The surface of Tharix-7 burned, not with fire, but with memory.
Once a thriving mining colony orbiting a dead sun, it now stood as a graveyard of screaming metal and frozen bones. The winds carried not air, but remnants of fractured songs—shards of an old melody lost in war and rewritten in ruin.
In the center of it all stood a tower forged from blackened alloys and fused soulglass, rising like a needle piercing through time itself. At its peak, a throne had been carved from memory—literally. Not steel, not stone, but memories sculpted into matter.
And upon it sat the Warlord.
Caleos Dar, once a brilliant tactician and Kael's closest comrade during the early years of the Resonance Conflict, was no longer the man he used to be.
Where flesh had once been, now only flickering entropy remained—his form fractured, his voice layered like overlapping echoes. His left eye shimmered with the pulsing red of a corrupted Shard. His right eye… was Kael's old gift—a forged prism lens meant to shield against harmonic illusions.
It hadn't worked.
"They seek to silence the song," Caleos whispered into the void. "But I hear its beauty. I feel its truth. And I... I have become its chorus."
Behind him, kneeling figures hummed—a choir of fragmented minds tethered by a single Shard frequency. They weren't soldiers. They were instruments, tuned to his madness.
The corrupted Shard embedded in Caleos' chest pulsed, sending tremors through the tower.
The Cadence had gifted him a role.
Warlord. Herald. One of the Seven Echoes of the End.
Far away aboard the Echohound, Kael stared at the latest intel with hollow eyes.
Rax laid out the damage report. "Tharix-7's surface is uninhabitable. The colony's AI mainframe sent a final burst signal before it was overridden. One word repeated: 'Caleos.'"
Lira clenched her fists. "He was one of us."
"No," Kael said. "He was better than all of us."
Nira added, "His tactical IQ was off the charts. If the Cadence has him, we're not facing just a warlord. We're facing a walking strategy engine with divine amplification."
Kael turned away from the screen, his voice grim.
"I have to face him."
Lira snapped, "That's suicide."
"Maybe. But I know his rhythm. His patterns. His tells. If there's anyone who can reach whatever's left of Caleos—"
"Assuming anything is left."
"—it's me."
The Echohound dropped out of void-space just beyond Tharix-7's orbital debris field. Twisted ships floated like corpses chained by invisible strings, still echoing faint distress calls that looped endlessly.
Kael suited up, silent as he clicked the armor seals shut.
Lira approached him. "I should come."
He shook his head. "He won't talk to you. He might not talk to me either. But there's a chance."
She gritted her teeth. "This isn't a story where the hero saves his old friend."
Kael met her gaze. "No. It's a story where he dies trying."
Then he activated the shuttle and descended into the ash-covered hell below.
The sky of Tharix-7 was choked with iron clouds and static lightning. Kael's boots hit the surface, cracking frozen bone beneath.
Every step echoed with the whisper of ancient instruments.
He walked alone, past frozen statues—people caught mid-scream, their faces locked in harmonic petrification. The corrupted Shard's frequency had rewritten even death here.
The tower loomed ahead.
As Kael approached the base, a ring of Choir Sentinels blocked his path.
He stopped.
"I'm not here to fight."
The Sentinels said nothing. Then they parted without a word.
A corridor of silence formed—an invitation.
Kael entered.
Inside the tower, he ascended floor after floor of memories turned solid. Hallways reformed as he passed, each wall showing moments from his own past—replays of battles fought, comrades lost, regrets buried deep.
It wasn't illusion.
The corrupted Shard had harvested his memories during their shared history.
At last, he reached the throne.
Caleos sat still, hands steepled, cloak of entropy waving gently in the non-existent wind.
"You came," he said.
Kael stepped forward. "Not to fight."
"You always were the hopeful one."
Kael took a slow breath. "The Cadence is using you."
Caleos tilted his head. "Or perhaps I've simply stopped resisting the song."
Kael pointed to the Shard in his chest. "That's not music. It's poison dressed in poetry."
"Yet it shows me things no mind could see. The world was always written. We just didn't know the language."
"You knew better once."
"I was weaker once," Caleos whispered, rising from the throne.
The entire tower pulsed with his breath.
"Let me show you what I see."
Without warning, Kael was pulled into a psychic projection—Caleos' inner world.
He stood on a field made of broken sheet music. In the sky, symbols of war drifted like clouds. A storm of vowels crashed against meaning. And Caleos towered above him, glowing with corrupted truth.
"I see the entire structure," he boomed. "The Cadence is not a god. It is literature. Alive. Self-editing. You think you're fighting an enemy. You're just erasing punctuation."
Kael's voice cut through the noise. "Then let me be the typo that ruins the page."
Caleos stopped.
A beat of silence.
Then—laughter.
"That's the Kael I remember."
He lowered his hand, and the storm ceased.
"I'll give you a gift," Caleos said. "One chapter. One clue."
A fragment of data burned into Kael's wrist module—a location. A planet long thought dead.
"Why?"
"Because somewhere… a part of me still wants the story to end on your terms, not his."
The psychic world collapsed.
Kael awoke outside the tower.
The door sealed behind him.
He stood, dazed, with the new coordinates glowing on his arm.
A whisper lingered in the air:
"Echoes remember. But even memory can betray its maker."
He returned to the Echohound, face pale, voice heavy.
"Plot twist," he said. "The next Shard… is buried inside a planet that was never born."