The weight of Arjun's words settled over them like a suffocating fog. A reset. Not just a shutdown, not just a collapse—a complete reboot of existence itself.
Yumi clenched her fists, her pulse hammering against her skin. "That doesn't make sense. If the Echo can wipe reality, then what's stopping it? Why hasn't it done it already?"
Arjun's fingers flicked across his interface, pulling up layers of decrypted data. "Because the reset isn't automated. It requires a trigger—someone with access deep enough to activate it manually." He glanced at Azrael. "Someone like you."
Azrael didn't react, his gaze fixed on the Guardian looming behind them. "If it were that simple, it would have been used already."
Yumi narrowed her eyes. "So what's stopping you?"
A flicker of something passed through Azrael's expression. He turned, stepping closer, lowering his voice. "Because I don't control the trigger. I was searching for it." His gaze locked onto Yumi's. "And now, I think I've found it."
Her stomach twisted.
"You think I'm the key."
Azrael didn't blink. "You don't just interface with the Echo. You alter it. You override its defenses, you bypass restrictions. That shouldn't be possible." He exhaled slowly. "Whatever you are, Yumi—you were never meant to exist within this system."
Eli stepped between them, glaring. "Yeah, okay, we get it. Yumi's special. But what do we do about this reset? Because if some lunatic gets their hands on the trigger before we do, that's it, right? Game over?"
Arjun scrolled through the fragmented code on his screen. "The good news? The trigger isn't activated. Not yet."
Yumi tensed. "And the bad news?"
Arjun hesitated. "It's buried inside the Echo's core. The Deep Nexus. And if we want to reach it, we have to go through the Abyss Terminal."
A heavy silence filled the space. Even Azrael's expression darkened.
Eli groaned. "Let me guess. The Abyss Terminal is one of those places where people go in and don't come out?"
Arjun nodded grimly. "It's the deepest layer of the Echo. No one's ever made it back from there."
Yumi exhaled sharply, rubbing her temples. "So our options are: do nothing and risk someone else pulling the trigger… or walk straight into the part of the Echo that's literally named after an abyss?"
Eli smirked. "Sounds like our kind of plan."
Before they could even think about breaching the Abyss Terminal, they needed time. Time to plan. Time to recover. Time to piece together whatever the hell was happening to Yumi.
The underground tunnels led them back to a half-collapsed transit station, one of the few places that still had working terminals. It wasn't much—just an abandoned ruin with flickering emergency lights—but it was quiet. And right now, that was enough.
Yumi sat near a rusted bench, staring at her hands. They were steady, but she didn't feel steady.
She could still sense the Guardian in the back of her mind, a silent presence lingering just outside her thoughts. It wasn't speaking to her, not exactly. But she could feel its awareness. Like it was waiting.
Eli dropped down next to her, nudging her with his elbow. "You okay?"
Yumi sighed. "Not really."
Eli leaned back, folding his arms behind his head. "Yeah, figured. Want me to pretend everything's fine?"
A small smirk tugged at her lips. "That might help."
"Cool. Then I'll say what I was going to say—" Eli gestured vaguely. "This is totally normal. Happens all the time. You hack an ancient super-AI, bond with a death machine, find out reality is fake, and now we're gonna go jump into a literal abyss."
Yumi huffed a laugh. "Totally normal."
He grinned. "Exactly. You're handling it better than I would."
She shook her head. "You'd probably just punch the Echo until it gave up."
"Hey, don't underestimate the power of a good punch." Eli stretched his arms. "But seriously. We've been moving non-stop. Maybe we take a second to just… exist, before the next insane thing happens?"
Yumi nodded slowly. She wanted to slow down. To breathe. To not have the weight of reality pressing down on her for just a moment.
But in the back of her mind, she knew the peace wouldn't last.
Because the Echo was stirring.
And it was waiting for her to take the next step.