Dalia stepped forward, axe humming. “Talk straight, ghost. What’s coming?”
“I’ll send a fruit basket,” Orion replied, but his heart wasn’t in the banter. Something was wrong. The server—Eternum’s core shard for this region—felt different . The usual neon hum was off-key. The shadows moved with a lag that wasn't lag.
The floor shattered.
Idriel stood at the far end of the chamber, not as a ghostly projection, but solid. Her feet touched the fractured marble floor. Her silver hair floated as if underwater, and her eyes—those twin voids—locked onto Orion alone.
Nova’s fingers froze on her device. “That’s… not possible. Patch notes were cosmetic. Bug fixes.” Eternum -v0.8.0- -Caribdis-
“You’re welcome, by the way,” Annie muttered. “That Sentinel was about to core you.”
The Fracture of Echoes
For a single frame—one tick of the server’s clock—the mirrors in the figure’s eyes cracked.