— Hurry… Only a few seconds left before midnight.
Her voice was swallowed by the howling wind.
The Echo froze. Its mace — a monster of black iron laced with bone and molten flesh — hung suspended midair, then slowly lowered. When it struck the ground, the impact didn't make a mere sound; it unleashed a blast, a living shockwave. The snow around them exploded into an opaque cloud, scattered like dust in an inverted world.
Jinra raised her arms to shield her face. The wind slashed her skin, carving cold gashes. She felt the snow melt on her lashes, seep beneath her tongue. Everything was cold. Cold and red. Cold and black.
The Echo, massive and deformed, its broken neck twisted toward her, finally spoke. Its voice was no voice — it was a chasm's groan, the sound of a throat ripped from time itself, amplified by the screams of those it had devoured.
— You… You… Echo?
A sharp, tense silence stretched the moment. Jinra lowered her hands. Their gazes met — if one could call the empty voids in the Echo's face "eyes."
— Yes, she said simply.
Her breath curled in plumes around her lips. She could have run. Screamed. Begged. But she stood her ground, her coat open over her dress, the boy's blood still staining her boots.
The Echo tilted its head slowly, like a creature that couldn't comprehend the rule just broken.
— Why?
Jinra smiled, a smile tinged with sorrow.
— Because I don't feel it. Being human. It's a lie. Incomplete. Everything I was given, they took from me. So why keep going?
Her arms dropped to her sides. She stepped toward the creature. The air around her hummed. The world had tilted, and she was walking against it, against nature.
— I want to be like you. I want to be feared. To be untouchable. To never obey again. To live without chains. Without laws. Just me… and my hatred.
The Echo growled.
— You want blood like mine?
— Now you're getting it.
A shiver passed through it, a distorted laugh in its throat, then a grimace. A strip of tongue hung half out of its dislocated jaw.
— You… Coward. Me, wings. You, none.
Jinra shrugged.
— I don't give a shit what a heap of bleeding anomalies thinks of me.
The Echo tilted its head. The voices of the dead whispered in the air. Syllables without origin, borrowed from other mouths. Other times.
— You… want to be me. But you… disgusted by me.
— Yeah.
— Then… why?
She laughed. A dry, cracked laugh.
— Because it burns. Because I'm starving. Fifty kilos of hate. Look at this skin. So soft. So fresh. I'm a fucking dessert in this world of carcasses. I'm offering it. Eat me.
She spread her arms.
— Do it. Tear me apart. Let's end this.
But the Echo didn't move.
Instead, it slowly turned its head. Its hollow gaze met the father's — still kneeling, arms trembling, eyes red, frozen in horror.
— You. Give me… hunger.
It dropped its mace. The ground trembled. Then, without ceremony, it lunged at the man. The absurd maw in its torso opened wide, and in a single motion, it swallowed him whole. A scream turned into a gurgle. Bones snapped. Entrails rolled.
Jinra was screaming:
— No! It was me you were supposed to eat!
But it was too late. The man was nothing more than a bloody memory.
Silence fell again, heavier than before.
Jinra's breath was growing shallow. Unsteady.
— Fuck. Midnight. My chance…
She looked at her shattered phone, still displaying 00:00. She hurled it to the frozen ground. The screen burst into a spray of blue shards.
— This fucking world…
The Echo turned back to her.
— You will shorten your own suffering.
And this time, it raised its mace.
She didn't have time to move.
Crack.
Blinding pain. Her left arm flew off. A gush of blood sprayed across the snow. Jinra screamed, her voice splintering.
— Fuck… you… you—
But the Echo wasn't done.
Second strike.
Her right arm this time.
The world reeled. Her vision flickered. Red snowflakes fell.
She collapsed to her knees.
— Enough… Stop…
But the Echo was smiling. Its smile wasn't a curve of the lips. It was a distortion of its entire face.
Third strike.
Her legs.
She crumpled, paralyzed. The cold seeped into her. The pain was beyond pain — a white-hot, shrieking agony that consumed everything.
She was drowning in her own blood.
— So this is… how I…
Her voice faded. Only crimson gurgles spilled from her mouth. Her eyes, wide open, brimmed with frozen rain and tears.
The sky seemed to close in above her.
But then…
The Echo began to vomit.
A shapeless black mass burst from it, falling into the bloodstained snow. It slowly formed the outline of a humanoid being.
And a voice — deep, broken, like it came from a crackling radio — emerged from the shadow:
— She… will pay.
Jinra, barely conscious, saw the figure. It was the father. Or what was left of him. A kind of black specter, his eye sockets hollowed by grief, his mouth twisted by rage.
— For my son's suffering…
He turned, began to walk toward her.
The Echo let out a horrid laugh:
— HA HA HA HA. Let's go.
And Jinra, lying in the red snow, felt her heart slow.
Her breathing grew erratic. Each inhale was a stab. She tasted iron on her tongue.
Her vision turned gray. Then blurry. Then fragmented.
The moon above her was shattered into a thousand pieces. The stars were bleeding.
She whispered, barely audible:
— He… was taken… too soon…
And as the figure drew near, as the cold burrowed into her skull, Jinra understood one thing.
The world didn't want her.
And she… no longer wanted the world.