Chapter 11 — The Trembling Begins
Two pair of bodies moved quickly through corridors , they twisted upward.
Echo barely noticed how many turns they took. Stairs, halls, more stairs....each step getting faster than the last. Elsa did not slow down either, her pace was sharp and
controlled.
"Keep up," she said. Echo followed quickly.
The deeper they moved, the more he felt it, a faint vibration. At first, it was subtle....like a distant heartbeat beneath a stone.
Then it grew a low tremor ran through the walls, dust loosened from the ceiling. The air itself felt… unsettled.
Echo frowned"What is this…?" Elsa didn't answer. They reached a final staircase...narrow, steep. At the top stood a single door.
No guards, no markings, just a heavy slab of dark metal. The trembling pulsed around again, this time stronger than the first.
Elsa pushed the door open, the light swallowed them.
Echo stepped out.....and froze. The world opened.
Sky, endless sky.
For a moment, his mind failed to process it.
After the enclosed halls, the sudden vastness was overwhelming. The air was colder and sharper around here. Wind rushed past him, tugging at his clothes.
He took a step forward,then stopped.His breath caught. He was standing on a wall.
Not a normal wall....
A structure so vast his eyes could not follow its end. It stretched across the horizon in both directions, disappearing into distant mist. The surface beneath his feet was wide enough to hold entire roads.
Below.....Echo looked down, and felt his stomach drop. There was no ground,only a deep shallow depth.
A vast, swallowing expanse far beneath him, blurred by layers of drifting haze. The world below felt… distant. As if he stood between two realities.
He stuttered..."This is…" Echo muttered.
"The Outer Wall," Elsa said. Her voice was calm...but her eyes were not.
Echo turned...All along the wall, figures were gathering.
Warriors,dozens of them, then hundreds.
Some wore armor,others carried weapons already drawn. Cloaks snapped in the rising wind. Commands were being shouted.
Something was coming,the tremor hit again.
This time, it did not feel distant. The wall beneath Echo's feet shuddered. A deep vibration rolled through the structure...it felt low, heavy and unnatural.
Echo staggered slightly.
"Wh ..What is this?" he asked again, sharper this time.
Elsa's gaze fixed on the horizon.
"The Trembling." Echo followed her line of sight, at first, he saw nothing.
Then... The air moved. Far in the distance, the space above the horizon began to distort. Not like heat… not like wind.
Like something pressing against reality itself.
The sky bent. A ripple spread outward...slow and deliberate.
The light warped around it. Echo's chest tightened.
"What… is that?" No one answered him.
The ripple came again this time closer.
The trembling intensified,the wall groaned beneath them.
Some of the weaker warriors dropped to one knee, gripping their weapons to steady themselves.
Echo felt it then. Not just under his feet...
Inside him. His chest tightened and began to beat sharply.
He grabbed at it instinctively.....His core,It pulsed,once,twice.
Then violently. Echo sucked in a breath.
"What… is happening to me…?"
The sensation wasn't pain. It was something like … reaction. As if something inside him recognized what was coming.
Elsa turned sharply toward him.
She saw it,the air around him has change. The way his breathing had changed.
"What the heck is going on with him"
Her eyes narrowed. "Echo." He barely heard her.Another ripple tore across the horizon. This time it was closer.
The distortion sharpened—dark lines cutting through space, like fractures forming in glass.
The air grew heavy and tense. Echo's core reacted stronger each time again.This time, he staggered.
A faint flicker of light pulsed beneath his skin—
Gone in an instant. Elsa stepped closer.
Her voice dropped. "Echo stay still."she said sharply.
Echo clenched his teeth. "I'm not doing anything...."
"I know, but you have to remain strong,formation will break if it reaches the wall," Elsa replied.
That was the problem.The wall shook violently. A deep crack echoed somewhere in the distance.
Shouts erupted across the structure.
"Brace!" "Hold formation!"
Weapons were raised. Energy began to gather.
The ripple reached the outer edge of the wall.
And then.... It stopped.
For a single, suffocating moment....
Everything went still.
No wind,no sound,no movement.
Echo felt his core… contract.
Hard.
Like something was forcing it inward.
"Ahhhhhh" a shout came too late.
Then...
BOOM.
The Trembling arrived.