They came at midnight.
No knock. No warning. No subtlety.
Just the shudder of the world as the Guild's elite strike team—Talon Unit Sigma—dropped from the sky and smashed through the roof of the warehouse Malik had taken as temporary shelter.
Twelve of them.
Synchronized.
Spell-cannons. Binding sigils. High-order ward breakers.
Each one had trained to fight Reapers.
And each one had been given a singular directive:
"Bring back Malik Graves. Or don't come back at all."
The first mistake they made was assuming the warehouse had no defense layer.
The second was assuming Malik didn't know they were coming.
The third?
They brought only twelve.
Malik didn't blink when the first blast shattered the reinforced skylight.
Instead, he turned toward the descending figures and whispered one word:
"Obsidian."
The shadows beneath him burst open like cracked glass, and the summon launched into the air with a roar that made steel warp and alarms fail.
The air screamed.
Naomi was already moving—flame wreathing her arms, her form blurred in flickering afterimages as she lunged toward the east flank of invaders.
Elaris appeared mid-fall, intercepting a strike intended for Malik's head and answering with three precise cuts that drew no blood—because blood didn't have time to reach the air.
Anacaona didn't step forward.
She glided—every motion measured, elegant, unstoppable. Her spear shattered a binding ring mid-cast and pinned the caster to the far wall without killing him.
Malik watched them all move like pieces on a board he had already memorized.
Then he moved.
His cloak billowed back as Echo flooded his veins, the familiar pulse now a living rhythm beneath his skin. The room fell silent—not because the noise stopped, but because everything that followed was too fast for sound to register.
He appeared behind the squad's comms lead before she could turn.
One touch to the spine—an injection of concentrated spiritual force—and she folded in on herself, collapsing without a mark.
Another turned. Malik locked eyes with him.
A spell burned mid-air, a luminous chain whip meant to bind his arms and seal his core.
Malik stepped through it.
Not around. Not under.
Through.
The spell shattered like glass against his skin, and in one smooth, casual motion, he backhanded the summoner into a steel beam.
Metal groaned. The man didn't get up.
Outside, two agents tried to flank Naomi.
One brought down a wide-area gravity rune. The other readied a soul-latch that could disrupt her flame channeling.
Naomi let it happen.
Then, as the rune anchored, she twisted her body through the compression field and ignited in a column of white flame so hot the concrete beneath her bubbled.
She stepped through the soul-latch like it was mist, grabbed one agent by the throat, and hurled him across the lot into the second. Both hit the wall hard enough to leave dents.
She shook off the dust and smiled, breathing hard.
"I was hoping someone would try me today."
Elaris cut through a summoner trying to cast in stealth, her feathers trailing behind her like burning judgment. The man's head turned to follow her… then slid from his shoulders half a second later.
One of the Sigma squad screamed and activated a null-zone beacon.
Everything within a 10-meter radius dropped into silence. Echo fields suppressed. Movement slowed. Shadows extinguished.
Obsidian dropped—snarling, unable to manifest fully.
But Malik stepped into the zone like it didn't matter.
The agents faltered.
He walked calmly through the field, eyes locked on the one holding the beacon.
"Impressive," Malik said quietly. "But you didn't test it on me."
He reached out.
Touched the core of the device.
It overloaded in an instant, Echo surging violently through the suppression field like water through shattered glass.
The zone collapsed.
And Malik was already gone.
He reappeared in the middle of their formation.
One man drew a blade of soulsteel. Rare. Illegal.
Didn't matter.
Malik caught it mid-swing, turned the man's wrist backward at the wrong angle, and shoved the blade back into his stomach.
"You don't use sovereign weapons on borrowed strength," Malik said as the man dropped.
By then, only three were left.
The commander, a heavy striker, and a medic.
The striker rushed him, releasing a multi-hit chain of echo-augmented punches meant to pulverize bone and armor alike.
Malik stood still.
He waited until the man's third strike—then ducked under it, slipped inside the guard, and drove a palm into the man's chin.
The impact didn't break bones.
It broke memory.
The man collapsed, eyes glazed, his Echo untethered from his physical form. Not dead. Just… unusable.
The medic trembled.
"Don't," she said. "Please. I didn't—"
Malik pointed to the door.
"Go," he said. "Before I change my mind."
She fled.
Only the commander remained.
He was older than the others. Broad-shouldered. His armor bore more scars than shine. He didn't speak. Just raised a two-handed glaive covered in sovereign glyphs.
"You're not the first who's come for me," Malik said.
"I'll be the last," the man growled.
Malik nodded.
"No," he said. "You'll be the one I leave to tell the others."
The fight lasted eight seconds.
The commander was good—disciplined, precise, a survivor of the Ashen Dunes War.
But Malik wasn't fighting like a Reaper.
He fought like someone who remembered battlefields that hadn't existed for centuries.
He anticipated the commander's anchor stance.
Broke it in two moves.
Slid under a spinning glaive arc and hit the man in the knee with enough force to dislocate it.
When the commander dropped, Malik stood over him.
No kill.
No cruelty.
Just a sentence.
"Tell them you met Malik Graves," he said. "And that next time, I won't be this merciful."
He turned and walked out, cloak trailing.
The warehouse burned behind him.
Not from flames.
From Echo residue so thick it ate through structure like acid.
Naomi jogged to catch up. "You let him live?"
"Someone has to carry the story," Malik replied.
Elaris landed silently on a rooftop above.
"They'll spin it."
"Let them," Malik said. "Truth doesn't care about spin. Only weight."
By morning, the footage was everywhere.
A bootleg recording captured from a drone.
Half-glitched. Static-laced. But undeniable.
A hooded boy walking through a Guild kill squad like he was untouchable.
The caption read:
"The Gravewalker doesn't dodge. He chooses."
That afternoon, the High Guild summoned an emergency strategy summit.
They no longer called him an anomaly.
They called him a sovereign-class threat.
They authorized new tactics.
And issued a codename.
BLACK ECHO.
Malik stood in the ruins of the warehouse, now fully collapsed, smoke rising like incense.
Anacaona stood behind him.
"They'll escalate," she said.
"I'm counting on it," Malik replied.
"Why?"
"Because the louder they get…" he turned, eyes glowing with something old and unrelenting, "…the more people start listening to me instead."
Somewhere beyond the Veil, a gate opened in secret.
And something that was not of this world…
Watched.