The door hissed open. Leyla and Mira rushed in, but were halted by a raised hand from Kaelen, who had returned with two silent, armored Inquisitors from the Academy's internal security.
"Stand down," Kaelen ordered, though her eyes were on Echo, calculating. "You just self-purified a Dawn-Class corruption. Explain."
Echo met her gaze, his new blood sense reading her pulse—elevated, but controlled. She was wary, not hostile. "My body fought it off. I have a high natural resistance."
"Resistance doesn't dismantle advanced corruption. It counter-adapts." One of the Inquisitors, a woman with lenses over her eyes, stepped forward. "You will submit to a deep psychic scan. To ensure no corruption remains, and to ascertain the nature of this 'resistance.'"
Leyla growled, stepping between them and Echo. "He just woke up!"
"It's okay, Leyla." Echo's voice was calm. He needed to control this narrative. If they scanned him deeply now, they'd find the awakening bloodline, and possibly the anomaly. He had to give them enough truth to satisfy, but not the whole truth.
He focused his Charm, layering it with the subtle, commanding presence of his nascent bloodline—the power of a sovereign over his own domain. "You can scan me. But you'll find only fatigue and the aftermath of a battle my biology won. The corruption is gone. I am Echo. I am loyal to the Academy and to my team. That is all you need to know."
His words carried weight, resonating not just in the air, but in the blood of those listening. The Inquisitor with lenses blinked, her certainty wavering.
Kaelen studied him for a long moment. Then she nodded. "Stand down, Inquisitor Vex. A surface-level scan only. Verify no active corruption."
The scan was brief, invasive. It brushed against his bloodline, but Echo consciously stilled his blood, making it appear ordinary, dormant. The scanner pinged clean.
"No corruption detected. Energy signature shows… unusual vitality, but within human variant parameters."
Kaelen didn't look fully convinced, but she had her result. "Very well. You have three days of medical observation. Then you return to duty. Dismissed."
The Inquisitors left. Kaelen lingered. "What really happened in there, Echo?"
He held her gaze. "I remembered what I'm fighting for."
She gave a slight, almost imperceptible nod, then turned and left.
The moment the door closed, Leyla and Mira were on him, holding him, their touches sending ripples through his new vascular awareness. He could feel their relief in the warm rush of their blood, the quickened pulses at their throats.
"You scared us," Mira whispered into his shoulder.
"Never again," Leyla vowed, her claws retracted but her embrace iron-tight.
Echo held them, his mind already turning.
He had a new power—one rooted in life itself. And he had a secret even deeper than his anomaly nature.
The Blood Sovereign had stirred.
And the war was about to change.