The girl hadn't spoken since her mutation.
She didn't need to.
Something in her Soul Echo had been rewritten — not erased, but reshaped, like molten ore poured into a new mold. Her eyes were the same, but her presence felt… cleaner. Sharper. The kind of silence that meant something.
When she walked beside the crawlers, they didn't growl.
They stepped aside.
Recognized her.
And obeyed.
The group moved through a corridor of collapsed arches and ash-veined stone, following the path into a place the system had long abandoned.
Threadlight flickered low here — barely visible veins humming with memory-sick light.
No monsters.
No echoes.
Just space.
And something deeper.
Elian slowed as they reached the edge of a basin where nothing grew.
Not a dead zone.
A deleted one.
That's when the Lucid trait shivered.
[Lucid Trait: High Alert Triggered]
[System Signal Interference Detected]
[Foreign Entity Class: Silence Purge]
[Designation: Null Echo]
[Caution: Proximity decay active – Identity threads may be severed upon contact.]
He stopped walking.
The rot on the crawler's skin began to pull back — not retracting, but recoiling, like it had touched something that didn't belong.
One of the beasts stumbled.
Another whined low in its throat.
"Something's here," the girl said behind him.
Elian raised a hand. "Stay back."
And then it appeared.
Not with a roar.
Not with a tremor.
Just existed.
Like it had been there all along, hiding in the part of the world no one looked at.
It stepped forward.
A humanoid form. Faceless. Smooth. Its body was wrapped in threadlight that didn't glow — it absorbed light. Sucked it inward. Flattened presence. Erased weight.
And with each step, the land beneath it stopped being remembered.
[Entity: Null Echo]
[Effect: Memory Collapse – Area of 15m will be purged of thread signatures, echo states, and observed identity.]
[Warning: Echo constructs, infected entities, and system mutations will degrade on contact.]
One of the crawlers took a step toward the Purge.
It didn't growl.
Didn't attack.
It forgot.
Its claws twitched mid-stride, confused.
Its rot blinked out like snuffed light.
Then it fell — not from a blow.
But from nothing.
The moment it touched the Purge's field, it ceased to exist.
No death message.
No system response.
Just absence.
Elian's eyes narrowed.
"This thing wasn't sent to kill me."
"It was sent to erase me."
The girl backed up. "How do we fight that?"
"We don't," he said.
"We anchor ourselves."
He drove his hand into the dirt.
Rotlight surged from his palm — not in a pulse, but in roots.
They spread across the stone in perfect spirals, wrapping around old, forgotten thread nodes and broken runes, infecting the air with something louder than sound.
Presence.
A declaration.
[Devil's Core: Authority Spike]
[Rotlight Override Initiated – Infected Terrain Imprinted]
[Trait Flare: Soul Echo Instability Stabilized]
[Effect: Memory Anchor Activated – Zone Presence Secured within 9m radius]
The Null Echo paused.
Not stopped.
Not damaged.
But delayed.
Its steps slowed.
The threadlight didn't collapse the ground near Elian anymore.
The infection had created a kind of shelter — a void-proof scar where memory could not be purged.
The girl watched in silence, awe twisting behind her irises.
"You remembered yourself harder than it could forget you," she whispered.
Elian stood slowly.
Eyes fixed on the being of silence.
"That's the problem with purges," he said.
"Eventually someone survives."
"And if they remember what you tried to erase…"
He smiled — no warmth.
Just warning.
"They rewrite it."
[Lucid Trait Sync: 48% → 49%]
[Devil's Core Progression: 14.0% → 15.2%]
[New Trait Passive: Memory Anchor I – In infected zones, you cannot be forgotten.]
[System Alert: Containment Protocol Failed. Null Echo Disengaging.]
The creature of silence didn't flee.
It didn't vanish.
It simply turned.
And walked away.
Back into the void it came from.
Because it had failed.
Elian wasn't erased.
He was remembered.
Harder.
Louder.
And soon?
He wouldn't just survive.
He'd become a memory the system could never cleanse.