The Awakening

Idris stood frozen, the echoes of the vision still pulsing through his mind. The hooded woman's hand remained on his shoulder, her presence both grounding and overwhelming. The weight of what he had just seen—the fall of the Sa'Khel, the war against the Echo, the extinction of his own bloodline—pressed down on him like an unseen force.

He swallowed hard. "If I'm the last of them… what am I supposed to do? I can't just—just fight something that eats time."

The woman studied him carefully, her glowing irises shifting like liquid stars. "Your awakening has already begun, Idris Vale. You have felt it, haven't you? The way time bends around you. The moments that slip. The way reality struggles to hold you in place."

His breath hitched. She was right. The unexplainable gaps in his memory, the times people had forgotten his existence for a split second, the way his own reflection sometimes lagged behind him in mirrors… He had ignored them, convinced himself they were tricks of the mind.

But now?

They were proof.

Elise stepped forward, her stance defensive. "If he's got these so-called powers, why haven't they shown up before? Shouldn't he be— I don't know, glowing or something?"

The woman's gaze flicked to her. "Power suppressed is power unfound." She looked back at Idris. "You have spent your life denying what you are. That denial has kept you hidden… but it has also made you weak."

A spark of irritation flared in Idris. "I'm not weak."

She tilted her head, as if amused. "Then prove it."

The chamber around them suddenly flickered, shifting like a living mirage. The symbols on the walls began to pulse in an unfamiliar rhythm, vibrating the air itself. The other hooded figures stepped back, forming a wide circle around them.

Idris felt something in his chest tighten—a force, invisible yet pulling at him. It was unlike anything he had ever experienced. His heartbeat pounded, each beat sending ripples of something otherworldly through his veins.

Then the world around him changed.

No transition. No warning.

One second, he was in the chamber.

The next—

He was standing on the edge of a ruined battlefield.

Wind howled through the skeletal remains of what had once been a grand city. Buildings lay shattered, their structures bent in unnatural directions. The ground beneath him was fractured, as if torn apart by unseen forces. And in the distance—

A shadow moved.

Not a normal shadow. Not a trick of light.

A figure, shifting in and out of existence, its form flickering like a badly recorded memory.

Idris recognized it instantly.

The Echo.

A rush of instinct surged through him, his body moving before his mind could even catch up. He stumbled backward, his pulse hammering in his ears. This wasn't real. It couldn't be real.

And yet, when the Echo turned toward him, its faceless void of a head tilting slightly—

He felt it.

A presence. Cold and ancient. Something that did not belong in time, yet consumed it all the same.

The Echo knew him.

And it was waiting.

Idris clenched his fists. His breath came fast and uneven. He needed to move, to escape, but his feet were rooted to the cracked earth.

Then—

The pull inside him intensified.

It was no longer a suggestion. No longer a whisper.

It was a demand.

A command to fight back.

For the first time, he didn't resist it.

The air around him shifted, the particles of dust slowing mid-motion. The wind ceased. The entire world around him seemed to pause.

Then—

He moved.

Not in the way he had before. Not with his muscles, not with his mind.

He moved through time.

One moment he was standing there, frozen in fear—

The next, he was behind the Echo, his arm extended, his fingers glowing with an unfamiliar light.

The Echo reacted.

It spun, its form distorting, its very presence radiating an unnatural hunger. But Idris had already felt something click inside him.

He didn't know what he was doing.

But he understood it.

With a motion that felt both foreign and instinctive, he twisted his fingers—

And time fractured.

The Echo jerked backward, its form glitching, splitting into overlapping images of itself. It let out a sound—something between a shriek and a distortion in reality itself.

For a single moment—

It was afraid.

Then—

Everything snapped back.

The battlefield vanished.

The ruined city was gone.

Idris gasped, stumbling backward as the chamber reappeared around him.

His lungs burned. His hands shook. His body ached in places he hadn't even known could ache. But he was alive.

More than that—

He had just used timeweaving.

The hooded woman smiled. "Now do you see?"

Idris could barely get the words out. "What… what was that?"

"The truth," she said simply. "You are not just a man, Idris Vale. You are a Sa'Khel. And the Echo fears you."

Elise looked between them, shock written all over her face. "Did—did you just rewind time?"

Nyla let out a low whistle. "I take back what I said. That was glowing."

Rook remained silent, but the look in his eyes told Idris everything.

He had doubted him.

Not anymore.

Idris took a deep breath. His entire body still buzzed with leftover energy, the memory of that frozen battlefield burned into his mind. He had no idea what had just happened or how he had done it.

But one thing was now clear—

The Echo wasn't invincible.

For the first time, it had been the one caught off guard.

And that meant it could be beaten.

He straightened, looking the hooded woman in the eye. "You said the Sa'Khel were wiped out. That they lost."

Her expression darkened slightly. "They did."

Idris' jaw tightened. "Then tell me how I win."

The woman hesitated, as if choosing her next words carefully. Then she gestured to the shifting symbols on the walls.

"There is only one place where the Echo has no control."

Idris frowned. "You mean the station? ECHO-01?"

She nodded. "It was built by those who understood time's true nature. If you want answers, if you want power—you must reach it before the Echo does."

Idris exhaled sharply.

The hunt was far from over.

But for the first time, he wasn't just running.

He was chasing something too.

And he wasn't going to stop.