The Hollow hadn't stopped burning.
Even in silence, the scars left behind pulsed under Riley's boots. The obsidian remains of the relay tower were now no more than smoldering rubble—a half-buried blade severed from the hive-mind of the Skuldrith. But victory here had not come clean. The enemy hadn't fallen. It had simply shifted.
Riley stood at the edge of the cliff, watching ash spiral into a sky that looked scraped raw. Behind her, the survivors of Hollow's Edge gathered in scattered formations, wounded but alive. The embers that licked the horizon weren't celebration—they were warning.
She gripped the pendant around her neck and closed her eyes. For a moment, she wasn't the leader of a rebellion or a soul-linked Echo-Born. She was just Riley Cross. Once forgotten. Once terrified.
Now?
Now she was fire.
Daphne moved through the recovery camp with calculated grace, her pulse scanner sweeping the wounded for signs of echo corruption. Her mind moved faster than her hands, processing injuries, infection rates, residual fire patterns. Skuldrith energy behaved differently now—more volatile. More like it had purpose.
She paused beside a collapsed tent where two soul-linked scouts sat with charred armor and cracked visors. Their bond flickered faintly between them, an amber thread that pulsed in time with their breathing.
"They absorbed too much residual memory," Daphne murmured, fingers tapping her gauntlet. "We need isolation chambers before the echo infection spreads inward."
Brael's voice cut through the wind behind her. "If we don't move soon, it won't matter."
Daphne turned. "How bad?"
He handed her a map—a burned scrap with shifting flame lines etched through it. "Velrax is redirecting through the north divide. He's building something. Bigger than a hive. More... structured."
Riley arrived mid-sentence, her cloak tattered and her eyes distant. "It's not a hive," she said softly. "It's a cathedral."
Flashpoint Briefing, Emberwake Command Tent – 0400
Inside the canvas walls, heat pulsed from makeshift lanterns. The command tent held the remaining leaders of the Echo-Born: Riley, Daphne, Brael, and three pairs of bonded veterans—each scarred from previous cycles, each looking to Riley for more than orders.
"The Cathedral," Brael said, pointing to a jagged series of peaks just north of the Divide. "If we're right, Velrax is building a central echo-surge chamber. It's not just spawning Skuldrith anymore. It's rewriting everything. Our history. Our victories."
Daphne frowned. "If he completes it, he'll rethread the war in his favor. Retroactively. It'll be like we never even existed."
Riley stepped forward. "Then we don't let him finish."
"What's your plan?" asked Garrik, a veteran flame-binder with half his face sealed in obsidian scar tissue.
Riley's eyes narrowed. "We go in before it stabilizes. Disrupt the weaver-nodes. Sever his memory threads. If we can tear through the core before it syncs—"
"You're talking about lighting a god's altar on fire," Garrik interrupted.
"No," she corrected. "I'm talking about making him remember what happens when he underestimates fire."
They moved at twilight. Three squads. Riley and Daphne led the central assault team—twelve Echo-Born strong. Brael took a flanking squad to disable the north surge pillar. Garrik led the southern sabotage, targeting the temporal stitch chambers.
As they neared the cathedral structure, Riley's thoughts tangled between her heart and her hands. Every step forward dragged echoes behind her: faces she couldn't save, timelines she never chose. But she pushed through the noise.
"You hear that?" she whispered.
Daphne nodded. "The song. It's a loop."
The cathedral wasn't silent. From within its molten walls, a rhythmic chant throbbed—a call in a forgotten language. Not spoken. Remembered.
They breached the outer barricade at dawn.
The cathedral rose like a spine of bone and fire, its towers curled inward like hands in prayer. Skuldrith flowed between its arches like veins—more coordinated now. Intelligent.
Riley gave the signal.
Daphne extended her gauntlet, igniting a field of echo-scramblers that sent pulses through the enemy ranks, fragmenting their formation.
Then the fire came.
Riley surged forward, flames leaping from her palms in controlled arcs. Every breath burned, but it also remembered. She used the memories of past battles to strike smarter: a slice of mirror fire across the left flank; a redirect through a crumbling wall to trap advancing drones.
She leapt onto a central dais. In her vision, the memory-thread showed dozens of versions of herself—all charging this point in different cycles.
This time, she would finish it.
Skuldrith generals emerged—massive, bone-armored, with molten eyes. One moved to strike Daphne, but Riley was faster. She wrapped fire around its blade, melting it mid-swing, then slammed a mirrored arc through its chest.
"Direction, not destruction," she whispered, repeating Brael's lesson.
Daphne hacked the echo-thread obelisk at the cathedral's core, rerouting its pulse through their bond. Her scream echoed as the interface burned into her arm.
Riley caught her as she collapsed. "Almost there," Daphne hissed.
"Then hold on," Riley said.
She reached for the flame.
And became it.
Fire burst from her body in radiant threads. Each strand tangled with the cathedral's memory lattice—turning Velrax's rewritten threads against him. The chants inside the structure wavered. Screams erupted—not of pain, but of confusion.
The Skuldrith forgot their orders. They forgot who they were.
Daphne, still conscious, triggered the detonation code within the memory-stitch relay. "Riley!" she shouted.
Riley knelt, fire flaring behind her like wings. "Do it."
The cathedral ruptured in a pillar of gold and ash.
Ash rained for hours.
The survivors emerged from the crater left behind. The sky had changed—not brighter, not darker, but clear. Riley knelt among the dust, Daphne beside her, breathing ragged but steady.
"He's not gone," Daphne whispered.
"No," Riley agreed. "But now he knows we're real."
The cost had been high. But so was the message.
They had burned the rewrite.