Chapter 27: The Depths of the Echo

The air tasted of something wrong.

Riven could feel it in the back of his throat, like metal or dust, but it wasn't the kind of sensation you could easily shake off. It was as if the very atmosphere was off-kilter. Like reality itself was tainted—warped by something far beyond his understanding.

Still, the worst part was that it wasn't new.

The feeling had been there for a while now.

Ever since he had heard the Monarch's voice.

Ever since he'd been pulled, nearly erased from existence.

He didn't say anything. He didn't have to.

Vera, walking next to him, sensed it too.

"How much longer do you think we have?" she asked quietly, her tone sharp yet weary.

Riven didn't answer at first, staring ahead. The streets around them—their city—were decaying. The buildings were unrecognizable, more like shadows of what they had been, shifting and flickering as though they were struggling to keep their form. One moment, a skyscraper loomed high above them; the next, it collapsed into dust. Then it was back again, though it looked slightly different. The colors, the shapes—it was as if the world was cracking under pressure.

"We're running out of time."

Vera nodded grimly, but didn't press him further. She had learned not to ask him for answers he couldn't give. She understood the growing tension between him and the Monarch. How they were tied together now, like two halves of a broken thing, forever locked in an unholy dance.

For the first time in weeks, Riven felt the weight of their situation.

The Monarch's influence was not just in the fabric of reality. It was inside him—gnawing at the edges of his mind, pulling at his thoughts. Every whisper was an attempt to rip him apart, not just physically but mentally, spiritually. It wasn't just about erasure—it was about replacement. The Monarch wasn't trying to destroy him.

It was trying to replace him.

---

Vex, always the pragmatic one, kept checking his equipment as they moved through the city, his face drawn tight with frustration. The devices flickered, their signals bouncing erratically. He muttered to himself in a low growl, barely audible to the others.

"Everything's so... unstable."

"Tell me something I don't know."

The tone of Riven's voice held a sharp edge, but Vex didn't respond. There were days when even Vex was losing his usual fire.

Finally, the silence broke when they reached the old district—their old safe house.

It wasn't safe anymore.

The entrance was a mess, half-destroyed like everything else around them, but it wasn't the state of the building that struck Riven—it was the sensation that crawled down his spine.

Like being watched.

No, not watched—observed.

Someone, or something, was inside the place. And it wasn't just that—

There was a palpable sense of wrongness.

Vera seemed to sense it too.

"We're not alone," she murmured, stepping forward cautiously, her hand brushing the hilt of her weapon.

Riven nodded slowly, his instincts screaming now.

He felt it deep in his chest. The same prickling sensation he'd felt before, the one that had come right before the Monarch's influence had tried to consume him.

But this... this was different.

There was a heartbeat beneath the static.

A pulse.

Something alive.

Without speaking, Riven walked into the shattered safe house.

It was too quiet. The air felt thicker, weighed down by something not of this world.

They moved cautiously, each footstep a muted echo in the strange, warped silence. As they crept further into the main room, the temperature dropped—suddenly—and the hairs on the back of Riven's neck stood on end.

The room felt alive, but not in the way a room should feel. This was something else. Something unnatural.

There was a sharp, low hum in the distance. It rattled through his teeth, reverberating in his skull.

Then a voice—low, guttural.

"You have come far."

Riven froze.

The Monarch.

It wasn't possible. The Monarch's voice had been inside him. Had been distant but ever-present, never fading. This was something else.

The voice came again—closer this time.

"But how much farther will you go?"

The echo of it echoed deep in Riven's chest, leaving a cold pit of dread that gnawed at his insides. This wasn't just a whisper in his ear. This was something much darker.

And then the source stepped into view.

A shadow, almost formless, swirling within itself like liquid night, only barely taking shape into the figure of a man—a dark silhouette barely visible against the growing darkness. He stepped forward, each movement a ripple in the air, as though he were not entirely real.

For the briefest second, Riven swore he saw the figure smile. But there was nothing human about that smile. It was the smile of something ancient, unknowable, and utterly malicious.

He wasn't a man.

He was a manifestation.

A presence.

And as he spoke, Riven felt his very being tremble.

"I am the threshold. The line between worlds. The last echo of a dying reality."

Vera stepped forward, her hand tight on the weapon, but Riven caught her arm, his grip like iron.

"No," he whispered. "It's not real."

But the doubt in his voice couldn't hide the flicker of fear that twisted in his gut.

The figure tilted its head, acknowledging Riven with a terrible, knowing gaze.

"You cannot hide from what is coming. None of you can."

The figure's form began to shift, its limbs elongating, its body distorting as it grew larger—its voice growing louder, more insistent.

Reality itself bent beneath its weight.

Vex stepped back, his face pale. "We need to get out of here. Now."

But Riven didn't move. He couldn't.

For the first time, he felt small.

Like a single, fleeting moment in a universe that didn't care about him.

"Is this what you've been hiding from me?" Riven asked. The words felt thick in his throat. "This is the real enemy?"

The figure smiled again, and Riven could hear the crushing weight of time itself pressing down on him, bending him in ways he couldn't yet understand.

"I am not your enemy. I am the truth. And I will show you what comes after."