The last motes of the Scuttler alpha dissolved into the stale, metallic air of the transport hub, leaving behind a silence more profound than before. In the center of the concourse, a knot of dark, angry crystal pulsed with a faint, malevolent light. A Tier-1 Echo. Just a Tier-1. The thought was a weak shield against the memory of Zane, his body convulsing on the floor of the Ancient outpost, his Aethel Frame shattering from the inside out. That had been a Tier-2. A live wire. This was… what? A faulty power cell? Still capable of burning the whole machine down.
Kael's side throbbed, a sharp counterpoint to the low, steady hum of the Hound's soul coiled within him. He had won. He had even done something… new. That trick with the spear, the focused vibration, it was the first thing that had felt truly his own. A whisper of possibility. But it wasn't enough. It was a clever hack, not a fundamental upgrade.
To reach the Sunken City, to find Outpost PR-3, he needed more. More tools. More options. More power. The words tasted like Zane's arrogance, and Kael hated it. But the logic was cold and inescapable. He was a technician staring at a system too complex to brute force. He needed a bigger toolkit.
The Scuttler Echo pulsed, a dark promise. He thought of its movements—the twitching, insectile speed, the way it exploited angles and cover. It was an ambusher's instinct. Lyra's was a hunter's, all forward momentum and relentless pursuit. They were different. Incompatible, maybe. Like trying to run two different operating systems on the same hardware. The thought of the resulting crash made his stomach clench.
But the alternative was what? Staying here? Sticking to low-threat pest control missions until he was old and grey, the secrets of the data slate rotting in his memory? He saw the face of Aris Thorne, a ghost in a machine, heard the name of a threat that had broken a civilization. He couldn't un-know that. He couldn't go back to just being a scavenger. He was already a hunter, and his prey was the past.
The Hound's Echo stirred within him, a low growl of pure predatory instinct. It saw the new Echo not as a tool, but as a rival's essence, a lesser creature's soul. It wanted to dominate it, or destroy it.
No.
He pushed the instinct down. He was the cage. He was the one who decided. This wasn't a prize to be claimed. It was a component to be installed. A calculated risk. The thought calmed him, grounding him in the familiar logic of his old life. He would do this like a technician, not a brute. He would prep the system. He would manage the integration. He would not be another cautionary tale for Jax to spit on.
He spent the next hour not in celebration, but in preparation. He found a quiet corner of the derelict hub, a place where the ghosts of hurried commuters had been replaced by the patient silence of decay. He sat, cross-legged, and sank into his inner world. He found his Aethel Core, that steady, humming star of his own energy. He let its calm, analytical Flow wash through him, soothing the jagged edges of his Frame, reinforcing the bypasses he'd built to contain the Hound. He was stabilizing the grid before plugging in a new, volatile power source. He focused until the thrum of Lyra's soul was a quiet, contained rhythm, a beast resting in its cage, not rattling the bars.
Only then did he approach the Scuttler Echo. He knelt, his hand hovering over the pulsing crystal. He took a breath. And he began the absorption.
It was not a detonation like Zane's. It was a jarring, grinding conflict.
The moment the new energy touched his Frame, it wasn't a flood of raw power, but a chaotic spray of alien sensation. He felt the phantom scrape of crystalline claws on ferrocrete. The claustrophobic comfort of a tight, dark space. The patient, twitching stillness of an ambush predator. It was a consciousness built on hiding, striking, and skittering away.
And the Hound hated it.
The feral rage of Lyra's Echo flared, not at Kael, but at the intruder. It was the fury of a pack hunter, a creature of open pursuit, confronted with the "cowardly" instincts of a thing that lurked in shadows. Two warring philosophies of violence clashed within the confines of his soul. His mind became their battlefield.
One moment, he felt the urge to press forward, to charge, to meet threats head-on. The next, a conflicting, overwhelming instinct screamed at him to flatten himself to the ground, to scuttle into the nearest crack, to wait. His limbs twitched. A low snarl caught in his throat, but it was cut off by a chittering, insect-like sound that was even more horrifying. He felt as though his bones were being pulled in two different directions at once.
Pain, sharp and disorienting, lanced through his skull. This was a system crash. A conflict of incompatible drivers. He fought to hold onto his own consciousness, his own calm Core, a single stable point in the storm. He wasn't the hunter or the ambusher. He was the technician. He was the framework they both inhabited. He forced his Flow out, not to suppress them, but to separate them. He built a new wall in his mind, a partition. He shoved the snarling wolf into one cage and the skittering insect into another.
He collapsed onto his side, gasping, his body drenched in a cold sweat. His Frame felt… crowded. Unstable. The low, steady hum of the Hound was now accompanied by a high-pitched, staticky whine. The weight of two echoes. It was heavier than he could have ever imagined.
For the next few days, he was a broken machine. His movements were a chaotic mess. He'd take a step with the fluid grace of the wolf, only for his next to be a jarring, sideways shuffle. He'd reach for a ration bar and his hand would twitch, his fingers splaying out as if testing the air for vibrations. He was a puppet with two different masters pulling the strings, and the result was a clumsy, horrifying dance.
He returned to the Forge a wreck.
Jax took one look at him and didn't even have the decency to look surprised. He just looked… tired. "So, you did it," the veteran grunted. It wasn't a question. He could feel the dissonant, sputtering energy coming off Kael's Frame. "You stuck a second engine in the transport and now you can't steer. What did you think would happen?"
"I can control them," Kael insisted, the words lacking conviction even to his own ears.
"Separately? In a quiet room? Maybe," Jax conceded, circling him like a predator diagnosing a wounded animal. "But you can't use them. You try to pounce, and you'll end up scuttling into a wall. You try to ambush, and you'll give away your position with a growl. They're fighting each other, and you're the rope in their tug-of-war. You're not a Frame User right now, kid. You're a liability."
He stopped, his expression hardening into the familiar, unforgiving mask of the mentor. "The old lesson was about building a cage for one beast. Congratulations, you've passed. The new lesson is harder. Now, you learn to be the zookeeper."
The training that followed made the first week feel like a vacation. Jax didn't just push him; he broke him. Over and over. He reactivated the drones, but now they moved with a new, terrifying unpredictability.
"Draw on the Hound!" Jax would roar. "Forward momentum! Overwhelm it!"
Kael would try, letting Lyra's instincts flow. He'd surge forward, spear extended, a blur of grey—and a second drone would zip in from his flank. The Scuttler's instinct would scream at him—Dodge! Hide! Sideways!—and the clash would send him tumbling to the concrete, his coordinated attack dissolving into a clumsy failure.
"Too slow! You hesitated!" Jax's voice was a hammer blow. "Again! This time, the Scuttler. Angles! Don't let them pin you down!"
He'd try to channel the other Echo, his movements becoming a series of short, explosive dodges, his body staying low. But the Hound would rebel. It saw the direct path, the clean line of attack, and fought against the evasive, "dishonorable" tactics. He felt like he was fighting with his own shadow.
"You're trying to command them," Jax growled, standing over Kael after a particularly spectacular failure had left him tangled in his own spear. "You're yelling at two different engines to go in two different directions. You're not the commander, kid. You're the damn chassis. You hold them together. You decide which one gets the fuel."
Kael lay there, every muscle screaming, his mind a frayed knot of conflicting impulses. He was beginning to understand. It wasn't about finding harmony between them. There was no harmony between a wolf and a spider. It was about selection. It was about building a switch. A clean, instantaneous, mental switch that could flick from one set of instincts to the other. To be the hunter one moment, and the ambusher the next. To treat his own soul not as a home, but as a weapon system with a fire-selector switch.
He pushed himself up, the cold of the concrete a familiar friend. He looked at Jax, and for the first time, he didn't see a tormentor. He saw an engineer. A brutal, terrifyingly effective engineer, who was teaching him how to rebuild his own soul from the ground up.
"Again," Kael said, his voice a raw whisper.
Jax almost smiled. "That's the spirit. Now, let's see if you can switch from predator to prey without ripping yourself in half."