Chapter 20: Dominion Protocol

In orbit above the scorched sectors of Gamma Reach, the Empire activated Dominion Protocol — a last-resort initiative built during the first Architect war.

Mass silos opened across battle moons. Relays began pulse-jamming Echo signals. The Obsidian Talons received new orders: bypass kill verification. Echoes were now classified as existential anomalies.

Admiral Serux stood before the central empire council.

"We no longer aim to contain them. We aim to erase the code that allowed them to exist."

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Meanwhile, Kael and Ryssa traversed a shattered Architect bridgeworld between realities — a glitching voidscape that pulsed with memory and distortion.

Here, Kael met the Mirror Echo — Echo-17.

It looked exactly like him.

But smiled like someone else.

"You want to ascend?" the Mirror said. "Then break yourself. Split. Divide. Become."

Kael attacked — but it was like fighting his own thoughts.

Every strike twisted his vision. His past blurred.

He saw himself as a child — crying. As a tyrant — laughing. As the Architect — screaming.

Ryssa shouted, distant and distorted. "Kael, remember who you are!"

He closed his eyes.

> I am not a fragment. I am the pattern that survives the fracture.

Voidlight surged.

He shattered the Mirror Echo in a single, silent blow.

But as it faded, it whispered:

"You'll need me again. When you become something... less human."

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In the distance, the six awakened Echoes converged.

Not allies. Not enemies.

Variables.

And above them all, in the storm-choked skies — the Empire prepared to drop the Dominion Core.

The weapon that once buried the original Void Architect.

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