The next Echo attacked the heart of Elara's world: the Great Library.
It was a strategic, terrifyingly intelligent assault. The creature did not manifest in the busy main hall, but in the deep, silent stacks of the history and philosophy sections, the very places where the city's conception of itself was stored.
The occurrence was sudden with a psychic pulse sent out by the library's archivist-sensitives, a wave of pure intellectual terror.
Yohan was the closest Harmonizer on duty. He arrived to a scene of quiet chaos. There was no stampede, no screaming. The library patrons and staff were simply fleeing in a state of stunned, horrified silence, their faces blank, their minds overloaded by the psychic sound.
Yohan raced into the stacks, the familiar scent of old paper and dust now mingled with the acrid, ozone-like smell of a powerful Dissonance event.
He found the Echo in a long, narrow aisle between towering shelves of books. It was different from the one in the concourse.
This one was smaller, more fluid, and it looked less like a solid object and more like a being made of shimmering, distorted heat, a vaguely humanoid shape of pure, rippling mirage.
But its psychic signature was just as powerful, a focused, piercing note of pure, foreign despair.
And it was not attacking the building. It was attacking the books. It moved down the aisle, and as it passed, the books on the shelves contorted and writhed.
Spines twisted, covers warped, and pages turned to a fine, grey ash without any sign of flame. It was specifically targeting books on history, philosophy, and psychic theory, the very foundations of their knowledge.
It was not just causing chaos; it was erasing information. It was a Censor. A librarian from hell.
Yohan knew he could not let it reach the main archival vaults where the data-shards were kept. He had to stop it here.
He planted his feet, raised his hands, and projected a wall of pure psychic force, blocking the aisle.
The Echo stopped. It turned its shimmering, featureless head towards him. There were no eyes, but he felt its gaze, a cold, intelligence that was profoundly unnerving.
Unlike the blind, agonized creature from the concourse, this one felt aware. It felt like it had a purpose, and it did not try to break through his wall. It simply raised a shimmering arm, and a lance of pure despair shot from its hand.
Yohan had felt the despair of the first Echo, but this was different. It was not a wave of emotion; it was a focused, weaponized concept.
It was the idea of utter, absolute meaninglessness. The feeling that all effort, all love, all existence was a cosmic joke, a brief, pointless flicker in an eternal, empty void.
The concept struck his mental shield, and the shield did not break; it dissolved. The idea of meaninglessness was a universal solvent for the will. Why maintain a shield. Why fight? Why exist? It was all pointless. A profound, soul-crushing apathy washed over him. His arms grew heavy.
His concentration wavered. His will to fight was being systematically dismantled.
The Echo began to advance again, the books on either side of it turning to dust, with the area becoming dark like nothing present.
Yohan was losing. The creature's psychic weapon was too powerful, too fundamental. How could he fight against the concept of nothingness itself.
He needed an anchor. Something to hold onto. He thought of Elara. Her face, her smile, her passion for the stories of the past. He thought of their life together, the quiet moments, the shared laughter.
He thought of the argument they had had, the fear in her eyes. His love for her, his fear for her, these things were not meaningless. They were real. They were the most real things he knew.
He seized on that feeling, that complex, contradictory knot of love and fear. He used it to rebuild his will. He was not fighting for an abstract concept of order, rather he was fighting for her. He was fighting for the meaning she gave his life.
He pushed back against the tide of apathy, his own desperate, emotional reality a bulwark against the Echo's cold nihilism.
"No" he whispered, the word a prayer. He focused all his renewed will, all his love and fear, into a single point.
The Echo seemed surprised. It faltered for a second, its advance halting. It had not expected such resistance, and it had expected him to collapse into a state of catatonic despair.
Yohan seized the opportunity. He did not try to destroy the creature with a blast of energy.
He did something more instinctive, more desperate. He reached out with his mind and grabbed the lance of despair that was still battering his shields, and he did not block it, rather he caught it.
The moment his mind made contact with the raw psychic energy of the attack, an explosion of pure, alien agony detonated in his consciousness. It was a pain beyond any physical sensation.
It was the pain of a billion years of solitude, the despair of a god realizing it is alone in the universe. It was a jolt of pure, unadulterated cosmic horror. The psychic feedback was immense.
His nose began to bleed, and the world went white, but his desperate gambit worked.
By grabbing the weapon, he had created a direct link to the Echo, and through that link, he had done something to it.
His own powerful, emotional reality, his love for Elara, had been transmitted back up the beam. It was a concept as alien to the Echo as its despair was to him.
The creature shrieked, a sound of psychic agony and confusion, and its shimmering form flickered violently. It recoiled, pulling its energy back, breaking the connection.
Then, as if it had touched something toxic, it dissolved. It did not explode or implode. It just unraveled, its form coming apart like a poorly woven tapestry, its shimmering substance fading into nothingness.
Within seconds, it was gone.
Yohan collapsed to his knees, gasping, his mind screaming from the psychic trauma. The aisle was silent, lined with the grey ash of incinerated knowledge.
He had won. He had saved the library. But he was not unscathed. The jolt of pure, alien despair he had absorbed had done something to him.
It had left a wound, a deep, psychic scar on his perception.
He felt it settle into his mind, a permanent, cold spot that would not heal.
He had touched the mind of the enemy, and it had left its mark on him forever.