Chapter 37: Echoes of the Abyss

The colossus descended like a falling star, its shadow devouring the fractured sky. Echo-0's form rippled—a grotesque amalgam of the Patriarch's malice and the heart's starlight entrails—its roar a cacophony of collapsing realms. Lin Wei's nameless flame flickered in his palm, its hue a paradox of color and void, while Lin Mei's void-flames coiled around her, hungry and restless.

"Stay close!" Lin Wei shouted, the flame's heat distorting the air into liquid mirages.

"Wouldn't dream of it," Lin Mei shot back, her grin sharp but brittle, her eyes locked on the monstrosity above.

Echo-0's fist cratered the earth where they'd stood moments before, the ground splintering into molten glass. Lin Wei lunged, his flame arcing in a searing crescent that bit into the colossus's arm. But the wound sealed instantly, starlight threading through malice and flesh like a needle through cloth.

Flashback:

Yuelin knelt in the mud, her hands trembling as she struck flint over damp tinder. Rain sluiced down her face. "Fire isn't just destruction, Wei," she said, breathless, as the spark finally caught. "It's… memory."

The memory dissolved as Echo-0 retaliated, tendrils of void lashing out like whips. Lin Mei intercepted, her flames devouring the attack with a hiss. "It's learning!" she yelled over the din.

"Then we teach it fear," Lin Wei growled, his fractures pulsing with the nameless flame's searing weight.

The flame scorched Lin Wei's veins, each surge etching deeper cracks into his skin—glowing fault lines that threatened to split him apart. His vision blurred at the edges, the world fracturing into prismatic shards. The system's voice, thin and strained, flickered in his mind:

[Host Integrity - 58%]

[Warning: Flame Integration Exceeding Threshold.]

He ignored it. Burn the chains, Yuelin's voice whispered, faint but relentless. Burn them all.

Echo-0's laughter boomed, the Patriarch's voice clawing beneath its roar. "You think this is new? I've tasted your fire before!"

A tendril of liquid void speared Lin Wei's shoulder, pinning him mid-air. Agony blazed through him, but the flame roared hotter, brighter—consuming the pain.

"Let him GO!" Lin Mei's scream tore through the chaos. Her void-flames erupted in a maelstrom, swallowing the tendril whole.

The reborn Harvester emerged from the ash, its star-lattice body shimmering with fragile mortality. It pressed a jagged spire shard into Lin Mei's hand, its touch fleeting, its voice a whisper. "Sever its core. Before it adapts."

Lin Mei hesitated, the shard cold against her palm. "Why help us?"

"Because you're the first to ask," it replied, dissolving into ash as Echo-0's gaze snapped toward them.

Lin Wei's flame faltered. Within Echo-0's chest, a flicker—a wisp of cobalt fire trapped behind latticework ribs.

Yuelin.

The colossus staggered, clutching its chest. "No—!" it snarled, the Patriarch's voice fraying at the edges. "You are MINE!"

Lin Mei saw it too. "The spark—it's her!"

The earth trembled—not from Echo-0's fury, but something deeper. Older. A fissure split the battlefield, exhaling air thick with rot and the cadence of forgotten tongues. Shadows pooled at its edges, formless yet watchful.

Flashback:

The Silent Patriarch stood at the edge of a chasm, centuries younger, his hands trembling as he sealed it with a ward of fire and blood. "Some fires even I wouldn't kindle," he muttered, sweat dripping from his brow.

Lin Mei drove the shard into Echo-0's core. The colossus screamed, its starlight dimming—but the fissure yawned wider.

From the abyss, a hand clawed free—skeletal, dripping tar-black ichor.

Lin Wei's flame guttered. "What did we—?"

Echo-0 seized Lin Mei, its grip crushing. "You lose," it rasped, hurling her into the fissure.

"MEI!"

The hand caught her ankle.

Then the darkness swallowed her whole.