The corridor narrowed the deeper he went.
Stone twisted underfoot — not broken by age, but rewritten. Like something had tried to erase the walls, and the walls had fought back.
At the center of the ruin stood a statue.
No name. No plaque. Just a man, hands clasped, face cracked.
Elian stared at it.
Not because it looked familiar.
Because the system refused to see it.
[Entity Scan Failed]
[System Note: No classification available.]
[Caution: Exposure may corrupt identity threads.]
"Then maybe," Elian whispered, "I'll let it try."
He stepped forward.
A pulse hit him — not violent, not loud.
Intimate.
It wasn't an attack.
It was an invitation.
A threadlight fracture opened across the statue's chest. Inside pulsed something raw. Not power. Not energy.
Memory.
Elian saw flashes:
A man tearing out his own Soul Echo before the system could corrupt it.
A ritual gone wrong — or right.
A phrase, burned into the stone behind the statue's back:
"Better to become a devil by choice than a pawn by design."
Elian reached out.
And touched it.
[WARNING: Soul Echo Assimilation Detected]
[Corrupted Memory Thread Acquired: Echo of the Nameless]
[Trait Mutation Risk: High]
[Proceed? Y/N]
He didn't hesitate.
"Yes".
The pain came like a scream under his skin.
His thread patterns twisted.
His Lucid trait flared.
Then something new appeared.
[Soul Echo Mutation: ACCEPTED]
[New Passive: Devil's Core I – You gain strength from rejected memories. The more feared you are, the faster your Echo stabilizes.]
[Lucid Trait Sync: 39% → 41%]
[Threadbreaker Progress: 4.7% → 5.0%]
[System Reaction: Passive Mark Flagged – "Illegible Anomaly"]
He fell to one knee, breathing hard.
But smiling.
"Now the system has a name for me."
"And it's fear."