Decoding the Shard
The laboratory was colder the second time Elias entered. The body had already been taken away, the walls stripped of their official seals, yet the air still carried the residue of what had happened. Elias placed the Memory Shard upon his portable console, its fractured glow pulsing like the dying breath of a forgotten star.
He began the decryption sequence. Lines of code streamed across the screen, collapsing into fragments of images and broken sound. Most shards yielded precise recollections—snapshots of lived experience stored and preserved. But this one resisted, trembling against his tools, refusing to be contained.
Then, a ripple crossed the display. A distortion that was not error but intent.
A Corridor of Mirrors
The shard opened, not into a memory, but into a corridor. Glass walls stretched into infinity, each surface gleaming with fractured light. Elias felt himself drawn forward, though he remained seated in the dim lab. The illusion was sharper than illusion—an Echo forming out of nothing, demanding his attention.
In the shifting reflections, he caught movement. A silhouette, faint but undeniable, walking within the corridor of mirrors. The figure was female, her steps soundless, her presence both fragile and commanding.
Every mirror she passed bent slightly, as though memory itself bowed to her existence. Elias leaned closer to the console, heart tightening in his chest.
The Woman in the Echo
The image never resolved into clarity. Her face flickered, a ghost hidden between layers of light. Yet her posture carried familiarity, the tilt of her head almost as though she were searching for him.
Elias froze. He had studied anomalies before—data shadows, corrupted imprints, false overlays from broken shards. But this was different. This figure was whole, purposeful, alive within the distortion.
And then, for a fleeting second, her eyes lifted. Across the infinite corridor of mirrors, she seemed to look directly at him.
The connection was brief, no longer than a heartbeat, but it pierced deeper than any encrypted code. Elias’s breath caught, and he felt the old instinct of denial rising: this could not be real. Echoes were not alive.
Still, he could not shake the sensation that she had seen him.
Whispers of the Past
The console trembled. Words bled across the screen, not from Elias’s code but from the shard itself:
ECHO DETECTED – ORIGIN UNKNOWN.
His fingers hovered above the keys. What origin? Who could place such a construct within a shard? Custodians forbade inscriptions, yet here was an Echo inscribed upon the very heart of memory.
And why a woman? Why a corridor of mirrors?
The questions pressed against Elias, each one heavier than the silence surrounding him. He knew the Custodians would call this corruption—an anomaly to be erased. But to him, it felt like invitation.
Drawn to the Unknown
The shard’s glow dimmed, collapsing back into darkness. The corridor vanished, the woman gone, leaving Elias with only the pulse of his own racing thoughts.
He sat motionless for long moments, staring at the dead crystal in his palm. Logic demanded he catalog the shard, report the anomaly, and step away. That was the Custodian way.
But something deeper than logic whispered otherwise.
The woman in the Echo was not random. The shard was not broken—it was hiding something. And Elias, despite every scar that bound him to caution, felt the irresistible pull of curiosity.
He whispered to the silence:
“Who are you… and why are you waiting for me?”
The console’s static hummed in reply. And though no words appeared, Elias felt certain: this was only the beginning. The first Echo had awakened.
