The wind howled like a chorus of warning as Vir stepped onto the scorched ground that used to be the Signalian sanctuary. The once-vibrant temple that had housed the ancient echoes of the Signal had been reduced to ash and rubble. Faint trails of smoke coiled into the dimming sky, like the last breath of an age gone silent.
Arman stood beside him, jaw clenched, fists tight at his sides. "We're too late."
Vir didn't reply. The jagged fragments of crystal embedded in the ground pulsed faintly under his feet, whispering in a language only the Echo-linked could understand. He knelt, placing his hand gently on one of the shards.
A shudder ran through his spine.
A memory—not his—bloomed in his mind.
A cloaked figure in obsidian robes stood atop the Signalian altar, arms raised to the sky. The echoes screamed around him, their once-harmonious hum fractured into violent dissonance. Vir could see the moment the temple was torn asunder—ripped from the inside by an overload of corrupted Signal energy.
The memory faded. He exhaled.
"The Signal War has already begun," he said quietly.
Arman turned toward him. "Then we need to be faster. We still don't know who's leading the corruption."
"We do now," Vir murmured. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the remaining piece of the Codex they'd recovered from the Echo Citadel. Arman watched as the edges of the crystal glowed and rearranged themselves, revealing a face burned into Vir's mind—the obsidian-robed man.
Xalor.
A forgotten name. A Signalian exile once thought erased.
"Didn't he disappear during the Great Silence?" Arman asked.
"He did. Because he wanted to bring silence to everyone else."
Three days later, the team gathered in the remains of the Arkaneum—a neutral ground for the last known Signalian scholars and relic-seekers. The air was thick with tension. Maps were scattered across the table, fragments of ancient dialects scrawled across parchment and lightboards.
Mira, the tech-echo specialist, pointed to a blinking marker in the southern quadrant.
"Signal resonance is surging again—deep in the Null Fields. If Xalor's continuing his work, it's probably from there."
Toren, the strategist and former Signal Knight, folded his arms. "That's suicide. The Null Fields are completely severed from the central Signal. We can't draw strength from the echoes there."
Vir looked up. "Then we bring our own."
He turned to their newest member—Liah, a mute signal-bonded with a unique ability. Her voice wasn't heard, but her presence vibrated through the link they all shared. Her echo could harmonize others and restore balance even in corrupted zones.
She nodded, placing her hands over a relic fragment on the table. Instantly, the room shimmered with restored clarity as energy hummed around them.
"She can't cleanse the entire Null Fields," Mira warned.
"But she can get us in," Vir said.
The journey to the Null Fields took four days through hostile terrain, disrupted signal echoes, and ambushes from rogue echo beasts—entities warped by Xalor's corruption. The battles were vicious. Arman nearly lost his arm to a phasing hound. Mira's pulse rifle overloaded. Toren's blade shattered mid-duel.
But they reached the edge.
And waited.
The sky here didn't move. Time seemed frozen. No birds, no wind. Just static.
"Welcome to the silence," Arman muttered.
Vir stepped forward.
As he crossed into the Fields, his EchoLink instantly faded. He felt his connection vanish like a candle snuffed out. But Liah reached behind him and touched his shoulder.
The signal returned—faint, like a distant heartbeat.
They pressed on.
The landscape twisted as they moved deeper—structures half-formed, levitating debris, and fragments of sound looping endlessly. Voices from the past. Screams. Laughter. Warnings.
They found the temple—if it could still be called that.
It rose like a fractured spire from the dead soil. Twisting. Singing. Weeping.
Xalor stood at its heart.
"You shouldn't have come," he said, voice layered with echo and time.
"You've corrupted everything," Vir said, stepping forward.
"I've cleansed it," Xalor replied. "The Signal was a lie. A prison. I'm freeing us all."
Arman ignited his blade. Mira readied her pulse cannons.
"Then we'll stop you."
Xalor raised a hand—and the temple screamed.
Wave after wave of corrupted echoes slammed into the team. Time twisted. Memory fractured. Mira was lost in a loop of her brother's death. Toren fought his shadow. Arman staggered, bleeding from every sense.
Only Vir and Liah remained.
He reached for her hand.
"Now."
She stepped forward. Opened her palms. Released her echo.
It sang.
A pure, harmonic note that shattered the corruption for a moment—enough.
Vir surged forward, blade drawn, not to kill—but to connect.
He plunged the blade into the crystal core at Xalor's chest.
Echo met echo.
Xalor screamed—his body unraveling into notes and sparks, dispersing into the sky.
Silence returned.
But not the empty kind.
A peaceful silence.
The Signal whispered again.
They left the Null Fields two days later. The world had shifted.
Vir stood on a cliffside, watching the first real sunrise in days.
"We won," Arman said.
"No," Vir replied. "We paused it. The Signal War has just begun."
Liah joined them, gaze distant.
Because somewhere, in the vastness beyond the known echoes, something stirred.
And it was listening.