Chapter 162: The wound’s response
The night was heavy.
Not dark, just heavy.
Whereas to Clayton, this was just returning to a vestige of his past that was long carved at the back of his mind, to Torren and the others, the wrongness of this region of Echoterra exposed them to things that they had never seen before.
Yes, they were born and grew up in the era of the Genesis Protocols, but even that didn’t prepare them for what this world offered them.
They were yet to face the main conflict of this trial, and yet, they already felt out of their element.
The only reason why they stayed calm was because of him... Clayton, their Verdant Lord. With him, they felt like they could take on whatever the Trial threw at them and return home stronger than ever before.
Despite their confidence though, they were not complacent. They knew that to survive, they had to give their all.
The scar below them pulsed like a living wound, each throb sending faint ripples through the soil.
Clayton sat with his back against a twisted root, eyes half-closed, watching the faint glow of the Heartseed in his chest rise and fall. Around him, his companions rested in uneasy silence.
They were camping too close to the wound, and they all felt it.
The air was thick there as vines that should have stayed still shifted as though breathing. Stone hummed like taut strings, and even the ground seemed restless, carrying faint vibrations as if Echoterra itself resented their presence here.
"Feels like the land wants us gone," Torren muttered, sharpening the edge of his Pyreaxe by the firelight.
Sparks leapt off the blade, swallowed almost immediately by the scar’s strange gloom. "Can’t say I blame it, the thing’s all wrong."
"It’s not wrong," Clayton said quietly, his eyes trained on the pulsing pit. "It’s wounded; wounds like this don’t heal clean, it’s a scar".
Torren grunted but said no more.
That night, they all slept. With the evolved version of Clayton’s Territorial Sentience, nothing could sneak up on them.
They all slept, but none of them slept easy.
Veyra dreamed of shadows locked in eternal battle, of Verdant Lords loosing volleys of thornfire across endless plains, their arrows blotting out the sky. She woke with her hands clenched as if still holding her bow.
Kaelin dreamed of walking through ruins filled with screams that never ended. He jerked awake before dawn, sweat running cold down his back, eyes wild as if he’d been hunted.
As for Torren, he dreamed of fire.
Not his fire, theirs. He saw an army of biomechanical Verdant Lords, bodies fused with steel, spitting flames that scorched the roots themselves. He woke furious, hyperventilating with teeth clenched, axe already in hand.
Clayton’s dream was the clearest of them all.
He saw a battlefield stretching for miles, soil ripped apart by roots the size of towers. He saw biomechanical constructs tear against living trees, steel grinding against bark. The sky bled green light, and in the middle of it all, a voice whispered...
"Remember the first cut."
When he woke, the words lingered.
Clayton also woke up hyperventilating, his brain feverishly working as he tried to make sense of the dream that he just had.
Morning came without birdsong. The sky above the wound was cloudless yet dim, light fading as it neared the scar’s center.
Clayton moved first, planting three small Seedpikes into the soil. Thin roots spread quickly, tasting the pulse beneath. Then he closed his eyes and listened.
The rhythm was uneven, like a heartbeat that had never healed right.
"This place isn’t dead," he murmured. "It’s alive, and it’s waiting."
Torren paced nearby, each step burning faint marks in the dirt as he tested his Aspect against the scar. He pressed his Pyreaxe into the ground, watching as flames licked across blackened veins.
The ash hissed, recoiling for a moment before knitting itself whole again.
"Fire caused this," he said. "But only for a breath. It’s like cauterizing something that refuses to stay closed."
Veyra scouted the rim, her sharp eyes tracing the jagged walls of the pit. She stopped when she spotted faint glyphs carved into the stone, lines like vines knotted into spirals.
"This is not natural," she called. "These are wards. Someone’s been here before us."
Mirra placed her palms against the soil and let her Aspect bloom outward. Thin silver roots spread, anchoring the group in a steady pulse of calm. The worst of the wound’s whisper faded, though it still pressed at the edges of their minds.
"Stay close," she warned softly. "The further we stretch, the more it resists."
They weren’t given more time though.
After a relative period of quiet, the scar finally reacted.
BZZZ!
The soil trembled, roots twisting violently as from the pit’s depths rose forms, shadows given flesh.
There were shapes of beasts and monsters, not real but remembered, pulled from the scar’s memory of battles long past.
A Verdant Warden Behemorph formed from bark and ash came to life, its outline flickering.
Beside it, a jagged steel wolf rose, ribs glowing with ember light. Behind them, dozens of smaller silhouettes took shape, shifting like smoke but with claws that tore into stone.
"Echoes," Clayton said, his voice low. "They’re created by the scar".
Then, the shadows charged.
It was a literal stampede, but they didn’t panic or freeze.
Torren roared back, flames bursting from his axe as he met the ash-behemoth head-on. Sparks rained as fire clashed with shadow-root.
Soren swung his Emberblade, the blade’s heat biting into the steel wolf. Each strike sent sparks flying, forcing the shadow beast to stumble.
Kealin? He did what he did best.
He vanished into smoke, striking from behind as his dagger cut a shadow’s throat and the entire creature collapsed in an instant.
"Strike the shadows, not the flesh!" he shouted.
The others adapted quickly.
Veyra loosed arrows tipped with Emberlight, each shot pinning an echo to its own shadow until it dissolved. Harrick’s spear stabbed deep into the ground, severing the flickers before they could rise.
Clayton stood in the center, roots lashing outward.
His eyes glowed with the pulse of the Heartseed as he forced the echoes back, each strike bursting with viridian power.
The fight was chaos, but it wasn’t hopeless. Every minute they endured, more echoes fell apart, fading back into smoke.
Finally, with one last burst of fire from Torren’s axe and an arrow from Veyra that pierced the wolf’s glowing ribs, the wave broke.
The echoes dissolved, leaving nothing but scorched soil and silence.
The group stood breathing hard, weapons still raised, eyes scanning the pit but no new shapes came.
"That wasn’t random," Torren growled, still scanning the pit for new shapes. He wiped sweat and ash from his brow. "That was a test."
Clayton nodded. "It’s adapting".
He stood for a moment, his eyes unfocused in deep thought, then he said. "Others have attempted this trial before," his voice was grim. "Every attempt before us, every strike, every failure, the trial remembers".
He paused. "And it uses those memories to break the next challenger".
Kaelin flicked ash from his blade. "So if we keep fighting the same way like everyone else, we’ll fail the trial like everyone else?"
"Exactly," Clayton said.
His voice was grim but steady. "We don’t brute force this. If we do, we’ll fail and die like the others, becoming memory".
"To win, we must find the first cut, the core memory holding this scar open. That’s what’s feeding the echoes."
Veyra stepped closer, her eyes narrowing at the glyphs carved into the stone. "If this place is bound by memory, then these marks might be records. Warnings, maybe even instructions."
Mirra touched the soil again, her silver roots glowing faintly. "And I can keep us stable. Not forever, but long enough to follow where the wound leads."
Clayton looked at each of them in turn: Torren, still smoldering; Veyra, eyes sharp; Kaelin, restless but focused; Soren, silent but resolute; and Mirra, calm at the center.
They had survived the first strike, but it was only the beginning.
Clayton planted his hand against the ground, feeling the scar’s rhythm. For a moment, his pulse synced with its broken beat.
"Tomorrow," he said, his voice carrying across the group. "We go down."
No one argued.
He outlined the plan simply. Tomorrow, Veyra would watch the glyphs, Torren would counter the scar’s flare with fire, Kaelin would slip through the wound’s shadows, and Soren would test combat law with his Emberblade.
Mirra would anchor them to life’s rhythm, and Clayton himself would weave it all together, bending their threads into one.
The scar pulsed once, almost in response, and the system’s voice whispered faintly in their minds.
DING!
~----~
[Orientation: 85% Complete]
"First memory close. Core fracture detected."
~----~
Clayton opened his eyes.
The wound loomed before them, vast and endless.
"Rest well," he said quietly. "Tomorrow, we find out what this scar has been hiding."
The fire crackled.
The pit pulsed, and Echoterra waited.