In the depths of existence, where reality fractures and possibility loses its grip, the Echoes stirred restlessly. This was a place no one should ever venture—a realm where suggsilence wasn’t merely a force but a devouring, malevolent presence. It breathed in the cracks of the forgotten, and it waited. And here, in this forsaken pocket of reality, Mal’zyr Rahal was trapped.

Unlike the others who had manipulated suggsilence, shaped it to their will, or unraveled paradoxes with ease, Mal’zyr wasn’t a master of anything. He was a victim.

Mal’zyr had always been drawn to places of great mystery, but his latest curiosity had led him into a labyrinth of nightmares, where the Echoes themselves had turned into something grotesque—no longer whispers of forgotten truths, but instead gnarled, twisted things that festered in the dark.

The Abyss of Shadows

Mal’zyr’s physical presence was striking. His skin glowed with a deep, reddish hue, and his eyes burned with crimson light, marking him as someone touched by suggsilence. A pulsating symbol was etched into his forehead, its meaning unknown even to him, though it was clear that it anchored him to forces far beyond comprehension. His chest bore a strange, suggslogical sigil, radiating energy that throbbed with each beat of his heart.

He was tall, muscular, but something about his frame seemed off—as though it wasn’t entirely his own. His arms, wrapped in bands of glowing symbols, felt heavy. They didn’t respond to his commands as they once had, and each movement was accompanied by an eerie resistance, as if the Echoes themselves had sunk their claws into his very flesh.

He wasn’t in control. He was being pulled deeper.

The Shifting Corridors

Mal’zyr had been wandering for infinite eternities. The corridors around him twisted in unnatural ways, their walls shifting between unmanifest and manifest possibilities. Faces—twisted, distorted faces—pressed against the walls as if they were trapped inside, screaming silently. Every so often, he would see his own reflection staring back at him, but something was wrong. His reflection would smile when he wasn’t, or it would twitch and distort, flickering like a dying lightbulb.

Each step felt heavier, each breath more labored, as though the very air was thick with malevolence. The deeper he ventured into the corridors, the more the Echoes began to manifest. But unlike the soft whispers that had guided others, these Echoes were deafening, cacophonous. They screamed at him, laughed at him, cursed him. Their voices grated against his mind, filling him with a suffocating dread that gnawed at his sanity.

He had come here seeking answers, but all he found were nightmares.

The Mirror of Suffering

Finally, Mal’zyr stumbled into a large, circular chamber. At the center stood an ominous, blackened mirror, its surface smooth yet rippling like water. The room was cold—unnaturally so—and the very light seemed to bend toward the mirror as though drawn to its dark gravity. Around the edges of the chamber, skeletal remains littered the floor, their bones twisted in impossible shapes, as if the Echoes had consumed not just their minds but their very forms.

Mal’zyr’s heart raced, his chest tight with a growing sense of dread. The mirror called to him, its surface warping slightly as though it was alive, waiting to reveal something—something awful. And yet, despite the terror that gripped him, Mal’zyr couldn’t resist. His body moved on its own, his legs carrying him forward even as his mind screamed for him to stop.

As he approached, his reflection in the mirror began to change.

It wasn’t his reflection at all.

The Crown

In the mirror, Mal’zyr saw a version of himself that had been utterly consumed by the Echoes. His eyes—once burning with crimson light—were hollow, black voids that seemed to devour the very light around them. His mouth was twisted into a cruel grin, and his body was riddled with cracks, as though he were a statue on the verge of shattering.

The figure in the mirror raised its hand, beckoning him closer.

“Join me,” it whispered, though the words didn’t come from its mouth. Instead, they echoed inside Mal’zyr’s own mind, as though the reflection was speaking directly to his thoughts. “You’ve wandered too far. You’ve seen too much. Now there’s no escape. Come… join me in the Echoes.”

Mal’zyr’s body shook, his hand moving to his chest as he felt the sigil there pulse violently, as though it was trying to tear itself free from his flesh. His reflection stepped forward, pressing its hand against the inside of the mirror, the glass rippling like liquid under its touch.

“Join me,” it repeated, its grin widening, splitting its face in two as the skin began to peel back from its skull, revealing the bone underneath. “We are one.”

The Descent into Madness

Mal’zyr stumbled back, his heart pounding in his chest as the chamber around him seemed to warp and twist. The walls stretched impossibly high, and the skeletal remains on the floor began to shift, their bones clattering as they reassembled themselves into grotesque shapes. The Echoes were screaming now, louder than ever, their voices filling his mind until he thought his skull might split from the pressure.

This isn’t real, he told himself, but the words felt hollow. His surroundings were too vivid, too visceral. The terror clawing at his insides was real, and it was growing stronger with every passing second.

His reflection was no longer confined to the mirror. It had stepped through, its hollow eyes fixated on Mal’zyr as it approached, its body distorting and cracking with each step. The sigil on Mal’zyr’s chest pulsed erratically, the energy within it surging as though it was reacting to the presence of his twisted doppelgänger.

The thing that wore his face reached out, its fingers elongated into sharp, bony talons, its smile stretched impossibly wide. Mal’zyr could feel the air around him growing colder, the darkness creeping closer as his own reflection stood before him, ready to claim him.

And then, with a sudden, terrifying clarity, Mal’zyr understood.

He hadn’t just stumbled into this place. He belonged here.

The sigil on his chest wasn’t a mark of suggslogic. It was a brand. A curse. The Echoes had claimed him the moment he entered this twisted reality, and there was no escape. He wasn’t meant to solve the labyrinth or bend suggsilence to his will. He was the final piece of a puzzle he hadn’t even realized existed.

He was the next horror.

Becoming the Echo

Mal’zyr’s body seized as the twisted version of himself reached out and touched his chest, its fingers sinking into his flesh. Pain—white-hot and searing—ripped through him as the sigil flared, burning brighter and brighter until it consumed his entire being. The Echoes roared in his ears, their voices merging into one deafening scream as his vision blurred, the world around him dissolving into darkness.

And then, just as suddenly as it had begun, the pain stopped.

Mal’zyr opened his eyes, but the world he saw was not the one he had known. The chamber was gone, the mirror shattered into a thousand pieces. He stood alone in an endless void, his body weightless, his mind empty. But when he looked down at his hands, he saw the cracks—the same cracks that had marred the reflection in the mirror.

He had become the reflection.

“You are one with us now,” the Echoes whispered, their voices no longer screaming, but calm and soothing. “You are the Crown. You are the Echo that haunts the forgotten.”

Mal’zyr’s lips twisted into a grin, though he didn’t feel it. His body wasn’t his own anymore. He was no longer Mal’zyr Rahal.

He was something far worse.

And as he drifted through the void, his mind consumed by the endless whispers of the Echoes, he knew there would be no escape.

Because he was now the horror that others would find in their darkest nightmares.

There was no possibility or actuality in the void where Mal’zyr Rahal drifted—only the endless, echoing silence. His eyes gazed into the nothingness around him, but his mind was a storm of fragmented thoughts, memories, and something else. The Echoes had become his constant companions now, not the faint whispers of forgotten realms but the consuming voices of things that should never have been.

He didn’t know how long he had been in this state. The narrative was meaningless here, just like everything else. He felt unmanifested, as if his body was no longer tied to the rules of essence of pataphysical existence. He didn’t need to breathe, didn’t need to move, didn’t need to be—and yet, the part of him that had once been Mal’zyr still struggled to exist.

But it was growing harder.

With every passing moment—or what passed for moments in the void—he could feel himself slipping further away. The suggslogic in his skin, the suggsvoid in his eyes, they were no longer just pataphysical manifestations. They were symbols of his unraveling, of his identity being devoured by the Echoes that had claimed him.

And yet, deep within that storm of chaos, a single thought kept surfacing: I can still fight this.

But how does one fight when they are no longer entirely themselves?

The Mirror of His Mind

The void shifted suddenly, as though responding to Mal’zyr’s fractured thoughts. The empty expanse twisted and warped, and before him appeared a structure—a reflection of the mirror he had seen in that forsaken chamber. This time, though, it wasn’t a mere object. It was alive.

The mirror’s surface rippled like liquid, and from its depths emerged faces—countless faces, twisted and broken, all of them screaming silently. They pressed against the surface, their hollow eyes locked on Mal’zyr as though they were pleading for release. But he knew better. These weren’t the souls of the lost. They were something worse.

They were the Echoes of those who had fallen before him.

Mal’zyr instinctively took a step back, but his feet no longer touched the expanse. He was drifting, floating through the void, unable to escape the mirror that now dominated his entire vision. His chest tightened, the sigil embedded there pulsing violently as though it were feeding on his fear.

“You can’t escape us,” a voice whispered, though it wasn’t a single voice. It was a chorus of voices, layered on top of one another, speaking from every direction. “You are one of us now, Mal’zyr. You belong to the Echoes.”

Mal’zyr clenched his fists, his suggslogical eyes narrowing. He could feel the pressure of the Echoes bearing down on him, trying to smother the last remnants of his will, but he wasn’t ready to give up. Not yet.

“I’m not like you,” he hissed through gritted teeth, his voice hoarse but still defiant. “I’m not gone.”

But even as he said the words, doubt gnawed at him. Was he really still himself? Or was he simply delaying the inevitable?

The Echoes Take Shape

The faces in the mirror began to twist and merge, their forms becoming more defined as they pressed against the surface. And then, without warning, they stepped out—one by one, the Echoes emerged from the mirror, their bodies suggslogically influx like Mal’zyr’s own.

But these weren’t reflections of him. They were something else, something older. Their suggslogical eyes stared at him with an intensity that made his skin crawl, and the air around them seemed to distort, bending to their will as they moved closer.

Mal’zyr’s pulse quickened as the Echoes closed in, their movements slow and deliberate, like predators stalking their prey. His mind raced, searching for an escape, but there was nowhere to go. The void offered no refuge, no hiding places—just an endless expanse of nothingness. Their voices overlapped, creating a dissonant symphony of whispers that made Mal’zyr’s head throb with pain.

“You’re already one of us,” they whispered, their voices low and menacing. “Stop fighting it. Stop pretending. You belong to the void now.”

Mal’zyr’s breathing grew shallow, his chest tightening with fear. He could feel the sigil on his chest pulsing harder, the energy within it surging as though it was reacting to the Echoes. But instead of fueling him with power, it felt like it was draining him—draining what little strength he had left.

“I’m not like you,” Mal’zyr repeated, though his voice was weaker now, the words trembling as they left his lips. “I won’t become like you.”

But the Echoes only laughed, their sugglogical eyes gleaming with malevolent delight.

“You already are.”

The Choice

As the Echoes closed in, Mal’zyr’s mind snapped to attention. He had a choice to make. He could give in to the inevitability of his transformation, become one with the Echoes, and lose himself forever. Or he could fight back, even if it meant tearing himself apart in the process.

The problem was that he didn’t know if there was enough of him left to fight.

The sigil on his chest flared again, brighter this time, and Mal’zyr’s body seized with pain as the energy surged through him. He doubled over, clutching his chest as the Echoes advanced, their whispers growing louder, more insistent.

“You belong to us,” they chanted, their voices merging into one deafening roar. “You belong to the void.”

And then, in that moment of utter despair, something inside Mal’zyr snapped.

With a primal scream, he thrust his hands forward, and the suggsilence within him exploded outward in a violent surge. The force was so powerful that it knocked the Echoes back, their forms flickering as though they were being torn apart by the very force that had created them.

Mal’zyr’s chest heaved, his breath ragged as he stood in the center of the storm, his body trembling with the intensity of the power coursing through him. The Echoes writhed on the ground, their bodies cracking and breaking under the weight of the suggsilence that now radiated from Mal’zyr’s very core.

“I… don’t… belong to you,” Mal’zyr growled, his voice barely above a whisper.

The sigil on his chest pulsed one last time before the energy within it began to fade. The Echoes, weakened and broken, dissolved into the void, their forms dissipating into nothingness.

But Mal’zyr knew that this wasn’t over. It was never over.

The Crown

Mal’zyr stood alone in the void, his body drained, his mind shattered. The Echoes had been beaten back, but the cost was steep. He could feel the cracks in his skin deepening, the suggslogic in his eyes growing darker. The sigil on his chest was still there, pulsing faintly, a reminder of what he had become.

He was no longer just a man. He was something else—something born from the void, shaped by the Echoes, and bound to a fate he could no longer escape.

The horror wasn’t that he had defeated the Echoes.

The horror was that he had become one of them.

And as Mal’zyr stared into the endless abyss, he knew that the void wasn’t finished with him. It would never be finished with him.

Because he was the Crown now.

And there was no turning back.