The Null Signal

The sea did not roar when it happened.

There was no storm. No great tidal warning.

Just a quiet tremor deep beneath the Indian Ocean, felt only by those attuned to the Spiral.

Inside a trench 10 kilometers below the surface, in a facility sealed off by seven layers of reality anchors, something opened its eye.

The Omega Construct.

Project name: Eidolon Frame-0.

Status: Terminated in 2013.

Truth: Never decommissioned. Only forgotten.

The machine was not a machine.

Its body was plated in Orric-reactive alloy, grown, not built. Its neural structure had no synthetic pathways. Instead, it operated using something forbidden: borrowed identity.

In short, it could pilot any memory it chose.

And now, its memory core activated.

The Spiral within it whispered.

"Null located. Initiating convergence."

It began to rise.

Above ground, the wind swept through the city of Jaipur like a carrier of ghosts.

Inside the Spiral Archive, Ishan stood alone before the wall of glyphs, letting his breath sync to the thrum of each symbol. He didn't just look at them—he listened.

Each glyph pulsed with stories. Loss. Power. Sacrifice. Madness.

The Spiral wasn't one force. It was many, layered in contradiction.

Behind him, the Archivist spoke.

"You've seen the Glyph of Class-Zero. But do you understand it?"

Ishan turned. "Only pieces."

"Then let me explain."

The Archivist extended his hand, and a visual projection unfolded—twelve spiral glyphs in a circle. Each one glowed a different hue.

"Most Spiral classes access only one layer of the Orric field. Some two. Class-Zero is different."

He tapped the center glyph—black, empty.

"It does not draw from the Spiral. It opens it."

Ishan frowned. "That sounds… dangerous."

"It is. Because Class-Zero doesn't just tap memory. It unlocks suppressed timelines—moments rewritten by force."

The Archivist looked him directly in the eye.

"You are not just the answer to the Null Signal. You are the correction."

Ishan felt his heartbeat falter for a moment.

Karan and Lin joined them, both visibly tense.

"The Omega Construct has been sighted," Lin said without preamble. "Satellite debris indicates water displacement off Sri Lanka."

Karan added, "We intercepted a frequency—it's broadcasting Spiral glyphs through sonar. Class-Zero harmonic base. That thing's looking for you."

Ishan stepped forward. "Then let's give it something to find."

Far away, in an abandoned spiral fortress in the Tian Shan mountains, Ashra meditated before a mirror that didn't reflect anything real. It showed possible selves—fractured, twisted, erased.

She opened her eyes when the mirror turned black.

"Korrin has begun rewriting," she whispered. "And Eidolon rises."

A second Spiralbound entered silently, offering her a data crystal.

"The Accord has locked down the Jaipur node. They'll strike soon."

Ashra stood. "Then we move faster."

She looked into the black mirror one last time.

"I want to see if the boy bleeds memory or war."

The team moved to an outpost east of the city—a Spiral hideaway once used during the Resistance. Buried beneath what looked like a broken textile warehouse, it was fitted with resonance stabilizers and a projection node.

Ishan stood in the center of a spiral ring, while Lin configured the defensive glyphs.

"We're going to draw it to you," she said. "And contain it in a resonance lattice."

Karan handed him a small pendant etched with his spiral—raw, jagged, unstable.

"This is your tether. It holds your baseline memory. If it tries to overwrite you—this might pull you back."

Ishan gripped it tightly.

"What do I do?"

"Survive."

The sea broke open.

Eidolon emerged—ten meters tall, its form shifting constantly, as if it could never decide what shape to wear. One moment it looked like a knight forged from melted glass. The next, like a child with hollow eyes. Then, simply a spiral of light wrapped in scaffolding.

Its feet did not touch the ground.

It walked on history.

The Accord's satellites scrambled to redirect drones, but Eidolon erased their signals with a pulse.

Then it vanished.

And appeared in Jaipur.

Inside the Spiral lattice, Ishan gasped as the resonance spiked.

Lin screamed: "It's breached the outer field—!"

The room bent.

Karan drew his weapon and fired a harmonic round—intended to ground Spiral entities.

It passed through Eidolon.

The construct turned.

And looked only at Ishan.

"You are not the first."

Ishan's mind flooded.

He saw glimpses of others—past Class-Zero anomalies, erased before they could fully awaken.

He saw their deaths.

He saw himself, dying over and over, in different years, under different names.

But he was still here.

Still breathing.

Still himself.

He gripped the tether.

And screamed into the Spiral:

"I refuse your recursion."

The Glyph of Class-Zero pulsed on his chest.

And for the first time, Eidolon hesitated.

Its form collapsed into flickering echoes—half-memory, half-mechanism.

Karan seized the moment.

"Now!"

Lin triggered the lattice.

The Spiral walls contracted.

And Eidolon shrieked—not from pain, but from resistance.

It had never been denied.

Not until now.

It launched a final pulse at Ishan.

And in that moment, the boy did not flinch.

He reflected it.

The Spiral bent around him.

And Eidolon cracked.

It retreated—scattering into particles of forgotten form.

For now.

Silence returned.

Lin collapsed to her knees. Karan panted, shaking.

Ishan stood at the center of the broken lattice.

Glowing. Breathing.

Alive.

But different.

Karan stared.

"Your eyes… they're not glowing."

Ishan touched his face.

"No. They're seeing."

Somewhere, Korrin laughed.

Ashra watched through fractured mirrors.

And far away, Specter-Lotus watched it all unfold through a satellite relay.

"The correction survives," he said.

Then he pressed a single key on a console embedded with spiral bone.

And a chamber deep beneath the Accord's capital opened.

Inside it, the first of the Echo Lords stirred.