Cindervale never slept.
Even at midnight its alleys glowed red with furnace light, the hum of half tuned Echos vibrating through the rusted pipes that ran under the streets. The rich trained in towers of glass and resonance steel. The poor fought for scraps of sound below them.
Reto Kopi lived in the silence between.
He crouched at the edge of the pit, bare feet sliding on the dust. Around him, dozens of voices bled into one chant:
"Fast Copy! Fast Copy! FAST COPY!"
He hated the nickname. It started as a joke the brown skinned kid from the slums who could mimic anyone's stance after watching them once. But tonight, the crowd meant it. His last opponent lay unconscious, ribs bent inward, and Reto's arms still trembled from the vibration of a copied strike.
Across the pit, the next fighter a man twice his size, branded with the insignia of the Echo Enforcement Corps jumped down and cracked his knuckles.
"Orders from the boss," he said. "You keep showing off tricks like that, the Tyrant's gonna want a word."
Reto's heart sank. Lord Kaien Sura. The Spectrum Tyrant. The man who ruled Cindervale's echoes like a god of light.
The gong clanged.
The enforcer moved first, arms shimmering with a faint orange glow. Agro User. Stronger than anyone Reto had faced tonight.
Reto dropped low, body loose. His eyes followed motion not muscle, not breath, but rhythm. The sound behind the sound.
Step. Twist. Strike.
He copied the pattern instantly, a ghost echo running down his nerves. The blow landed at the same angle, same tempo but faster. The man crumpled.
Shock rippled through the crowd.
Something inside Reto's chest pulsed hot, electric. For a heartbeat the world around him slowed, colors sharpening to crystalline edges. He felt everything: the spectators' gasps, the vibration of their voices, the hum of his own pulse. A second pulse rose under it, alien and bright.
What was that?
A whisper no, a note slid through his mind, like someone plucking a string inside his skull. His skin lit with faint lines of gold, then dimmed.
The pit master hurried forward, pressing a handful of cracked coins into his palm. "Take your winnings and vanish, kid. Before the Corps grabs you."
Reto left through the back alleys, the coins clinking like tiny bells. Above, Cindervale's main tower bled prism light into the night Kaien's palace. He could almost hear it humming, seven colors blending into one suffocating tone that covered the whole city.
He reached the stairs to his apartment and paused. A thin shadow detached from the wall ahead.
The same enforcer he'd dropped earlier. Except now, his body glowed blue.
"Lord Kaien requests your presence," the man said, voice hollow. "Immediately."
Chains of light slid from his arms, hissing through the air. Reto's instincts screamed.
He jumped back and his body moved on its own.
The pattern of those chains, the rhythm of the flick… his muscles repeated it perfectly. His hand snapped forward, mimicking the angle and a faint thread of gold flashed from his fingertips, meeting the blue chain mid air.
Both shattered.
The enforcer stared, stunned. "You copied !"
Reto didn't wait. He turned and sprinted into the maze of alleys, heart pounding so loud it drowned the city's hum.
By dawn, Cindervale buzzed with a new rumor.
A street rat copied the Spectrum Corps' chain technique.
He broke their pattern with his own.
They say he moved too fast for sound to catch him.
Somewhere in the tower above, Lord Kaien Sura opened his eyes, the colors in them shifting like shards of glass.
"Fast Copy, is it?" he murmured. "Let's see how fast a mirror shatters."