The descent into the Forgotten Lines was like falling through the spine of a dying world.
Rusting pipes hissed out stale air. Lights flickered on walls not touched by life in decades. As they moved deeper through the conduit shaft, the tunnels grew narrower, quieter—until only the sound of their breaths and the distant, rhythmic pulsing of ancient machinery echoed in the dark.
Xander held the map orb tightly, its light dimming the farther they went. Not because it was failing—because the Veil itself seemed to resist illumination here.
"Feels like this place hates light," Veyr whispered.
Raid growled low. "The Lines were buried for a reason. Even the Wards sealed them off after the Collapse."
"And yet," Lyra muttered, "here we are. Chasing ghosts."
"No," Xander said, eyes fixed on the orb. "We're chasing truth."
They reached a terminal junction, its grated floor half-eaten by corrosion. Solara moved ahead, eyes glowing faintly with reflected code. Her movements were more precise now, like her body was syncing with something deeper—something older.
"Here," she murmured, kneeling beside a cracked panel. She traced her fingers along the rusted edge, whispering in the same pattern-language from the Whispering Vault. The wall responded. Not with sound—but with vibration.
The map orb flared.
A section of the floor spiraled open with a clank of ancient gears, revealing a stairwell swallowed in violet mist.
Raid stepped forward but froze. "Blood. Old. Wrong."
Xander smelled it too—metallic, but sharp, electric. Like copper boiled inside lightning.
They descended anyway.
Every step felt like a question asked to the bones of the world.
---
At the base of the stairwell, they entered a chamber shaped like an amphitheater—rows of empty stone seats facing a raised pedestal. Hovering above the pedestal, suspended by invisible currents, was a floating prism of fractured crystal, its facets shifting like a heartbeat.
But it wasn't beautiful.
It was hungry.
Xander staggered back the moment he looked at it. "What is that?"
Solara's breath caught. "I don't know. But... it feels like it's calling you."
"It's not just a prism," Lyra said, stepping closer, blade drawn. "It's coded. Veil-tech, but twisted."
"No," Raid growled. "It's beyond Veil-tech. This is a Shard. An Echo Shard."
Solara went still. "Echo... like the recursion visions?"
"Yes," Raid replied. "But crystallized. Echo Shards are fragments of moments that should not exist. Timelines that were erased, realities overwritten. This one... it's attached to him."
Xander stared at it—and in the reflections, he didn't see his own face.
He saw the older him again. The one from the Vault vision. Standing in a ring of fire, holding something in his hand.
This.
It was the same shard.
"It's mine," he said softly. "Or it will be."
The shard pulsed.
Solara reached for him. "Xander, don't—"
But the moment her fingers brushed his arm, the shard flared and slammed into his chest like a starburst of frozen flame.
Xander screamed.
---
And just like before—
He was elsewhere.
Standing in the same cathedral Victoria had passed through. Only this time it was pristine. No moss. No static. Just silence and golden light.
In front of him stood Ralph Thorne.
Not twisted.
Not yet monstrous.
Dressed in sleek black robes, with a single glove of mirrored chainmetal covering one hand. He looked young. Calm. Human.
"There you are," Thorne said.
"You... this is a memory."
"More than that," Thorne replied. "It's a beginning."
The world bent again—and Xander saw Ralph kneel before the very same shard, cradling it like a relic.
"She said it would bring order," Thorne whispered in the vision. "But all I see is noise. Endless. Screaming. How do I silence it?"
Then the figure behind him appeared.
Victoria.
But not the Victoria he knew.
Her eyes were dark voids. Her body covered in silver glyph scars.
"She lied," Victoria said, voice distant. "The shard doesn't end the pain. It echoes it. You can't use it, Ralph. Only someone born of recursion can."
Thorne turned. "Then I'll find one."
The vision burned away.
---
Xander collapsed, gasping, on the stone floor of the amphitheater.
Lyra was by his side instantly, shaking him. "You're back. What happened?"
"I saw Thorne," he wheezed. "And Victoria. In the past. He's been after this shard for decades. It doesn't just record reality—it chooses which ones survive."
"Then why would Ralph want it?" Veyr asked.
Solara stepped forward, eyes unreadable. "Because if he controls it, he doesn't need to steal souls anymore. He can just write a new future."
Xander stood slowly. The shard hovered near him now, orbiting his body like a moon caught in a cursed gravity.
"He wanted me to find it," he said quietly. "Victoria was never after Solara."
Lyra stiffened. "You're saying—"
"She was sent to track the shard. Ralph used her. Used me. He knew I'd trigger the Whispering Vault. He wanted me to see that future—so I'd come looking for this."
The group fell silent.
Raid exhaled smoke. "Then we destroy it."
"No," Xander said. "We hide it. If Thorne gets it now, he wins. But if I can learn to use it first... I might be able to rewrite the convergence itself."
Solara stepped closer. "And if it rewrites you instead?"
He met her gaze. "Then you stop me."
---
Elsewhere in the ruins of the city's broken upper tiers, Victoria Slade stood beneath a canopy of shattered satellites, the wind howling through twisted steel like a choir of ghosts.
Her soul mirror floated behind her, pulsing faintly.
Drath appeared from the shadows. "They've reached the shard, haven't they?"
"Yes," she said.
"Then the girl—Solara—is still the key."
"No," Victoria replied, voice cold. "She's a gate. Not the one."
Drath's head cocked. "You doubt your master?"
"I doubt that I was ever told the truth." She turned to him. "Ralph said I was supposed to recover an artifact buried in recursion echoes. But he never said the shard would speak."
Drath hissed. "It's cursed."
"It's alive."
Victoria turned away, drawing her pulse-blade with a flicker of violet static. Her eyes weren't cold now—they were sharp. Clear.
"Thorne lied. He didn't want to stop the convergence. He wanted to own it."
Drath's smile spread too wide. "And you? What do you want?"
She looked skyward. "To make sure Xander Croft doesn't become the one thing Ralph fears."
"What's that?"
"The future."
---
Back in the Forgotten Lines, the team regrouped inside a half-collapsed archive chamber, where data spores drifted like pollen in the air.
Veyr sealed the tunnel behind them with shadowglyphs, his hands trembling from the strain. "That'll hold. Maybe."
Lyra scanned the perimeter. "We can't stay long."
Xander studied the shard hovering in front of him, now reacting only to his presence. He could feel it now—a rhythm under his skin. Like memory breathing.
"It's called the Echoheart," Solara said quietly. "The ancients believed each worldline had a core—an anchorpoint of recursion. A heart that remembered all possible paths."
"And I'm bonded to it now," Xander said.
Raid growled. "Which makes you the most dangerous anomaly in the City."
"Not just in the City," Solara corrected. "In the world."
They fell silent again, each absorbing what that meant.
Xander finally looked at them all. "We don't run anymore. Not from Ralph. Not from the truth. We find the next Vault."
Lyra stepped forward. "Then we take the fight to him."
Veyr smirked. "About time."
Solara hesitated. "There's one more thing."
Everyone turned.
"The next Vault isn't underground. It's above. In the Spire District."
Raid hissed. "That place is locked tight. Arcology towers. Guarded by Code Saints. Anyone who goes up... doesn't come down."
Xander's eyes narrowed. "Then we'll be the first."
He reached into the shard's light and pulled something from within—a code-sigil glowing with a symbol none of them recognized.
A path.
A door.
A beginning.
---
Above, in a chamber lined with veins of nullsilver and broken angel circuitry, Ralph Thorne stood in front of a crystalline screen pulsing with faint green.
He watched Xander pull the sigil from the Echoheart and gave the faintest smile.
"So... you did survive."
A figure approached from behind—a woman in a hooded veil, her fingers tipped with black circuitry.
"Victoria failed," she said.
"No," Thorne replied. "Victoria changed. As expected."
The woman frowned. "You're letting them reach the next Vault?"
"I'm letting him think he's in control."
Thorne turned, eyes dark.
"Let the boy climb," he said. "We'll break him on the way down."