Chapter 4 Echoes that should not exist

The city did not sleep.It remembered.As Kaelthar descended from the shattered lake chamber, the pathways beneath his feet hummed with low-frequency resonance—too ordered to be random, too organic to be purely mechanical. The lights no longer flared at his presence. They waited.Like eyes already open.The air changed.Not temperature—texture.It grew dense, heavy with something unquantifiable, as though sound itself had weight here. Every breath carried a faint chorus, just below the threshold of comprehension.Whispers.Kaelthar slowed.“I hear them,” he said quietly.You are not meant to, the voice replied.That was the first time it sounded… uncertain.THE HALL OF UNRECORDED VOICESThe passage widened into a cathedral-scale hall carved directly into the ice and bedrock. Colossal pillars rose like frozen vertebrae, each etched with scenes—cities burning, people fleeing, stars collapsing into silence.And everywhere—Voices.They seeped from the walls, the floor, the air itself.Not loud.Not pleading.Just… present.“I remember the sky before it went blank.”“We thought erasure meant death.”“Please—write this down.”“Someone should know we existed.”Kaelthar’s heart pounded.“These aren’t simulations,” he whispered. “They’re memories.”The journal at his side trembled violently.He pulled it out.The pages flipped uncontrollably, stopping on a spread already filled with writing—dozens of overlapping entries, different handwriting styles bleeding into one another.We were here.We were here.We were here.Kaelthar’s breath hitched.“You erased them,” he said aloud, unsure who he was accusing. “Didn’t you?”The voice answered slowly.They were erased before me.The hall darkened.Something moved.THE REMNANT CHOIRFigures emerged from the shadows—dozens at first, then hundreds. They were human-shaped, but incomplete. Some lacked faces. Others lacked limbs. All of them flickered between states, as if struggling to remain remembered.Their mouths opened.And sang.Not music—testimony.A psychic wave slammed into Kaelthar’s mind, dragging him through чуж memories—lives lived, dreams abandoned, deaths that were never allowed to mean anything.He dropped to his knees, clutching his head.“Stop!” he gasped.ENTITY DESIGNATION: Remnant ChoirTYPE: Collective EchoTHREAT PRINCIPLE: Overload by remembranceCOMBAT SOLUTION: NoneThe choir advanced—not walking, but accumulating. Each step closer layered more voices into the assault.Kaelthar felt something inside him strain.Psychomorph stirred.Not advancing.Reacting.Fragments of other identities brushed against his own—foreign impulses, unfamiliar emotional weights. For a terrifying moment, he couldn’t tell which thoughts were his.“This is how mutation starts,” he muttered through clenched teeth. “Too much… too fast.”Do not absorb them, the voice warned urgently. Witness only.“But they want—”—to be acknowledged, the voice finished. That is not the same as being carried.Kaelthar forced himself to breathe.Momentus flared—not to fight, not to flee—but to choose a single instant.One moment.One voice.He focused.A young woman’s voice cut through the noise.“I was a cartographer,” it said softly. “I mapped stars that no longer exist.”Kaelthar reached out—not physically, but conceptually.“I hear you,” he said. “And I’ll remember.”The choir froze.Then—slowly, reverently—they began to dissolve.Not screaming.Not resisting.Satisfied.As the last echo faded, the hall grew silent.Too silent.THE FIRST LIEKaelthar remained kneeling, shaking, long after the entities vanished.“That wasn’t a fight,” he said hoarsely. “That was… mercy.”The journal opened.A new entry wrote itself.Compassion is not harmless.Reality punishes those who care too much.Kaelthar looked up. “That sounds like you.”No answer.Instead, the city shifted.A door appeared where none had been before—smooth, seamless, carved with a symbol Kaelthar recognized instinctively, though he had never seen it.A gradient.Not the Church’s crude imitation—but something purer. Older.The voice spoke again, carefully neutral.This section should not exist.Kaelthar stood slowly. “You’re lying.”A pause.…Yes.The word echoed louder than any scream.AFTERMATHAs Kaelthar stepped through the newly formed doorway, he felt something fundamental change.The simulation had reacted.Not as a program.As a system under stress.Far above, hidden layers of logic recalculated anomaly tolerances.And far deeper—Something that had once been human tightened its grip on memories it had sworn never to recall.The journal closed itself.On the last page, a sentence burned faintly, then vanished.Do not make me remember them again.