Flashes of memory stab through the haze of battle. He sees mentors who fell before they could finish teaching him, friends he managed to save at the last possible second, and the split-second before each of his past defeats. Each fragment tightens the pressure in his core, where power and strain build together until collapse feels dangerously close. Every echo he has earned, every resistance bought with blood, feels like a debt finally being repaid in this single fight. I am more than the sum of days hunted, he tells himself, forcing his mind to stay with the rhythm of the battle instead of drowning in what came before.
Minutes stretch and warp as bodies crash, fire bursts, and shadows twist across the amphitheater floor. The Nightborn Alpha mutates constantly, studying his movements and adjusting its own responses so that it never repeats the same motion twice. Noctis feints left, dropping his weight low before sliding under a flaring mirror arm. His blade flashes upward, stabbing toward the glowing core in the Alpha's chest. The monster writhes, orphan limbs snapping back into formation, pulling themselves into a shield as runed fire ignites in a wide defensive arc. Heat forces him backward. He breaks off and retreats, lungs burning, recalibrating as he moves. Direct attack fails. He parses the problem with the same precision he uses to read enemy patterns: first the fire, then the orphans, then the mirrors, then the core. Disrupt the fire before the orphan gambit. Break the mirror defense. Only then strike at the heart.
He circles the arena's edge, keeping just outside the worst of the fatigue hum. Each breath feels heavier, like inhaling smoke. He waits, counting the beat of the Alpha's pulses. When the shade wisps swirling around its body drift farther from their host, he triggers an echo flare from his core, sending a ripple of wild light crashing through them. Shadows burn away in a sudden blaze. The Alpha reels as its cloak of gloom thins, orphan arms shuddering and losing perfect unison. But adaptation is its nature. It splits again, scattering fresh fragments across the cracked marble. Poisoned crystal creeps over the ground in spreading veins, making each step more dangerous. Noctis fights on the edge, legs growing heavy. If I lose pace, I lose life.
He starts setting traps instead of trading blows directly. Using broken amphitheater crates, scattered mirror shards, and the silver-threaded artifact at his belt, he creates pockets where his counters will be strongest. A dangling shard becomes bait; a reflective surface becomes a tripline for mirror phase; a loop of silver thread is anchored between stones, ready to snare any limb that passes through. The fight stretches. Every moment becomes a new calculation: what changed, what failed, what can be used.
Noctis circles the Alpha again, each breath ragged but controlled, each motion stripped of waste. Shards of mirror scream past his face as the creature lashes crystalline limbs at his legs, forcing him to roll and pivot over broken marble. Memory sharpens his instincts. He no longer swings at reflected angles, never striking where the mirror shows instead of where it is. Instead he waits for the instant reflections blur—the moment mirror phase collapses—then moves. Time the strike for fire's fade, not its peak. The Alpha splits once more, sending orphan fragments skittering into alcoves around the amphitheater. Each fragment emits a low, keening hum that gnaws at his focus. Poison seeps into the air and into his skin; numbness tingles down his left arm, fingers threatening to stiffen. He grits his teeth and shifts his stance, forcing his body to rely more on the right while redirecting his movements to keep blood flowing and toxins from pooling.
He leans on his core adaptations like invisible armor: Shadow Dissolve techniques to slip through patches of gloom without being gripped; Fire Resist to keep skin and lungs barely on the survivable side of scorching. Every move has to adjust on impact. Can't let toxins dig deep; keep wounds high, avoid low cuts that drag through poison-slick ground. Amber fire blooms across the Alpha's chest. The arena steams. Stone hisses, cracks racing through marble as the heat spikes. Noctis spots it—the source of the escalating burn: a runed sigil fused in the Alpha's core, growing brighter with every mutation cycle. Shade wisps coil around it, drinking ambient light and feeding it back into the sigil. He understands in an instant: the creature feeds on both heat and fear. The more the battlefield burns, and the more his morale wavers, the stronger its explosive defenses become.
He snatches up a broken mirror disk and flings it wide, its flashing surface bait for the Alpha's attention, then darts behind a cracked column for cover. But the monster has already adapted. Whisper Wyrm hum rolls over him in a dizzying wave, dulling his thoughts, slowing the sharpness of his timing. Orphan fragments close in from multiple directions, synchronizing for a perfectly layered attack. He counters on instinct, swinging wide in a defensive arc. Three fragments shatter, but a fourth catches his calf. Razor edges open skin; poison fire pours into the wound. Pain jolts him awake even as his body threatens to collapse.
His thoughts fracture into quick, hard-edged lines: toxin spread window, thirty seconds, maybe. Must sever hum with a core pulse, regain enough clarity for one decisive read. Remember: pain is temporary; survival is everything. He triggers the Echoframe.
A ghostly interface floods his perception with tactical overlays.
ECHOFRAME ALERT:
Toxin levels: critical. Resilience: 78%.
Fire core escalation: rising.
Shade wisp density: at apex—prepare lamp flare.
He moves on that data. He scatters lamp fragments near a crack where hot air vents upward from beneath the arena, then deliberately exposes himself with a wide, aggressive arc that invites a fire blast. The Alpha obliges. Flame surges through vent and lamps together. The fragments ignite, flaring into sudden, concentrated bursts of light.
The arena erupts in brilliance, vaporizing shade wisps and throwing the Alpha's mirrored limbs into disarray.
Noctis does not waste the ten seconds this buys him. He launches a volley of precise strikes—one aimed at an exposed orphan core, another slashing into a fire vent to disrupt flow, a third slicing through a mirror limb at the exact angle that will send shards into the Alpha's own armor.
He lands a solid hit.
But the Alpha's nature is to survive by changing. It splinters completely, letting its form explode outward and reassemble along the amphitheater's rim like a ring of grotesque statues coming to life. Ten new shapes coalesce, each echoing a different facet of the monsters he has fought before. They rush him together, a storm of contradictions made flesh.