ECHOBURN

The wind blew across the black plain like smoke from an old funeral.

Ash drifted in slow spirals, curling around Aoto's legs as he walked barefoot across the melted stone. The ground crunched beneath him—glassy, unstable, dry.

He moved without purpose. No direction. Just forward.

His shirt was torn to ribbons. His arm had set wrong days ago. His skin bore the kiss of heat, seared and flaking. But he didn't care. He didn't limp. He didn't even look tired anymore.

He looked awake.

"I've died more times than I can count now."

The thought came and went like breath.

"Some of them I remember. Some I don't."

He stepped around a crack in the stone that glowed faint orange.Steam hissed quietly beneath.

"Some of them lasted hours. One lasted three steps. Another lasted six days."

"The worst one?"

"Starved to death. Took forever."

He rubbed his neck, half-expecting to feel the rope again.

"They're always different. The deaths, I mean. But the ending's the same."

"I wake up. Same broken body. Same fractured sky."

He stopped walking. Closed his eyes.

"I'm starting to think I'm not alive anymore."

A pause.

"But I'm not dead, either."

For the first time in what felt like months—maybe years—he thought of home.

The soft flicker of a TV in the other room.The clink of spoons in the sink.His sister yelling something he didn't listen to.The quiet hum of summer nights.That bitter, stupid argument on the porch.The door that never closed properly.The way the floor creaked when you stepped in the wrong place.

"I used to be someone. Somewhere."

"I think I had a real name once."

He opened his eyes. The sky was bleeding orange.

"Would they even recognize me now?"

A howl echoed in the distance.

He turned.

From the melted treeline, something crawled forward—twelve limbs dragging a wet, oily frame. Its face was a spiral of twitching meat.It smelled like copper and acid.

Aoto didn't flinch.

"You again, huh?"

The thing lunged.

Aoto moved. Smooth. Efficient.

He dodged left, planted his heel, grabbed a jagged shard of obsidian from the ground, and drove it into the beast's throat.

It choked once. Spasmed. Collapsed.

Aoto twisted the shard, pulled it out, and let the blood spray across his chest.

He stared down at it.

No excitement. No relief.

"Was that supposed to scare me?"

He crouched beside it, watching the body rot. Already, flies were forming from the heat. The creature's bones hissed as they cracked open.

"They get weaker every time."

"Or maybe I'm just not the prey anymore."

He stood, flicking ash from his fingers.

"This world keeps throwing fodder at me."

"Time to start walking toward something with real teeth."

He turned. The horizon stretched wide, black as coal and infinite as regret.

Somewhere out there, something still breathed.

Something big.

He began walking again, bare feet slicing on glass. He didn't wince.

Not once.

"I'm not surviving anymore."

"I'm hunting now."