Echo didn't walk the same paths as the others.
He drifted through the margins of the simulation, navigating the seams—the cracks where memories faded and code frayed into silence. This place wasn't meant for characters with clarity. It was for the uncertain, the wandering, the ghosts that had learned how to stay.
And Echo?
He was somewhere in between.
He stood at the edge of an unfinished classroom. Desks hung midair, frozen in soft loops of playback. A chalkboard wrote and unwrote itself, names fading just before they could be read. He watched it quietly, hands in his pockets, hoodie fluttering in wind that wasn't wind at all.
"Still here, huh?" he muttered—not to the system, but to himself.
A faint ripple answered. A voice, like static soaked in memory.
> "You were never part of the primary loop."
He smiled faintly. "Yeah, I know. I walked in through the side door, remember?"
