The sky was broken.
Shattered like glass, it stretched over the endless city of Oblivion Spire, a fractured dome of faded stars and blood-red clouds. At the very top, the elites of the Echoborn thrived in luxurious towers of shining steel, their powers drawn from the ancient echoes of the gods. Below, the people who didn't matter—those like Kael—fought for survival in the suffocating depths.
The lower floors were where dreams died. Diseases ravaged the weak. The lawless hunted those desperate enough to climb. For years, Kael had witnessed it all. His family, once hopeful, had rotted away in the filth of the lowest level. They'd tried to climb, believed that the higher floors held salvation. But the Spire was a vertical prison, and climbing its towers meant nothing without power. And the only power that mattered was the Echoes—fragments of the gods themselves, scattered across the earth after the war that ended their reign. They gave those who could harness them incredible abilities.
But there was a price.
"Kael," his mother had whispered in her last moments, the breath in her body growing shallow. "You must survive... You must climb..."
It had been years since he had heard those words. He had tried to forget, but they haunted him like the restless winds that howled through the Spire's broken walls.
Kael coughed, spitting blood into the cracked stone beneath him. He couldn't feel his limbs anymore, not fully. The sickness was eating him alive, breaking down his body piece by piece. His chest was tight with the strain of every shallow breath. He should be dead by now, but the gods of this world had never been kind. Instead, he clung to life in a fragile shell, hoping for an end that didn't come.
Today was no different from the rest. The cold shadows of the lowest floors were a constant companion. He had learned to navigate these levels with a practiced ease, avoiding the scavengers and the worse things that lurked in the dark. There were whispers of a strange power growing beneath the Spire, deep in the forgotten vaults, where no one dared to venture. Some said it was a myth. Others said it was the last of the gods themselves, trapped and waiting to be freed.
Kael didn't believe in myths. But he had learned something more valuable in his life: survival.
The faint buzz of energy pulsed in the air as he passed a forgotten doorway, hidden beneath a tangle of wires and shattered glass. He stopped, sensing something—an echo, or maybe a flicker of his fading mind. His hand trembled as he reached for the old rusted door.
It's not real. Don't do it, a voice whispered in the back of his mind, a voice that almost sounded like his mother. But Kael ignored it, pushing the door open.
The room beyond was cold, empty—save for a single stone pedestal in the center. Resting atop it was a dark, crystalline fragment that pulsed with a faint, almost unnatural light. The air seemed to hum with an energy that wasn't entirely... human. Kael stepped closer, drawn to it as though some invisible force was pulling him in. His heart raced, his breath ragged.
"What is this?" he whispered, reaching out, his fingers brushing the surface of the Echo.
The world shifted.
Kael gasped, stumbling back as his vision blurred. The Echo began to speak. Not in words, but in a deep, resonating voice that seemed to shake the very air around him.
"Do you understand what you've awakened?"
The voice reverberated through his mind, cold and ancient.
Kael's hands trembled, his heart pounding in his chest as the world around him grew darker. The walls seemed to close in, and he was no longer in the Spire, but in the midst of something much, much older—something that had never been meant for mortal hands.
"I am Ruin. And you, boy, have chosen to awaken me."
Kael's breath hitched, his thoughts scrambling for comprehension. He stumbled backward, but the floor seemed to shift beneath him. He could hear his heartbeat—no, it was louder, too loud. It was as if the Echo had taken over his senses, drawing him into a place where only the gods could speak.
The stone pedestal cracked, shards falling away to reveal the full form of the Echo. It was massive, swirling with energy, like the collapse of a thousand stars in a blackened void. For a moment, Kael couldn't breathe, couldn't think, as the darkness around him intensified.
"You are mine now," the Echo said. "But know this—your humanity will slip away. Power comes at a cost."
Kael tried to speak, but his throat closed up. He gasped for air, his body shaking violently as the Echo's presence flooded his senses. His mind felt as if it was being pulled apart, and in the chaos, one single thought rose to the surface:
I am going to die.
But the Echo wasn't finished.
"You will live. For now."
With that, the world seemed to crash back into place. Kael collapsed to the ground, his mind spinning. His body felt foreign—strange. He reached for his face, but his hands were slick with sweat, and his heart still thundered in his chest. The Echo had taken something. He could feel it in his bones. His humanity, slipping away like sand through his fingers.
The echo was still there, not in his ear but inside his mind. The voice of Ruin—cold and unrelenting.
Kael felt the weight of it, the weight of what he had just done.
And now, he had to live with it.