The wind howled through the concrete carcasses, dragging with it the forgotten murmurs of a dead city. It slipped between the crumbling walls of buildings, rifled through the wreckage like a starving dog, carrying the metallic stench of old blood laced with the duller tang of ash — the lingering scent of a scorched world.
Jinra was running.
Her boots pounded the frozen ground with the rhythm of a heart beating against panic. But there was nothing alive here anymore. Only ruins. And him.
The Echo.
A crack echoed behind her. Not a mechanical noise. More like… a rasp of metal and flesh, as if the city itself were choking under the weight of what it had birthed.
— Hurry, Jinra… she muttered. Just a few more seconds…
Her voice was swallowed by the wind.
Midnight was near.
And with it, the end — or the beginning.
She stopped. In one sharp motion, she turned. Silence crashed down around her. Even the wind seemed to hold its breath.
The Echo was already towering over her, just a few steps away. A deformed titan of fossilized flesh and blackened iron, a mass of scarred bone fused with barbed framework. Its club — more organ than weapon — rested on its shoulder, exhaling a white vapor, cold as the grave.
When it lowered the weapon, the impact made no sound.
But the world responded.
A deep pulse throbbed through the snow, warping the air like a nightmare mirage. Reality trembled. Jinra stepped back, her heart pounding like a hollow drum.
The beast turned its head. Slowly. Far too slowly.
Its broken neck bent at an impossible angle, and its eye sockets — two yawning cavities — seemed to drink in the light.
It had no face. Only a void. A hole in existence.
— You… Echo?
Jinra's voice was barely a breath.
Silence fell again, thick and sharp.
Then she said, even softer:
— Yes.
She didn't cry. The cold did it for her. Icicle tears already clung to her lashes, carved by the wind like frozen scars.
The Echo tilted its head. A simple gesture. Unnerving in its slowness, almost human in its strangeness.
— Why? it asked.
Jinra smiled. A dry, disenchanted grimace.
— Because nothing is real. Not this body. Not this life. They gave me everything… and took it all back. So why keep playing their charade?
She opened her arms, her thin dress flapping in the wind. The dried blood on her boots clashed violently with the sterile whiteness of the snow. She looked like a remnant. A forgotten offering.
— I want to be like you. Free. Terrifying. Unbound. Guiltless. I want fear to change sides.
A guttural growl answered, almost a strangled laugh.
— You… want same blood?
— You catch on quick for a pile of nightmares.
The Echo wavered slightly. Its body shuddered, as if an emotion — old, alien — had clawed its way through its dead flesh.
Then:
— You… coward. Me… wings. You… still cage.
Jinra shrugged. The gesture was almost weary.
— And you're a chatty corpse. But if I have to die to be free… so be it.
Around them, the silence thickened, filled with whispers. Voices. Shattered. Without tongue or origin. They floated in the air like torn silk threads, scraping reality raw.
— You… want be me. But you… disgusted by me, the Echo murmured.
Jinra let out a broken, joyless laugh.
— You got that right. I want to become horror so nothing can hurt me anymore. But I still have enough humanity left to gag at the thought.
A beat. A heartbeat? Wings? She ignored it.
— Look at me. Fifty kilos of well-packaged hate. Smooth skin, pretty — perfect for being consumed without question. And me? I say: eat. Tear. Take it all. But make it mean something, for fuck's sake.
She spread her arms. A macabre offering.
— Go on. Do it.
The Echo didn't move.
Its empty sockets turned away. Slowly, it looked elsewhere. At something else. Someone.
The father.
Still kneeling, frozen, wracked with tremors, his eyes red with a grief too vast for any man to bear alone.
— You… make me hungry, the Echo said.
Then it dropped its club.
The world contracted.
With a grotesque leap, it hurled itself at the man.
A scream.
A crack.
A hot red spray splattering across the snow.
The crunch of shattered bones, the chewing of torn flesh, a strangled rasp amid the bursts of gut-slick noise.
— NO! Jinra screamed. It was me! IT WAS ME!
But it was too late. The man was nothing more than a shredded memory.
She staggered.
Her knees buckled.
— My chance… Midnight…
She looked up. Her shattered phone read 00:00. Motionless. Ironic.
She hurled it to the ground. The screen shattered. Bluish fragments scattered like dead stars.
— Fucking world…
The Echo turned to her.
— You end your pain now.
And this time, it raised the club.
The blow was lightning.
A white-hot pain ripped through her left arm. It tore off in a crimson spray.
Jinra screamed.
A second strike.
Her right arm.
She reeled, her breath shredded. The world swayed around her, breaking into shards of red snow.
She collapsed to her knees.
— Stop…
But the monster was smiling. A hideous, twisted grin, almost joyful in its cruelty.
A third strike.
Her legs.
The crack was wet, obscene.
She crumpled, gasping, her limbs twisted like dead branches. The cold crept in. The blood spilled out. She drowned in her own ending.
Then the Echo… vomited.
A dark, viscous mass poured from its jaws. It splashed into the snow — and slowly, took shape.
A man. No. The shape of a man.
Distorted. Mutilated.
But recognizable.
The father.
Or what remained of him.
His eyes were hollow, his mouth twisted into a silent grimace.
And he spoke.
— She… will pay.
Jinra tried to rise, but her body was nothing more than a shattered vessel.
The father stepped forward. Each pace a sentence. Each look, an epitaph.
— For my son's suffering…
The Echo let out a warped laugh.
— Ha… Ha… Ha. Let's begin.
Jinra felt her heart flicker out, like a lamp beneath the sea. Her vision blurred. Her fingers trembled. Her breath was nothing but a death rattle.
She looked up.
The moon was cracked.
The stars… were bleeding.
She whispered:
— He left too soon…
And in that last flicker of clarity, she understood.
This world was never meant for her.
And she no longer wished to belong to it.