The wind sang in fractured tongues as Elias walked the border of the dead city.It wasn't language in the traditional sense, but tones layered upon tones, as if the desert itself had begun to hum in polyphony.
He paused.
The pitch shifted with his breath.
When he exhaled sharply, the surrounding air echoed it, a second later, like a voice out of sync.
Then:
"I remember you."
A girl stood where there had been no one.
Rae.But not.
Her robe shimmered with static, caught between forms. Her face flickered.When she opened her mouth, a dozen voices emerged at once, like a choir of Rae, each one broken differently.
"You left me.""You died in me.""You made me.""You never turned around.""Why did you leave the mirror open?""We still burn."
Elias staggered back.
No—Not her. Not like this.
"Which Rae are you?" he managed.
"All of us," the Fracture Choir answered."And none of us."
Behind her, the sand cracked and a cathedral of echo-glass rose from beneath, blooming like a mechanical flower.It was not built. It had been sung into existence.
Each wall was a screen of reflected memory.Each spire, a resonating frequency.
Elias stepped inside.
The Cathedral of Echoes was not empty.
Figures lined the pews, transparent and flickering, trapped in loops. They hummed softly, Rae's voice, again and again, broken into different iterations.
Some cried. Some bled. Some just looked at him.
"This is where they keep us," the Rae-choir said."Every version of me you created by leaping. Every Rae you left behind."
He fell to one knee. "I didn't know... I thought you came with me—"
"Only one Rae leaps," she said. "The rest fracture."
"You didn't create me. You split me."
"And now the Watcher sings through us. All our voices. All our pain. All your choices."
The walls shimmered.
He saw them.
Rae of the desert, smiling as the world collapsed.Rae of the drowning city, screaming his name underwater.Rae of the machine, bound by glass and numbers, unable to break her loop.
Each one left behind.
Each one still waiting.
"You don't understand what you're becoming," the Rae-choir whispered."You think you leap between timelines. But you're not just the traveler anymore, Elias."
She stepped forward. Her eyes were mirrors.
"You are becoming the Watcher."
He staggered. "No. That thing... it used me. It used all of us."
"And now it lives through you. Through the fracture."
The choir raised their arms as one.
The cathedral sang.
A polyphonic scream of every Rae who ever failed.A layered tone that broke the walls apart.And through the cracks, Elias saw himself, a thousandfold.
Some were monsters.Some were saviors.Some were just broken men.
He dropped to the floor. The echo in his ears wasn't fading, it was binding.
"We need your voice," said the Fracture Choir."We need you to sing."
"So that one of us can be whole."
He opened his mouth.
And for the first time, Elias did not speak.
He sang.
One long, shattering note.
It wasn't beautiful. It wasn't even human.
But it was true.
And the cathedral cracked.
Not into ruin, but into one voice.
As the desert calmed, the echoes receded.
The Rae in front of him stood alone now.Just one version. Quiet. Breathing.
"You found the thread," she said. "Now find the weave."
And she stepped into him.
Not as code. Not as ghost.
But as memory.
Elias stood, changed.
The echo was part of him now.