Night descended upon the clearing like a shroud. Even in the darkness, my mind's eye clung to that chilling scene: the husk village, the spectral Collectors, the man drained of his very essence. Each memory felt like a fresh wound.
"We will not stay here," Lilith's voice broke the tense silence. She spoke with a fierce resolve that pierced through my internal haze.
We retreated deeper into the forest. Our feet were light on the earth, borne of shared despair and hardened resolve. We did not speak. No words could offer solace, only the shared knowledge that survival meant action.
When moonlight broke through the dense canopy, casting pale ribbons of light across the forest floor, Lilith halted.
"Here. Rest." She led the way into a hollowed-out trunk of a petrified tree. There were a few animal pelts strewn within, barely offering any comfort against the damp moss. Sleep eluded me, the visions of that ghost village haunting every closed-eyelid flash.
The first hints of dawn found Lilith sitting alert beside me. "This is the place," she whispered. Her eyes shone with a mixture of anticipation and dread. "One of their collection routes passes through here. An ambush...it's our best chance."
"Are there others like you?" I couldn't shake the chilling notion of just how many cycles, how many iterations of suffering could have spawned enough outcasts to wage such a desperate war.
Her jawline hardened. "Fewer each year. Those who break free..." She trailed off, the unspoken thought clear - their fight often carried a heavy price.
I thought back to Richard, then the drained faces in that husk village. "Is that their aim? To erase the evidence of failure?" If Initialization succeeded, no soul would be left behind to tell the tale, no ghosts to trouble those Administrators.
Her fingers drummed against the damp wood. "No. More practical, I suspect. Each 'loop' creates echoes… residual energy. Not enough to sustain them, but the Collectors...they have learned to feed on this waste product.”
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Her words brought a new understanding. Every fight, every death, it wasn't just progress through some sick game, but an endless feast laid out for these scavengers.
“Then we attack, take one out…" I started. It seemed ludicrous, but this sense of being hunted, watched, had to end. It wasn't just for me, but for every discarded version of me trapped in a future like that husk.
“That isn't the target,” Lilith cut in, “Don't get consumed by that anger, even though I understand its source. Remember what they crave...echos.”
I nodded, remembering with chilling clarity that red luminescence.
A plan began to form. It was brutal, desperate, and probably foolhardy. Then again, my entire presence in this fractured reality was exactly that.
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Our ambush happened swiftly. As dawn turned the grey leaves of the forest a dull green, a single cloaked Collector drifted silently upon the trail. The forest floor erupted before it, roots winding skyward in a frenzied tangle. Lilith vanished and reappeared around it, a sharp whistle catching the Collector's attention.
For a split second, I met its gaze and nearly recoiled. No eyes, just pools of an inky void where eyes should be.
That hesitation nearly proved fatal. I dove aside as the creature moved with deceptive speed, hands now morphing into spectral energy whips that sliced through the air where I just stood. Yet, something flickered in that empty form. It wasn't surprise, but... hunger.
I willed that lingering energy from past battles to flare again. Red pulsed throughout my limbs, and I slammed a fist into its midsection. I stumbled back, not from the impact, but from an icy jolt. Unlike any fight in the system, I felt like my very strength was draining. The creature hissed, more sound than actual articulation.
Suddenly, Lilith rushed in, wielding a jagged shard of stone I could have sworn wasn't there before. Her weapon glowed red as it stabbed into the spectral form, and her body was outlined in the energy surge from that blow. And the Collector screamed.
A high-pitched wail that scraped at the back of my skull and brought an onslaught of flashes— memories. Not my own, but fragments of others...of every time this creature had done this, the echoes of souls torn asunder.
The creature shuddered, the spectral body dissipating, reforming, yet weaker. I knew what she intended. With that shard, Lilith became a conduit, the pent-up memories of victims a weapon stronger than any sword.
It ended when the creature became little more than an inky stain against the forest floor. No energy surged through me, no sense of satisfaction. There was only the echoing despair in that death cry. Lilith slumped to the ground, exhausted, eyes closed.
Her whispered words confirmed my worst fear. "These things. They used to be…something like us."
And just like that, the fight turned not just outwards, but inwards.