The barrier around Cael and Lyra pulsed like a living thing.
Not a dome.
Not a wall.
A heartbeat — theirs and something else's, woven together.
Lyra pressed her palm against the shimmering curve.
"It's not Zephyr," she whispered.
Cael felt it too.
The resonance wasn't mechanical.
Wasn't artificial.
Wasn't anything the city had ever built.
It felt ancient. Familiar.
And terribly alive.
But the Echo didn't care.
It lunged.
A lash of crystallized aether carved through the air — a spinning arc of prismatic shards aimed straight at the Anchors.
Seraphine moved faster than thought.
Aether wings flared behind her as she swept upward and intercepted the strike, her palms striking the projectile sideways, redirecting it into the ruined scaffolding. Metal exploded behind her in a burst of white-blue flame.
Jax was already rushing forward, Pulseknife blazing.
"Mireen, I need a clean frequency—"
"Trying!" she yelled from behind a broken support pillar. "It's rewriting its own signature every second! I can't get a lock!"
Sena staggered to her feet, one lens cracked, but she raised her scanner anyway.
"Its manifestation is unstable—every time it shifts, the district grid drops two percent! If this keeps up—"
"The district collapses," Seraphine finished coldly.
The Echo tilted its jagged, almost-humanoid head.
> "Collapse is irrelevant."
It vanished.
Not teleported — redacted. Its presence blinked out like the world forgot it.
Jax shouted, "Move!"
The Echo reappeared behind him.
Sena screamed.
Jax spun, Pulseknife slashing upward, catching the Echo's fractured limb — except the blade passed through the arm like cutting smoke.
And still, Jax staggered back as if he'd been hit.
"Damn—! It's reflecting resonance!"
Lyra's grip tightened on Cael's arm.
"It's learning faster… from us."
Cael met her eyes.
"No. It's learning from you."
But there was no time to dwell.
The barrier around them dimmed for a moment.
Lyra's breath hitched. Cael felt the drop like a blow.
Seraphine snapped toward them, voice sharp:
"Anchors! Re-sync! Don't let the barrier collapse!"
They tried.
Their pulsebands flared — twin rings circling their wrists — but the Link was rattled by the Echo's intrusion. Lyra's heart raced. Cael's thoughts buzzed too loud.
Lyra shook her head. "It's—slipping—"
The Echo appeared again.
This time in the air.
Above them.
Its limbs folded inward.
A prism spine aligned.
A spear of condensed resonance formed — sharper than light, heavier than gravity.
Seraphine's eyes jolted wide.
"Everyone DOWN!"
Jax dove.
Sena dropped her scanner.
Mireen threw herself behind the rig.
The spear fired.
Straight at Cael and Lyra.
Lyra gasped— Cael flinched— The barrier flared—
And shattered.
Not violently.
Not explosively.
It broke like glass touched by a feather.
The spear did not stop.
Cael moved first.
He pushed Lyra behind him and reached for whatever energy he could pull—
But it wasn't enough.
The spear struck.
A blast of white consumed everything—
—
—
Then… rewound.
The spear reversed course.
The blast folded back in.
The shards of the barrier reassembled.
And the spear reappeared in the Echo's hand as if nothing had happened.
Only Lyra had seen it.
"…Cael."
Her voice trembled.
"You—rewound reality."
Cael blinked.
"I—I didn't—"
But the pulseband on his wrist glowed with a symbol he had never seen before.
A spiral.
Two rings intertwined.
The same mark from the Breach.
Seraphine saw it too.
Her composure cracked.
"That symbol—Cael, what did you access inside the Breach?"
Cael didn't even know where to begin.
The Echo tilted its head again, something between curiosity and hunger rippling through its fractured form.
> "Anchor Drayen… expanding."
Its mask shifted, splitting into new crystalline angles.
> "Your memory returns.
Your resonance reforms.
Your past wakes."
Lyra stepped forward, fury burning in her pulse.
"YOU don't get to decide who he becomes!"
The Echo's fractured face flickered toward her.
> "And you… Anchor Vance…
incomplete.
Missing pieces.
Missing… him."
Lyra's breath punched out.
Cael moved instinctively between them.
"Stay away from her."
The Echo drifted down to the ground.
Gravity bowed to it rather than the other way around.
Its voice warped again:
> "You cannot keep what the Breach has already claimed."
Before Cael could demand an explanation, the Echo's prisms snapped outward — forming a circular frame.
A portal?
A conduit?
A memory gate?
Sena shouted, "It's creating a collapse rift—if it anchors that into the district, the entire Vein will fold!"
Seraphine surged forward.
"Eclipser units—subdue it NOW!"
Jax charged.
Mireen fired a burst of harmonic disruption.
Sena launched her scanning-lances.
The Echo finally reacted.
It unfurled.
A dozen limbs.
A hundred shards.
A storm of light.
The blast knocked every Eclipser flat.
Every one except—
Cael and Lyra.
They stood in the eye of the storm, untouched, resonance flowing around them like a shield woven from instinct.
Lyra's fingers found Cael's.
"Cael," she said, voice steady, "if we fall apart, the others fall with us."
He nodded.
"Then we don't fall."
Their pulsebands aligned.
Two hearts synchronized.
The resonance spike that erupted was not planned, calculated, or trained.
It was emotional.
It was raw.
It was them.
The explosion of light punched outward, spiraling through the district like a shockwave of memory and purpose. The Echo shrieked, distortions ripping across its form as its prisms cracked and recoiled.
For the first time—
It staggered.
Jax lifted his head, stunned.
"What the hell—did they do that?"
Seraphine didn't answer.
Her eyes were fixed on the Anchors — on the glow that now circled their joined hands.
A perfect dual-ring sigil.
A full Anchor pair awakening.
But the Echo wasn't done.
It steadied itself, limbs twitching, mask cracking open into a new, sharper smile.
> "Anchors… achieved.
Good.
Now the hunt can begin."
Before anyone could react—
The Echo inverted, folding inward like collapsing origami.
A burst of prismatic light blinded the district—
And it vanished.
Leaving only the shimmering circular frame behind — collapsing a second later into dust.
Silence swept through Sector Twelve.
Breathing.
Heartbeat.
Wind.
Then Seraphine spoke, voice tight:
"Anchors. With me. Now."
Cael and Lyra exchanged a breathless, rattled look.
The Echo hadn't been trying to kill them.
It had been testing them.
And they passed.
Which meant—
It wanted more.
Lyra shivered.
Cael looked at the fading dust of the rift.
Whatever the Echo had awakened in him—
It wasn't finished.
---
End of Chapter 79.