The Shadow Queen Is Too Alluring—I Can't Handle This Anymore!
Chapter 79: The Signal That Called Them All

Chapter 79: Chapter 79: The Signal That Called Them All

Aelius stared at the sky, still shimmering with the fading light of the Primogenitor’s departure.

His face was pale, but his grip on the scythe was steady.

"Did we... survive that?"

Lyra coughed beside him, brushing ash off her armor.Her lips twitched. "Barely. But the sky didn’t."

Above them, constellations began to realign—impossible symbols blooming like veins across the stars.

Suddenly—the signal pulsed again.

A high-pitched resonance drilled through their skulls.

"Incoming transmission. Echo Code: Class Δ.""Match found: Parallel Echoes in 14 Systems.""Broadcasting Activation Pulse."

Aelius dropped to one knee.

The voice wasn’t from outside—it was inside his mind, inside his blood.

He saw flashes—

A girl with silver eyes screaming inside a glass coffin.A man with golden circuitry carved into his back.A child floating in zero gravity, fingers etched with language.

They were like him.

Not alone.Never alone.

"They’ve all been waiting.For someone to break the silence."

Lyra touched his shoulder, eyes wide. "You saw them too, didn’t you?"

He nodded slowly.

"Echo Protocol didn’t just save me.It woke up the others."

In that moment—

the universe felt like a cracked mirror slowly reassembling itself in reverse.

Each shard, a reality.Each reflection, a variation of power.

And Aelius?

He was the flaw that spread through them all.

The one who triggered the resonance.

Suddenly, a giant holographic seal appeared in the sky—

interlocking rings of symbols, each glowing brighter.

A countdown began.

12...

"What the hell is that?" Lyra whispered.

"A gate," Aelius replied."And it’s not just opening...it’s calling them here."

One by one, beams of light pierced the horizon.

From across dimensions—they came.

Each carrying a different symbol.Each wearing Echo’s mark in their own way.

A boy in chains of thunder.A girl with a blade made from liquid time.A faceless monk trailing smoke.

They all looked at Aelius—

and knelt.

"Protocol recognized," one of them spoke."We answer the call of the Breaker."

Aelius’s eyes widened. "Wait, I’m not—"

"Leader," the monk corrected."The war begins with you."

And far above, in deep space...

The Echo War officially began.

Aelius barely had time to process the arrival of the kneeling warriors before one of them stepped forward.

His face was sharp—scarred and storm-bitten.

Silver eyes crackled with lightning, and his arms were bound in glowing thunder-chains.

"Name," he said flatly.

"Rael. First Echo of the Fractured Sky."

Aelius blinked. "You’re one of them. One of... us?"

Rael’s lips curled into a faint snarl.

"Don’t flatter yourself. We answer the signal, not you."

Without warning—

Rael rushed forward, lightning-chains exploding from his wrists.

Aelius barely raised his scythe in time.

⚡ Clash.

Steel met storm.

"What the hell are you doing?!" Aelius shouted, forced back by a barrage of thunder-strikes.

Rael’s eyes narrowed. "Testing the link."

"The Protocol doesn’t choose. It triggers.

But leadership—it must be earned."

Aelius gritted his teeth.

This wasn’t a rebellion.

It was a trial.

These were warriors forged in pain, in collapse.

They didn’t follow gods. They followed proof.

And right now, he was nothing but a kid with questions and a borrowed scythe.

Unless—

He made them feel his conviction. Not just see it.

The sky above mirrored their battle.

Each clash of scythe and chain sent shockwaves rippling through the heavens—

lightning writing scars across the clouds.

Every strike Rael delivered carried the weight of a thousand broken skies.

Every counter from Aelius was desperation forged into steel.

Lyra shouted from the sidelines, "You’re not proving you’re stronger—you’re just burning!"

But Aelius didn’t answer.

He knew.

This wasn’t about dominance.

It was about identity.

And as the storm peaked, he stepped forward, letting the final chain wrap his throat—

—but instead of struggling...

He dropped the scythe and embraced the lightning.

Rael froze.

"Why aren’t you resisting?"

Aelius looked up, eyes glowing with violet clarity.

"Because leadership isn’t about force.

It’s about carrying the burden that breaks others."

The chains shattered.

The storm broke.

Rael dropped to one knee again—this time, not by instinct.

"Acknowledged. Breaker One has passed the First Link."

Behind them, 12 more figures watched in silence.

Their eyes glowed.

The next warrior stepped forward—her body shifting in and out of time, with memories leaking from her aura.

"I am Vessra. Keeper of the Echoed Future."

She smiled coldly.

"Let’s see if your soul can survive me."

Vessra walked forward without making a sound.

Her hair shimmered in a strange breeze, strands moving as if the world was rewinding, not flowing forward.

Her eyes were unfocused—not because she wasn’t paying attention, but because she wasn’t seeing this moment at all.

She was watching something that hadn’t happened yet.

"Aelius, Breaker of the Void," she said, voice like silver glass cracking.

"I’ve watched you die. Seventeen times."

Aelius blinked, muscles tightening.

Lyra scoffed. "Is she... high?"

But Vessra raised a hand, and reality around her began to fracture.

A ripple spread from her palm, slicing into the air like broken glass—

—and there it was.

A vision.

Aelius, collapsed on a mountain of corpses.

Whispering. Bleeding.

"I killed them. All of them..."

His eyes widened. "That’s not real—"

"It’s a future," Vessra corrected. "One of many."

And with that—

the trial began.

Shards of space wrapped around Aelius like a prison.

Not physical. Not magical.

Chrono-mental.

He was inside his own possible futures, and none of them were kind.

— One version saw him refuse Lyra’s plea for help. She died in an explosion.

— Another had him abandon Rael’s judgment. The floating city fell.

— A third... he summoned the Protocol before it was ready. Half the Echo army self-destructed on the spot.

Each scenario bled with guilt and failure.

Each one whispered:

"You are the cause."

He clutched his head, staggering.

"Is this what I become? A walking apocalypse wearing a hero’s face?"

"Only if you keep pretending to be one," Vessra’s voice echoed, cool and distant.

"I’m not judging you. You are."

That hurt more than anything.

Because she was right.

Inside Vessra’s trial, he felt like he was trapped in a river of backward-flowing time.

Each current pulled him into another version of himself.

Each version was a mask.

Some noble.

Some monstrous.

He saw:

— Lyra clutching his broken ring, crying.

— Void_Heart draining light from a collapsed city.

— Himself standing on a balcony, crowned in flames, ruling over ash.

But the worst vision?

He looked into a mirror.

And the man staring back wasn’t sad or broken.

He was smiling.

A future Aelius who loved the power.

He snapped.

Aelius screamed, channeling his own spiritual projection, slicing through the illusions one by one.

"I’m not you," he roared.

"I choose my path!"

The river of time froze.

The visions shattered.

And he stood, panting, heart thundering in his ears—

alone again.

Vessra appeared beside him, no longer distant.

This time, she was smiling—a genuine, small, bittersweet smile.

"You changed the end I saw," she whispered.

"You’re not the strongest. But you are the most dangerous... to fate itself."

She knelt.

"Breaker Two. Complete."

Relief washed over Aelius—until her next words turned his blood cold.

"But you need to hurry. The Echo Killer has already awakened."

Rael stepped forward. "Echo Killer? That’s not one of us."

Vessra didn’t blink.

"No. It’s not.

It’s a replica. A prototype built to erase failed timelines."

She held up her hand, and a new shadow flickered into being:

It had Aelius’s face.

One eye was burning like an engine. The other—his own furious glare.

"Next time you fight... it’ll be yourself."

To Be Continued...

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