Chapter 17 · The Living Echo

"Stay the hell away from me!"

Elara didn't just scream it; she launched a bolt of raw, jagged energy that cracked the floor tiles between us. I didn't flinch. I stepped forward, the Veil Current humming under my skin like a live wire, absorbing the shock before it could even touch my boots.

"I'm not here to hurt you," I said, my voice low, steady. Too steady for a guy in a seventeen-year-old's body.

"Liar!" She backed into the corner of the holding cell, her chest heaving. Her eyes were wide, glowing with a flickering, unstable light that reminded me of a dying star. "You're just another one of them. Another suit with a leash. You want to put me in a cage and study me until there's nothing left!"

I took another step. The air in the room grew heavy, thick with the scent of ozone and old copper. I could feel her power—it was chaotic, screaming, a living echo of the same kind of Current I’d mastered lifetimes ago. But here, in this broken city, it was a death sentence.

"Look at me, Elara," I commanded.