SEVERED ECHOES

  Maxwell's penthouse gleams with tactical displays, holographic security schematics of Camp Estrella floating above the glass conference table. My team assembles their gear with practiced efficiency. Starla adjusts her vocal dampener, testing frequencies that will turn whispers into weapons. Waylan organizes paint tubes, each color capable of warping reality in specific ways. SCAN's eyes flicker with data streams only he can see, memorizing guard rotations and defense systems.

  "Perimeter breach here," Maxwell indicates, finger marking the southeast corner of the compound. "Blind spot in their surveillance lasts 2.3 seconds. Enough time if we move precisely."

  I nod, strings tasting possibilities, calculating odds of success against Starstruck's defenses. My attention shifts to Mikey, our newest recruit. The boy stands apart from the others, staring at his reflection in the floor-to-ceiling windows. Fourteen years old and already carrying power that makes reality uncomfortable.

  "You ready for this?" I ask, approaching him while the others continue preparation.

  He doesn't respond immediately. His fingers trace patterns on the glass, leaving faint quantum distortions visible only to those who know what to look for. When he finally turns, something shifts behind his eyes, pupils dilating until the iris nearly disappears.

  "They speak to me," he whispers, voice layered with harmonics that make my strings coil defensively. "In my dreams. Between heartbeats. In the spaces where reality thins."

  "Who speaks to you?" I keep my tone casual, though my strings taste copper and corruption and wrong radiating from the boy.

  Mikey's head tilts at an angle that looks painful. "The watchers. The waiting ones." His fingers twitch in patterns that remind me of shadow vessels. Of possession. "They say you know them. That you've always known them."

  The others remain oblivious, caught in their preparations for tonight's mission. But my strings sense the subtle shift in quantum frequencies around the boy. Taste something ancient. Patient. Hungry trying to reach through.

  "They watch from the void between dimensions," he continues, voice no longer entirely his own. "They see through every crack. Every tear." His eyes meet mine, and for a heartbeat I see someone else looking through them. "Your son sends his regards."

  My strings coil with protective rage, but before I can respond, Mikey blinks. The moment passes like quantum particles resolving into single states. His expression shifts back to nervous determination, awareness returning.

  "Sorry, what were you saying?" he asks, completely unaware of his momentary absence.

  I study him carefully. "Just checking if you're ready for tonight."

  "Oh." He nods, fingers fidgeting with the hem of his jacket. "Yeah. I've been practicing the reality manipulation like you showed me. I can create a doorway through their security systems."

  I say nothing about what I've witnessed. File it away with the growing list of cosmic chess moves I'm tracking. The pieces are aligning, connections forming between past, present, and the looming Convergence. Between my fractured family and the fabric of reality itself.

  "Time to move out," Maxwell announces, collapsing the holographic displays. "Vehicle's waiting downstairs. Remember the plan. We locate the quantum containment lab, extract Subject 17, and disappear. No confrontation with Starkid."

  Twenty seven days until everything changes. But first, we have a fortress to breach.

  As we descend to the waiting transport, my mind shifts back to where this all began. To another fortress breach, another dimension. To the moment when strings became chains, and I learned the true price of power.

  *******

  My strings taste quantum residue and blood as Roth and I flee through maintenance tunnels beneath Hollow Creek. The zealots' screams echo behind us, their deaths punctuating our escape like exclamation points in a suicide note. The quantum suppression field around me pulses with each step, strings weak as wet tissue paper, useless against the shadow vessels pursuing us or the woman with the Severer.

  "We need to find somewhere to regroup," Roth gasps, his features shifting between age states with each labored breath. Temporal flux accelerates under stress, cells aging and rejuvenating in nauseating cycles. The pendant pulses against his chest like a second heart, its etched surface crawling with equations that hurt to look at directly.

  "There," I point to a maintenance access, rusted hinges suggesting years of disuse. My strings, though weakened, still taste the air for pursuit, for danger, for possibilities. Old habits.

  We emerge into the dust choked basement of an abandoned department store. Mannequins stand in silent judgment, their plastic forms eroded by time and neglect. Clothing racks empty except for wire hangers that rattle like bones in the stale air. Perfect place to hide. Perfect place to die.

  Roth collapses against a support column, temporal flux accelerating until his features blur between ages in rapid succession. "The anchor is destabilizing," he mutters, fingers clutching the pendant. "The resonance pattern is shifting. Unpredictable."

  I watch the exits, strings coiling with predatory patience despite their weakened state. "Can you fix it?"

  "Not without proper equipment. Not with this suppression field still active." His eyes narrow, studying me through the temporal distortion affecting his vision. "You could remove it, you know. Your strings are weak, but not powerless. You could kill me, take the anchor, and run."

  "Thought about it," I admit, tasting the air for pursuit. "Still considering my options."

  Roth laughs, the sound distorting through temporal hiccups. "At least you're honest. Unlike my father."

  "Speaking of honesty," I say, strings tasting sudden shifts in the building's electromagnetic field. "We're not alone anymore."

  The air shimmers near the emergency exit, reality distorting like fabric caught in machinery. My strings bristle with warning, tasting copper and quantum wrongness. The doorway doesn't open so much as reality forgets it's supposed to be solid, allowing a figure to step through the resulting discontinuity.

  Ishra. The weapon collector. The woman who wounded Melek with the Severer.

  She steps through the dimensional tear with predatory grace, the black blade humming in her right hand. Her braids end in metal beads that click together with soft menace, each one carved with symbols that distort local physics. Her clothing shifts between tactical gear and ceremonial robes depending on how the light hits it, as if she exists partly in multiple realities simultaneously.

  "The temporal anomaly," she says, voice carrying harmonics that make my teeth ache. "And the puppet master himself. How predictable."

  My strings uncoil in defensive patterns despite the suppression field. Roth presses deeper against the support column, one hand clutching the pendant protectively. "We have nothing to discuss, Ishra," he says, temporal distortion momentarily stabilizing enough for him to speak clearly. "You've taken enough from this town."

  "I've taken what was necessary," she replies, the Severer humming as she gestures with it. "Just as I'll take that anchor when our business concludes."

  "You're not taking anything," I step forward, placing myself between her and Roth. My strings may be weakened, but a puppet master with cut threads is still more dangerous than most realize. "Except perhaps that blade through your throat if you move any closer."

  Ishra laughs, the sound making air molecules vibrate uncomfortably. "Always the same. Threats, posturing, the illusion of control." Her eyes fix on mine with unsettling intensity. "Don't you ever get tired of playing the same role, puppet master? Century after century, pulling the same strings, thinking you're writing the script when you're just another actor in a play you don't understand?"

  "Philosophical debates can wait," I counter, strings coiling closer. "Why are you here? To finish what you started with Melek?"

  "Melek was a means to an end," she replies, the Severer temporarily lowering to her side. "As was Roth's little cult. As are you."

  "And what end would that be?" Roth demands, the pendant pulsing faster against his chest.

  Ishra's expression shifts, something like genuine emotion breaking through her tactical detachment. "To stop the Convergence. To prevent what happened to my world from consuming yours."

  The words hang in the air, unexpected enough to momentarily disarm us both. My strings taste truth in her statement, or at least what she believes to be truth. Roth's temporal flux stabilizes briefly as he focuses on her words.

  "What happened to your world?" I ask, strings still ready but curiosity temporarily overriding aggression.

  Ishra's free hand rises to one of the metal beads in her hair, fingers tracing symbols etched into its surface. "It was called Earth Sigma by those who catalog such things. A dimension parallel to this one, similar in most respects." Her eyes take on a distant quality, seeing beyond the abandoned store to something infinitely more painful. "Until the shadows came."

  "The Parallax Event," Roth whispers, understanding dawning across his shifting features.

  Ishra nods once, sharply. "We didn't call it that. We called it the Gift, at first. A shadow passed over our world for exactly seven minutes and nineteen seconds. When it lifted, people began manifesting abilities. Extraordinary abilities."

  "Like the powers appearing globally here," I say, making the connection.

  "Just like that." Her fingers tighten around the Severer's hilt. "We celebrated. Called it evolution. The next step in human development. Religious leaders called it divine blessing. Scientists called it genetic activation. Everyone called it progress."

  "What was it really?" Roth asks, the pendant momentarily forgotten in his scientific curiosity.

  "Infection." The word drops from her lips like blood from a wound. "Each new ability was an Umbra finding a foothold in our dimension. Each power a microscopic tear in reality's fabric."

  My strings coil tighter, processing implications. "The Umbras. The ancient entities that exist in the spaces between dimensions."

  "The ones that were here before reality learned rules," she confirms. "Before separation. Before physics became law instead of suggestion."

  "And the Parallax Event was their way in," Roth theorizes, temporal flux accelerating with his excitement. "The abilities are manifestations of their influence bleeding through."

  "At first, the tears were microscopic. Imperceptible except to those studying quantum physics at the subatomic level." Ishra begins pacing, the Severer leaving trails of distorted reality in its wake. "But each use of these new abilities widened the tears. Created fault lines in dimensional barriers. Within months, reality itself began unraveling around us."

  "The Unweaving," I mutter, remembering Dresden's explanation. Reality coming undone thread by thread.

  "We called it the Collapse," Ishra continues. "Buildings existing in multiple states simultaneously. People's consciousness fragmenting across timelines. Physics becoming locally optional." Her voice remains clinically detached, but her eyes carry centuries of horror. "Imagine watching your child age backward and forward simultaneously. Imagine streets where gravity reverses every thirty seconds. Imagine rain that falls as crystallized time."

  "How did you survive?" I ask, strings tasting the genuine trauma beneath her controlled exterior.

  Ishra stops pacing, turning to face us directly. "My brother, Ethan. He developed Quantum Displacement abilities."

  This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

  "Quantum Displacement?" Roth interjects, scientific curiosity momentarily overriding fear.

  "The ability to teleport through the quantum void between dimensions," she explains. "The rarest of all Parallax abilities. He could move between points in space by temporarily existing in the quantum void."

  The comparison to Dresden's abilities sends my strings into defensive coils. "What does this have to do with my son?"

  "Everything," she replies, something like genuine regret in her voice. "The Herald was specifically hunting those with Quantum Displacement. Using that ability, it could create more Parallax Events across multiple dimensions simultaneously."

  "The Herald?" I press, strings coiling tighter.

  "Their first consciousness. The one seeking entrance to physical dimensions." Ishra's hand returns to the metal bead, fingers tracing patterns that seem to connect to her memories. "It possessed Ethan, tried to use his ability to spread across realities. But my brother was strong. He fought the possession, maintained fragments of his consciousness even as the Herald wore him like a suit."

  "What happened to him?" I ask, though I suspect I already know.

  "He sacrificed himself." Her voice finally cracks, emotion breaking through the tactical exterior. "With help from the few of us who understood what was happening, he managed to resist the Herald's complete control long enough to make one final teleport." She pauses, swallowing hard. "He jumped into the quantum void itself, trapping both himself and the Herald there forever. Cut off from all dimensions. Existence without form."

  The parallels to Dresden's last moments hit like quantum uncertainty. My son, pushing Lark into the void, sacrificing himself. History repeating itself across dimensional barriers.

  "And now the Herald is trying to escape the void," I say, connecting pieces of a cosmic puzzle. "Using Dresden."

  Ishra nods once, sharply. "Your son's quantum abilities make him the perfect conduit. Just as my brother's made him the perfect prison."

  "The Severer," I say, looking at the black blade. "That's how you fight them now."

  Ishra nods, raising the weapon so light seems to bend around its edge. "After Ethan's sacrifice, I discovered my own Parallax ability. Quantum matter manipulation." Her fingers trace the blade's surface, which seems to exist partly in dimensions we can't perceive. "I can forge weapons from crystallized quantum material. Weapons that affect beings existing between dimensions."

  "The black blade doesn't just cut physical matter," Roth realizes, scientific curiosity temporarily overcoming fear. "It severs the connection between dimensions. Between Umbras and their hosts."

  "And between immortals and their stolen powers," I add, remembering how the blade cut through my strings, making them bleed black essence onto Melek's floor.

  "Precisely." Ishra brings the blade back to ready position. "I've been traveling between dimensions, hunting Umbras, collecting quantum weapons, preventing other worlds from suffering Earth Sigma's fate."

  "And now you've come to save us," I say, skepticism evident in my tone. "How generous."

  "I've come to prevent your world's Parallax Event," she corrects. "The cracks in your dimensional barriers are already forming. The Unweaving has begun. When the Convergence happens, your world will experience a Parallax Event far worse than what devastated my dimension. And this time, the Herald has found better tools."

  "Tools like my son?" My strings vibrate with barely contained rage.

  Ishra meets my gaze without flinching. "The Herald is using your son's quantum abilities to prepare for escape from the void where my brother trapped it. The connection goes both ways. Your son isn't just trapped between dimensions. He's being worn, like my brother was before he sacrificed himself."

  "You're lying," I spit, though my strings taste truth in her words.

  "I wish I were." She gestures toward Roth with the Severer. "The pendant. It doesn't just open doors between dimensions. It's a weapon. One of the few that can harm them."

  Roth's hand closes protectively around the anchor. "This was my father's final gift."

  "Your father knew more than he told you," Ishra counters. "The anchor creates fixed points in space time. Points the Umbras can't distort or corrupt. With the right modifications, it becomes a quantum blade that can cut the Herald itself."

  Understanding dawns across Roth's shifting features. "That's why you hunted my father. Why you wounded him with the Severer."

  "I needed his knowledge. His quantum technology." Ishra lowers the blade fractionally. "I didn't kill him because I recognized he wasn't compromised. Just manipulated. Like so many others."

  "And the quantum mineral?" I press, strings coiling tighter. "What was that for?"

  "Weapons," she replies simply. "More Severers. More anchors. An arsenal for the real war that's coming."

  "The Convergence," Roth murmurs, temporal flux slowing as he processes information. "Twenty eight days until the dimensional barriers collapse completely."

  "At the cathedral," I add. "Where it all began."

  Ishra nods once, sharply. "Where your daughter will become the vessel if we don't stop it."

  "My daughter," I repeat, strings coiling protectively despite having never met the child. "What do the twins want with her?"

  "They think they're protecting her," Ishra explains. "They believe they're preparing humanity for evolution, for transcendence when the barriers fall." Her expression hardens. "They're wrong. Your daughter wasn't born, she was created. Designed by the Umbras through manipulation across timelines."

  "Created how?" Roth asks, scientific curiosity momentarily overriding self preservation.

  "The quantum abilities she inherited from her parents create the perfect bridge between dimensions," Ishra explains, eyes fixed on mine. "Her father's power to transfer abilities, her mother's probability manipulation. Together they created a child whose consciousness can perceive multiple realities simultaneously without fragmentation."

  "The catalyst," I whisper, remembering the term the twins used.

  "The door," Ishra corrects. "The perfect vessel for the Herald to enter this dimension completely."

  The implications settle like lead in my gut. Scarlett's betrayal. The twins' plan. Dresden's warning. All orchestrated across centuries, across dimensions, by entities I never saw pulling the strings.

  Before I can respond, the air grows heavy with wrong. Shadows deepen in corners that shouldn't exist. Temperature drops as physics momentarily forgets how heat works. My strings taste copper and corruption and quantum wrongness.

  "They've found us," Ishra hisses, the Severer rising to combat position. "Shadow vessels. They can track my quantum signature across dimensions."

  "Track you?" Roth demands, temporal flux accelerating with fear. "You led them here?"

  "They're not after you," she replies grimly. "They want me. And the anchor."

  Reality fractures around the department store's main entrance. The door doesn't shatter so much as forget its own molecular structure, particles disassociating in patterns that hurt to observe. Through the resulting absence pour shadow vessels: humans whose consciousness has been replaced by Umbra fragments. Their movements are wrong, too fluid, too precise. Their eyes vacant, expressions blank. Not humans anymore. Just puppets with invisible strings.

  My strings lash out despite the suppression field, wrapping around the nearest vessel's throat. It doesn't struggle, doesn't gasp for air. It keeps advancing, dead eyes fixed on Ishra, even as I crush its windpipe with pressure that would kill any normal human.

  "Physical attacks won't stop them," Ishra calls, the Severer cutting through air that screams at the quantum level. "They're not alive in any meaningful sense."

  She demonstrates by engaging the closest three vessels. The Severer moves in patterns physics hasn't invented names for, each swing opening momentary gaps in reality itself. Where the blade touches the vessels, they don't just die. They unravel. Consciousness, body, atomic structure dissolving into component particles that forget how to exist in our dimension.

  I've killed more humans than I can count across centuries of existence. I've witnessed deaths in ways most minds couldn't comprehend. But what Ishra does with the Severer isn't death. It's erasure. Complete. Permanent. Terrifying.

  My strings adapt despite the suppression field, centuries of combat experience compensating for reduced power. I target joints instead of vitals, using shadow vessels' own momentum against them. One crashes through a display case, glass shards embedding in flesh that doesn't bleed. Another I send careening into a support column hard enough to shatter vertebrae. The body drops, nervous system severed from brain, but the eyes continue tracking Ishra with single minded purpose.

  Roth crouches behind a checkout counter, quantum anchor clutched to his chest, features shifting so rapidly he resembles a flickering film projection. His temporal powers can't stabilize under stress, leaving him effectively useless in combat.

  More vessels pour through the shattered entrance. I count twelve, then fifteen, then stop counting as they swarm the space. Too many for Ishra and my weakened strings.

  "We need an exit strategy," I call to her, ducking under a shadow vessel's mechanically precise strike.

  Ishra carves through two more vessels with terrifying efficiency. "The anchor," she calls back. "Roth needs to activate it. Create a fixed point they can't follow through."

  "I can't stabilize it," Roth protests, temporal flux accelerating to near invisibility. "Not without proper equipment. Not with the suppression field active."

  I make a split second decision that goes against centuries of self preservation instinct. "Barrett," I call to the zealot operating the suppression cube. "Shut it down. Now."

  The tall zealot hesitates, religious devotion warring with immediate survival. "The Prophet commanded..."

  "Your Prophet will die if you don't," I snap, strings straining against quantum restraint. "Along with everyone else in this room."

  Barrett makes his choice, deactivating the suppression cube with trembling fingers. The effect is immediate and intoxicating. My strings roar back to full awareness, hungry after confinement, eager for violence. They explode outward in a web of death, wrapping around shadow vessels with surgical precision. Where they touch, animated flesh responds to my will, nervous systems temporarily hijacked, bodies turned into weapons against their companions.

  I make three vessels attack their fellows, using them as blunt instruments to clear space around Roth. Two more I send crashing through windows, buying precious seconds. My strings hum with deadly joy, finally freed from restraint, finally able to pull the puppets around me.

  "Work fast," I tell Roth, strings creating a defensive perimeter around him. "Whatever you need to do with that anchor, do it now."

  Roth's hands move with newfound certainty, temporal flux temporarily stabilized by concentrated purpose. The pendant's etched surface crawls with equations responding to his touch, quantum energy building around it in patterns that distort local physics.

  Ishra fights with mechanical precision, the Severer erasing vessels from existence rather than simply killing them. Where my strings disable, her blade unmakes. Each vessel that approaches her doesn't die so much as cease to have ever existed.

  One breaks through my defensive line, moving with unnatural speed directly toward Roth. My strings catch it mid lunge, wrapping around limbs, throat, torso, immobilizing it centimeters from the temporal scientist.

  "Do it," I command Ishra, holding the vessel in a web of strings.

  She brings the Severer down in a precise arc, black blade passing through the vessel's neck like it's cutting memory rather than matter. The body doesn't separate into pieces like a normal decapitation. It dissolves, component particles forgetting their relationship to each other, atomic structure unwinding like a sweater pulled apart by quantum hands.

  "That's what you'd do to Dresden if you found him," I say, realizing the full implications of her methods. "Erase him completely."

  Ishra meets my gaze without flinching. "If your son is being worn by an Umbra, as I believe he is, then he's already gone. Like my brother."

  My strings coil with protective rage. "You go near Dresden with that blade, and our alliance ends permanently."

  "There is no alliance yet," she counters, the Severer cutting through another vessel attempting to flank her. "Only mutual necessity."

  "It's ready," Roth interrupts, the pendant now pulsing with stable quantum energy, its etched surface glowing with equations that have stopped shifting. "The anchor's stabilized. I can create a fixed point, but I need coordinates. Somewhere the shadow vessels can't follow."

  "My workshop," Ishra decides after momentary consideration. "It exists partially outside normal space time. They won't be able to track us there."

  "How do we know this isn't a trap?" I demand, strings holding two more vessels at bay.

  "You don't," she replies simply. "But staying here certainly means death."

  "Trust is earned, not given," I counter, strings tightening around the vessels.

  "Then earn it by surviving," she snaps, the Severer cutting through another vessel with mechanical efficiency. "Decide now. They're still coming."

  More shadow vessels pour through the entrance, their movements becoming more coordinated, more purposeful. Whatever controls them is adapting to our defense patterns, evolving its attack strategy in real time.

  "Do it," I tell Roth, making the only choice available. "Create the fixed point."

  Roth activates the anchor, quantum energy building around it in a sphere of distorted physics. Reality bends inward like fabric caught in machinery, creating a corridor through dimensions that shouldn't connect.

  "Go," Ishra commands, the Severer held defensively as she backs toward the quantum corridor. "I'll hold them here."

  "Not a chance," I reply, strings still immobilizing vessels. "You first. So I can watch you."

  Her lips curl in what might be grudging respect. "Trust issues, puppet master?"

  "Two hundred years of them," I confirm.

  Ishra nods once, sharply, then steps backward into the quantum corridor. Reality folds around her like origami, her form seeming to exist in multiple dimensions simultaneously before settling into a fixed point elsewhere in space time.

  "You next," I tell Roth, strings creating a final defensive perimeter.

  The temporal scientist clutches the anchor to his chest, features still shifting but with reduced intensity now that the pendant has stabilized. "If this is a trap..."

  "Then we spring it together," I finish for him. "Go."

  Roth steps into the corridor, reality distorting around his form as it transports across dimensional barriers. The sensation resembles quantum teleportation more than conventional movement, his body seeming to disassemble and reassemble elsewhere in the multiverse.

  With both gone, I release my defensive position, strings pulling me toward the quantum corridor. Shadow vessels converge from all directions, their movements taking on a singular purpose that suggests direct control from something beyond them. Something ancient and hungry watching through empty eyes.

  I step backward into the corridor, feeling reality bend around me like water around a stone. My strings extend outward, tasting the quantum fluctuations, measuring dimensional frequencies, mapping the path between here and elsewhere.

  As the corridor closes behind me, I catch a final glimpse of the shadow vessels converging on the empty space I occupied. Through their dead eyes, something else watches. Something that tastes like copper and corruption and quantum wrongness.

  The Herald. The entity trapped in the void with Ethan. The consciousness now using Dresden as its conduit.

  The one that wants my daughter to set it free.

  My strings dance with deadly certainty. I've been pulling strings for centuries, thinking I controlled the narrative, never seeing the ones manipulating me from dimensions beyond.

  But strings work both ways.

  And I'm done being the puppet.

  and I would like things to sync up. Go check it out when you have the chance!