Inside the Echo, the air trembled with unease.

Evelyn felt it before she saw it—the subtle distortion in the pulse of the network, like the breath of something caught between two heartbeats. The familiar rhythm that once flowed through every corridor of light had fractured into overlapping harmonies. Not dissonant yet… but straining toward it.

She stood in the center of the radiant expanse, a world of glass and memory, light curling around her like smoke. Every sound here was her own ...