The return to Zephyr Base should have been fast.
Emergency evac protocols.
Direct aerial route.
Priority channel.
But for reasons no one understood—
The skies above the city felt heavier.
Thicker.
As if the Echo's disappearance had stretched something thin across Zephyr's upper atmosphere.
The carrier engines hummed harder than usual, pushing through invisible resistance as the craft ascended from the Outer Vein landing ring.
Inside, the cabin was silent.
Not the disciplined silence of soldiers after combat.
A stunned, uneven quiet— held together by adrenaline, fear, and unanswered questions.
Lyra sat across from Cael, pulseband still glowing faintly.
She touched her wrist once, then met his eyes.
"You felt it too," she whispered.
Cael nodded slowly.
"That moment… before it rewound."
He hesitated.
"It wasn't instinct. It wasn't the Link. It felt like I stepped into—"
"Something deeper," Lyra finished.
Cael nodded again.
"Something I wasn't supposed to access."
Lyra's throat tightened. "Cael… what exactly did you see in the Breach?"
Before he could answer, Seraphine spoke from beside them.
"Whatever it was… it's becoming active."
Her gaze stayed fixed on Cael's pulseband—the intertwined sigil still glowing faintly beneath his skin.
Lyra stared at Seraphine.
"You know something. Don't you?"
Seraphine folded her hands behind her back.
"Not enough. But enough to be concerned."
Mireen wiped soot from her face, still shaken.
Jax leaned back, arms crossed, trying to process how his blade passed through the Echo yet still hit him.
Sena checked her cracked scanner for the hundredth time.
And Cael…
He sat still.
The weight of something unspoken resting on his shoulders.
---
Zephyr Base — Anchor Ward, Command Briefing Room
Arden was already waiting when they arrived.
The door slid shut behind them, sealing the room.
"Report," she said.
Seraphine stepped forward.
"The Echo is accelerating its manifestation capability. Its signature has crossed the threshold into proto-physical form."
Arden's eyes narrowed. "Meaning?"
"It is no longer bound to resonance fields alone," Seraphine explained.
"It is becoming something we can fight—or something that can fight us—directly."
Jax exhaled sharply.
"So we're dealing with a monster that can appear wherever it wants and ignore weapons."
Sena added quietly, "It didn't ignore them. It learned them."
Arden turned to Cael and Lyra.
"Anchors. What did it say to you?"
Lyra swallowed hard.
"That I'm incomplete."
Arden's jaw tightened.
"And Cael?"
He met her eyes, steady now.
"It said I remember."
Arden stepped closer.
"Do you?"
Cael hesitated.
A flash.
A memory.
The moment in the Breach.
Lyra falling.
His Echo screaming.
The collapsing sky.
His own voice calling her name—
But distorted, echoing through multiple versions of himself.
"I remember… pieces," Cael said.
Lyra watched him carefully—not surprised.
More like she already suspected.
Arden didn't press.
Not yet.
---
The Recording
Sena, trembling but focused, activated her fractured scanner.
"I managed to salvage one sequence from the Echo's manifestation before it scrambled the grid."
A projection flickered into the air—
—grainy at first, then sharpening into a slowed replay of the fight.
The Echo forming.
Jax attacking.
Seraphine intercepting.
Then—
The spear of resonance.
Lyra gasped.
The recording showed the barrier shattering, the spear touching Cael—
And then, a glitch.
The entire image rewound.
Frame by frame.
Perfectly reversed.
Jax leaned forward, eyes wide.
"It actually reversed time?"
Arden stared at Cael.
"What did you do?"
Cael shook his head.
"I don't know. It didn't feel like time. It felt like… choosing a different outcome."
Seraphine inhaled sharply.
"That is not possible."
Lyra's voice was soft.
"Unless the Anchor Link can do more than we've been told."
Arden turned toward Seraphine.
"Well?"
Seraphine hesitated—something she rarely did.
"I believe we are witnessing the earliest form of an ability only theoretical until now."
Sena murmured, "A resonance override…"
Mireen whispered, "A choice point…"
Seraphine finished:
"A Refracted Path."
A hush fell over the room.
Cael frowned. "What does that mean?"
"It means you didn't alter time," Seraphine said quietly.
"You altered resonance probability. You chose an outcome so strongly that the field reshaped itself to match."
Lyra stared at Cael.
"You… forced reality to pick a different option."
Arden's voice dropped to a whisper.
"No Anchor in recorded history has ever done that."
Cael's chest tightened.
He wasn't sure whether to feel terrified or guilty.
---
What the Echo Left Behind
Mireen tapped the projection again.
"There's more. Just before it vanished… it dropped something."
The image zoomed in on the final burst of prismatic light.
A single shard of crystal—tiny, almost invisible—fell to the ground where the Echo had stood.
The room froze.
Lyra whispered, "That wasn't there before."
Sena nodded.
"It wasn't part of the environment. It materialized when the Echo destabilized."
Arden stepped forward.
"Where is it now?"
Mireen answered:
"I brought it."
She reached into a resonance-sealed case and lifted it with shaking hands.
A small, floating prism—imperfect, cracked—
—but pulsing with a signature that matched Cael's pulseband.
Cael felt the pull instantly.
Lyra felt it too.
Seraphine inhaled sharply.
"Arden… that's not just a shard."
Arden's voice was barely audible.
"No. It's an Anchor Fragment."
Lyra froze.
Cael stared.
And Sena whispered what no one wanted to say aloud:
"Did the Echo drop a piece of itself… or a piece of Cael?"
The shard pulsed once.
Softly.
Painfully.
Lyra reached toward Cael, fear touching her eyes.
"Cael… I can feel it resonating with you."
Cael swallowed hard.
Because the truth hit him at the same moment:
The Echo didn't leave behind a fragment.
It returned one.
His.
Something stolen long ago.
Something buried.
Something he lost inside the Breach.
The shard pulsed again.
And Cael's pulseband answered.