Echo Through the Ages

All or nothing!

Han Mingxuan took a dagger from his waist and cut open his palm. Crimson blood seeped out.

He dipped a brush in the blood and dabbed it against his forehead.

Hum.

Han Mingxuan's vision blurred for an instant. Then an extremely tiny golden thread appeared in his palm, tinged red with blood.

"Wait! This is what I'm going to give you: a new soul."

"Hehehe, I really must admire you. Even now, you're still trying to deceive me with the same story. You're brave, but just as foolish."

Trazyn stared at the almost imperceptible thread in Han Mingxuan's hand.

"Look at it. This is what you call a soul."

"Heh, what a fragile yet stubborn concept it is."

"I have seen it take countless forms."

"On the battlefields of Old Night, the so-called soul was nothing more than a fleeting halo of foresight in an Aeldari seer's eyes."

"It was also the bloody mist spewed by Orks as they roared."

"And likewise, it was the whimper mixed with a human pilgrim's last, labored breath before death."

"It was weightless, like a spore in the wind."

"There are always those who believe a soul can move the stars."

"But in truth, a soul cannot even withstand the radiation from a faint supernova."

Damn it!

Why was this Necron Overlord so stubborn?

That wasn't how it happened in the novels!

Fuck it!

If I win, I'll hit it big. Why should I be afraid of you?

He wrote in the air.

"By my decree!"

The golden thread shot straight toward Trazyn's forehead and entered his metal body in an instant.

Trazyn, who had already been about to act, froze in place.

He felt it.

Not through his electronic nervous system, but with that infinitesimal thing that truly existed.

"Malfunction."

The judgment came instinctively. He raised his arm, intending to activate the purification protocol.

But the golden glow began to flicker, and a faint sting swept through his entire metal skeleton.

A tremor from some ancient age burst along his neural conduits.

It was not the paralysis of an electrical overload, but a sting... in the emptiness.

Like a wound forgotten for hundreds of millions of years suddenly splitting open.

Trazyn staggered backward, his metal feet gouging two deep tracks in the floor.

His cane fell from his hand and struck the ground with a crisp sound, as though echoing some distant cry from ancient times.

At that moment, the power core in his chest, the engine that had operated with precision for hundreds of millions of years, experienced an irregular flow of energy for the first time.

It was not a malfunction.

It was something more unfamiliar.

Not the unfamiliarity of encountering something for the first time.

It was the estrangement born of a gap in memory upon seeing something again after it had been lost for so long.

It was as though a warm, soft mass were burrowing out of absolute nothingness.

Its distinctive edges scraped against the cold alloy walls inside him.

"Error... purification protocol... aborted..."

Garbled noise burst from Trazyn's vocalizer, and the focus of his optical sensors wavered violently.

Images that had long since been ground to dust by the shifting sands of time were now growing wildly.

The lullaby his mother hummed in his memory suddenly had a melody.

The feel and warmth against his palms as he gripped a sword in battle burned so fiercely that he instinctively wanted to pull his hands back.

Here and now, the searing heat brought by this sliver of soul felt almost eerily real inside this metal body!

Boom.

Trazyn collapsed to the ground. The sliver of soul weighed nothing, not even enough to leave dust on his collection, yet it bore down on him until he had no strength left.

It was not any known form of energy.

It had no frequency, only a stubborn sense of presence.

Like the singularity before the Big Bang.

Chaotic and fragile, yet bearing the power to tear through the void.

In this single moment, the presence brought by this sliver of soul tore apart the emptiness that had surrounded the Necron Overlord for the tens of millions of years since his sleep.

It was like a canvas that had been blank for tens of millions of years suddenly being stained with streaks of glaring, overpowering color.

"No..."

Trazyn growled, the rasp in his metal throat carrying a hint of an emotion the Necron Overlord had not felt in tens of millions of years.

Panic.

And a secret trace of... incredulous cherish, one he himself was unwilling to acknowledge.

Han Mingxuan watched it all, waiting for the outcome.

Soon, the result came.

Trazyn slowly lowered his hand. Today, after tens of millions of years, his optical sensors shone with a different kind of light.

It was a hint of bewilderment.

It was the curiosity and confusion of a newborn, the helplessness of someone born deaf and mute hearing a sound for the first time.

Han Mingxuan knew he had succeeded.

Trazyn felt it even more clearly.

He knew what it was.

It was the past devoured by the C'tan, the proof of having lived that he himself had sealed away for tens of millions of years!

It was light, as light as a trace of stardust.

It was also heavy, heavy enough that he was willing to bear the shackles of those tens of millions of years and learn to feel again.

Trazyn gradually came back to his senses. He picked up his cane and walked over to Han Mingxuan again.

Everything around them returned to normal, and Trazyn's voice gradually rang out.

"Record."

The metallic coldness in his voice was melting away.

"Unknown energy entity, code name... Echo."

Trazyn looked at Han Mingxuan.

"Mortal, I do not know how you did it, but at this moment, I apologize to you for my recklessness."

"I thank you for that moment of life."

Han Mingxuan let out a long breath.

Only the heavens knew how nervous he had been just now.

He had nearly been frightened to death on the spot.

"Then can we sit down and talk?"

"No."

Huh?

"I must leave, mortal. There are some things I need to do concerning today's change."

"I must still thank you for creating that beautiful memory of a fleeting moment of blissful abandon for me."

"I believe we will meet again soon."

Then Trazyn took out several small items.

One was an obsidian ring. Han Mingxuan knew it was a Blackstone Artifact.

There was also a small pendant and a watch.

"The Blackstone ring is from my private collection. It can completely block the influence of the Warp."

"This pendant is a phase teleportation device. Wear it, and I will be able to sense your condition and location."

"This timepiece is made from time crystals. It is a shield generator that grants immunity to temporal attacks and can reverse time twice."

"I hope you will still be alive the next time we meet."

"Hey, wait."

"It is still too early for you to use the other equipment..."

"I don't want equipment. I wanted to say, you can go wherever you like, but remember: don't do anything with that sliver of soul before we meet again."

"It's my first time using this method to plant a root in someone else. If something goes wrong with that sliver of soul, I don't know what will happen either."

"Thank you for the warning."

Trazyn vanished without a trace, leaving only his voice behind.

Which meant he had already run off.

"Did he have to run so fast? It's not like I'd snatch them back."

Still, at least he had made contact with the Necrons. The future was looking brighter and brighter.