The shadows no longer felt safe.
Kael pressed his back against the cold stone wall, struggling to control his breathing. His body still trembled from the surge of power he had unleashed, the bodies of Garron and his men etched behind his eyelids. He had not wanted to kill them, not really. But the Echo or the thing inside him had acted faster than his thoughts.
Now there was blood on his hands. Blood and something worse. Something far older.
He stared down at his fingers, still faintly pulsing with dark light. No matter how hard he clenched his fists, the mark of what he had done refused to fade.
The figure from before still lingered in his thoughts. That voice had been cold and sharp, cutting deeper than any blade. He remembered the warning, clear as if it had been carved into his bones.
"Others will come for you now."
Who were they? And who was that man, if he could be called a man at all?
Kael shook his head, pushing off the wall. He could not afford to stand still. Not here. Not now.
The alleys twisted like a maze, and he followed them by instinct more than logic. There was no destination in mind, only escape. But escape from what? The Spire itself? The gods? His own body?
It felt hopeless.
Eventually, the heavy scent of oil and burnt metal reached his nose. That meant he was close to the Scraps.
The Scraps were a place where old machines went to die and sometimes to be reborn. Technomancers, scavengers, and mercenaries made temporary homes there. If anywhere in Oblivion could offer anonymity, it was here.
Kael slipped through the rusting gate, nodding to the armed guard who barely glanced his way. The guard must not have noticed the faint darkness curling at his fingertips or the way his shadow twitched slightly out of rhythm with his movements.
He found a quiet corner under a half collapsed dome of shattered steel and broken glass. It was a dead place, forgotten even by the desperate.
Kael finally allowed himself to sit. The exhaustion crashed over him in waves.
For a while, he let himself drift.
Night fell.
He did not sleep, not really. The dreams were worse than staying awake. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw the eyes of Garron as the darkness swallowed him. He heard the voice of Ruin whispering through the cracks in his soul.
And underneath it all, something stirred. Something ancient, watching him.
A soft shuffle of boots broke the silence. Kael's eyes snapped open.
Someone was coming.
He rose slowly, every muscle coiled with tension. From the shadows between the wreckage, a figure emerged.
Not the cloaked stranger from before.
This one wore armor made of bone and scorched leather. A hunter. But not any hunter. Kael recognized the emblem carved into the man's shoulder: a black sun with a cracked core.
"Echomarked," the hunter said without emotion. "You are infected."
Kael backed up, his heartbeat hammering in his chest.
"I didn't choose this," he said, voice hoarse. "I didn't ask for it."
The hunter stepped forward, drawing a weapon that shimmered like obsidian. It was not a blade. Not a gun. Something between the two.
"It doesn't matter."
Kael's vision blurred.
The Echo stirred, thrumming with fear and fury.
Run.
Kael turned and fled.
He darted through the twisted alleys of the Scraps, leaping over fallen engines and ducking beneath broken pipes. The hunter followed, fast and silent, like a predator that had been waiting for this moment his entire life.
Every time Kael glanced back, the hunter was closer.
He dove through a cracked doorway, only to find himself cornered in a room with no exit. Dead end.
The hunter stepped inside, blade glowing faintly.
"Your kind always runs."
Kael pressed himself against the wall. The Echo pulsed louder now, flooding his senses. It offered power. Power to fight. Power to kill.
But he was afraid of what he would become if he accepted it again.
"Stop!" he shouted. "You don't know what it is. You don't know what it wants!"
The hunter hesitated.
Only slightly.
But it was enough.
Kael raised his hand, and the room exploded with dark light.
He didn't control it. He didn't even understand it. The energy surged out of him like a storm unleashed. The walls cracked. The floor buckled.
And the hunter was thrown backward into the rubble.
Kael collapsed, gasping for breath. Smoke and dust filled the air.
He did not know if the hunter was dead. He did not wait to find out.
He ran again.
This time he did not stop.
Outside the Scraps, the city loomed. Higher towers, more guards, tighter control. Kael knew he could not go there. Not now. But there was one place left.
The Deep Archives.
It was forbidden territory. Buried beneath the Spire. Sealed away after the Collapse. Only the high scholars and their enforcers dared enter.
But Kael had once seen a map. He remembered the path.
If there were answers anywhere, it would be there.
He limped toward the entrance, hidden beneath an old chapel ruin. The door was rusted shut, but his power, the Echo, burned it away with a touch.
Steps descended into darkness. Kael swallowed his fear and entered.
The stone beneath his feet felt older than time itself.
And the deeper he went, the colder the air became.
Finally, he reached the first gate.
And it opened for him.
Without a sound.
Kael stepped inside, not knowing that above him, in the tower he had fled from, the cloaked stranger stood once again in the shadows, watching.
"He has entered the Archives," the stranger whispered.
Another figure stepped beside him, taller, clad in armor etched with sigils that glowed faintly in the night.
"Then the Hunt has truly begun."