The alpha's emergence was not sudden.
It was inevitable. Like a tide that had been drawing back all this time, only to finally rush in. Crystalline floors that had once lay still began to splinter. The shattered amphitheater at the city's center started to throb with a slow, rhythmic pulse. Mirrors that had hung cracked and harmless along the walls fractured further, lines of breakage spreading like spiderwebs. Flames crept along old stone in thin, licking tongues, feeding on air that tasted of old echoes. Darkness thickened, drawn toward the heart of the ruin.
Noctis stood his ground in the center of the amphitheater.
The Echoframe pulsed against his wrist, its light ticking in time with his heartbeat. He tightened his worn gloves, flexing his fingers, recalling every death he had endured and every adaptation he had earned.
If I die tonight, he thought, at least I'll know the story.
If I live, I can change it.
The alpha rose.
It was not a single monster, but a fusion—everything the city had thrown at him, gathered into one form. Mirrored arms like the Lurker's limbs jutted from its sides, reflecting torchlight and broken starlight into dizzying patterns. A core of runed fire burned in its chest, markings similar to the Ember Sigil's flaring and fading. Wisps of orphaned shadow curled around its body, traces of the Vilebound Orphan's sorrow and spite woven into its edges. Crystals encrusted parts of its hide, leaking poison that smoked when it hit the floor. A faint hum vibrated in the air—the Whisper Wyrm's fatigue field reborn on a larger scale. Shade Wisp remnants clung to its exterior like a cloak, ready to sap morale, heat, and hope.
SYSTEM: NIGHTBORN ALPHA DETECTED.
Survival odds: minimal. Echo payout: magnitude uncertain.
All escapes sealed by distortion. Engage to survive.
Exits warped around him, doorways bending into walls, streets folding back into themselves. There would be no running.
Noctis planted his feet.
He took a focusing breath and catalogued his advantages.
Mirror-phase timing from the Lurker—he knew how to read that flicker just before a reflective surface shifted.
Fire resistance from the Ember Sigil—limited, but tested, enough to keep him from burning outright.
Poison resist from the Dusk Mite—small, but potentially enough to survive another sting in the midst of battle.
Shadow dissolve technique—he would not make the mistake of grabbing Shade Wisps directly.
Mental discipline for the Wyrm's hum—he had learned how to feel it and fight through the fog.
Core morale bolstered by the Shade Wisp's echo—less likely to freeze or break under fear.
I have learned from every threat, he told himself. Will it be enough against a synthesis?
The alpha attacked.
Mirror limbs flickered in the darkness, refracting torch light into chaotic shards that stabbed at his eyes. Noctis dove sideways, rolling across cracked marble. In the span of that motion, he calculated three possible arcs of movement. One risked the poison crystal sprays. Another would drag him through the densest part of the fatigue field. The third seemed least suited to a reflect strike pattern.
He chose the third.
The alpha's orphan fragments—smaller bodies and limbs that broke off from its bulk—surged to intercept. They flooded his chosen path from five angles at once, each one carrying a piece of the whole's power.
He whirled, sword in hand.
The first mirrored claw slashed for his head. He ducked under it, feeling the hum shave fractions off his reaction time. He drove his blade into the nearest orphan fragment's chest, then pivoted, dragging the blade through another's joint.
Don't let them regroup. Fragmentation is their first gambit—mine is discipline.
Two fragments died quickly, shattering against the marble floor in showers of broken crystal and dissipating shadow. As they broke, he felt poison seep into the air from their remains, numbing the scarred side of his right arm where his skin was already weak.
I need to fight from the left, he decided. Never expose my wounds.
He rolled again, keeping broken statues between himself and the alpha. Fallen stone figures—heroes, judges, nameless citizens—became cover, their chipped faces catching stray reflections. He tracked the fire surges from the alpha's core, watching for the moment the runes flared brightest.
He gripped a handful of ash from a burned banner.
When the alpha leaned forward, mirrored limbs spreading, fire-core brightening for a blast, Noctis threw the ash in a dense cloud toward its face. The fine black dust spread, breaking light, dulling reflections.
He moved with it.
While the alpha's vision fractured, he leaped, blade drawn, aiming straight for the runes pulsing in its chest.
Flame exploded outward.
His reflexes, honed by too many close deaths, pulled him into a twisting fall that saved him from a direct hit. Fire licked his side instead. Heat seared his armor, turning metal almost too hot to bear. Pain flared along his skin even through the protection.
The alpha split again.
Orphan limbs and bodies swarmed, entangling with the Whisper Wyrm's lingering hum. Fatigue slammed into him like a wave. His thoughts blurred at the edges. Movements lost some of their sharp adaptive edge, slipping into familiar patterns that the alpha quickly began to read and counter.
But his core fought back.
Echo resistances, small and scattered, rose up one by one. Poison slowed but did not stop him. The hum bent his thoughts but did not entirely swamp them. The Shade Wisp remnants tugged at his heat and morale, whispering of failure, of pointlessness, of the inevitability of being consumed—but the extra resistance there dimmed the worst of their impact.
Ignore fear. Focus on technique. Let emotion inform you, never control you.
The battle compressed.
It became a single exchange drawn out into something that felt like eternity. Each breath he took was measured. Each step matched to a flicker in the alpha's mirrored arms. Every time its hum peaked, he prepared a strike. Every time its fire sputtered, he shifted to defense.
He counted wounds.
He tracked poison levels as best he could—where the numbness stopped, where it started again. He shifted between offense and reaction, never letting the alpha dictate the rhythm entirely. The city around them watched in cracked stone and shattered glass.
Noctis kept moving, kept thinking, kept feeling—no longer empty, no longer a shadow with no weight—testing, in each heartbeat, whether everything he had gathered in this world was enough to face what it had made to kill him.
Noctis fights the Nightborn Alpha like a man standing in the eye of a storm, every second a test of whether his accumulated echoes can outpace the monster's evolution.