Prologue: The Echoes of past

The night was unnaturally still.

No wind.

No engines.

Not even the sound of his own breath.

And yet—Riven heard the screams.

They weren't real.

Not anymore.

But they never truly left him.

Every time he closed his eyes, they came crashing back—

like a fractured loop of pain, etched into the walls of his mind.

Children's screams, muffled behind reinforced glass.

Test subjects, begging in a language made of panic and silence.

And beneath it all—his own voice, raw and breaking.

----

He stood at the edge of a half-collapsed spire,

high above the skeletal city.

Fog swept through broken towers, curling around twisted steel.

The wind tugged at his torn black coat, making it billow like smoke.

Below him, the city still pulsed—

but not with life.

With the echo of a forgotten war.

Neon signs blinked like dying stars.

Drones passed silently overhead—watchers, not protectors.

And no one ever looked up.

But Riven wasn't watching the city.

He was listening.

—to the past.

And the past was screaming.

---

His gloved hand rose slowly.

A sigil glowed dimly beneath the fabric—

a cracked clock, its lines misaligned, shifting like a puzzle broken by time.

It was a mark.

A brand.

A curse.

"Project Echo," they had called it.

Evolution, they claimed.

But to him—it was execution without death.

He clenched his hand.

The light faded.

But the memories didn't.

---

Blood.

A shattered promise.

A friend's silence that cut deeper than any blade.

That night...

The betrayal.

The chains.

And worst of all—the look in Dante's eyes.

Not anger.

Not guilt.

Acceptance.

As if what had happened was always going to happen.

As if fate had already made the choice for them both.

"You can't escape fate, Riven."

That voice again.

Smooth. Cold.

Still alive inside his mind—Dante's voice.

It had been years since they'd spoken.

But some words echo louder after silence.

---

Riven's eyes narrowed.

He had once feared fate.

But not anymore.

Fate can be shattered.

Time can be rewritten.

He just had to survive long enough to do it.

---

From inside his coat, he pulled out a small, faded photograph.

Two boys.

Side by side.

Smiling.

Riven.

Dante.

Before the labs.

Before the silence.

Before one became a weapon…

and the other, a warden.

He stared at the photo, then slowly folded it back into his coat.

His voice was low. Solid.

"I'm not running anymore, Dante."

"I'm coming for you."

Not for revenge.

Not for justice.

But because only one of them would walk away from this story.

And if fate had already written a tragedy—

Riven would hack the code and write his own ending.

---

A breeze stirred.

Not cold.

But wrong.

Something was approaching.

He stepped away from the edge,

eyes hard beneath the moonlight.

The past had never left him.

The pain, the ticking, the sound of time fracturing like glass—

it followed him like a second skin.

He didn't escape the lab.

He carried it inside him.

But tonight…

Tonight felt like the calm before the storm.

The last stillness before everything would burn again.

And this time—

he wouldn't run.

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