But Elias was already prepared.
He let himself drop to the ground, wrapping both hands around the disgusting, sore-infested leg of the monster.
Then, with every shred of strength left in him, he pulled.
It was already useless.
The leg he was holding flickered—and suddenly he was gripping nothing at all.
Elias barely had time to react before the monster raised that same leg and kicked him into the air like he was nothing more than trash.
His eyes widened as he went airborne again. Then they widened even more when the Echoform hurled the femur in its hand like a slingshot straight toward his midair body.
Shit!
Panic sharpened his movements. He twisted his body mid-flight, barely shifting his trajectory in time as the bone shot past him, its rough shaft grazing the fabric of his torn sleeve.
Then he was falling.
This time, Elias didn't let himself hit the ground like a ragdoll. He twisted mid-fall just enough to land on one knee, the other foot planted for balance, scraping against the ground as he stabilized.
Behind him—the femur the Echoform had thrown.
Without wasting a second, Elias reached back, grabbed it, and forced every bit of strength he had into a throw. The bone cut through the air and disappeared into the distance.
For this to work, it had to be gone. He didn't know if it would—honestly, the odds were terrible—but it was still his best shot. And right now, it was his only shot.
The monster was already coming.
Its maddening giggles pressed against his mind, making him grit his teeth as a low groan slipped out anyway.
When it reached him, it pulled a long blade of bone from its waist like it was drawing a weapon it had always owned. Then it swung.
Fast. Precise. Too precise.
Elias tried to lean back, but it didn't matter.
The blade carved across his chest.
Pain exploded through him as his skin tore open and blood spilled down in a hot rush. A broken, pained sound forced its way out of him before he could stop it.
The Echoform laughed.
Its tongue slid out as if it was savoring the sound.
Elias dropped to one knee again, staring at the blood dripping to the ground. For a moment, everything in him went still—not calm, not peace, just that hollow shock when your body starts to fail before your mind is ready to accept it.
Strength left him in steady waves, draining out with the blood, and with it came something heavier.
Powerlessness.
"Is this how I die?"
The thought slipped in before he could stop it.
Elyndra stood behind the Echoform, watching him with something in her eyes—something like guilt.
'None of this is your fault, tiny gremlin.'
The monster's free hand wrapped around Elias's neck and lifted him straight up. Its lips curled into something like a grin.
Elias stared ahead, blank for a moment, like his brain had simply run out of reactions.
Then it opened its mouth—if that mess of flesh could even be called one—and started to sing again. The sound scraped through his mind like acid, pounding behind his eyes.
[SYAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRARAAAAAAAA!]
[HRAAAAAAGRRRRRRRRRRRREEEAAA!]
[WREEEEEEEEESSSSSSAAAAAAAAAAAA!]
It was unbearable.
But Elias was too drained to even scream. Too tired to struggle properly. His body just… hung there, barely responding, like it was already halfway gone.
Still, even now—bleeding out, helpless, seconds away from becoming one of those skeletons in this guy's collection—there was only one thing in his mind.
"Hey," he rasped, voice rough from disuse. "You're too loud."
He'd barely spoken since arriving in the Mirrorth, but this thing's voice was so irritating he couldn't even die in peace without complaining.
If this was it, fine. But at least let it be quiet.
The monster didn't stop. It kept singing, the warped symphony grinding through everything.
Elias felt something flare in his chest—rage, sharp and sudden. Why wouldn't it just shut up?
That familiar flicker brushed against him again. His Harmonic Core. Close, but slipping away like wind through a cracked door.
He barely noticed it.
Not with how angry he was.
"SHUT THE HELL UP, BASTARD!"
Still, the singing continued.
And somewhere in it, Elias swore he could hear laughter buried deep inside the sound.
That did it.
Maybe it was the rage. Or maybe just pure irritation finally pushing through the exhaustion—but one of his hands, the one that had barely been able to move before finally twitched.
"I SAID—"
Elias wrapped his hand around the Echoform's wrist—the one holding the bone blade.
The thing didn't even seem to care.
It was too busy unraveling his sanity, too focused on dragging him deeper into that maddening Song.
"SHUT YOUR FUCKING MOUTH!"
With a sharp motion, Elias forced the monster's own arm inward, driving it toward its chest.
Only then did it react.
Its form flickered violently, trying to phase out—but it was already too late. The hand, still gripping the blade, slammed into its own body.
The bone blade pierced straight through its chest with a sickening wet sound.
The Echoform dropped him.
For the first time since the fight began, it let out a real scream.
A raw, blood-curdling sound of pain.
***
What Elias had done was simple in theory—but insane in practice.
You couldn't kill an Echoform if you couldn't match its frequency. That much was clear.
But nothing said he had to be the one to land the killing blow.
The trick was forcing the monster to do it to itself.
When Echoforms shifted frequencies, their entire body resonated as one. Which meant the hand holding the blade wasn't separate—it was the same "state" as the rest of it.
So if that hand struck the chest… it would actually land.
Real damage. Real pain.
That was the idea.
Everything before that had just been setting it up.
The femur had to go first—useless for what he needed. He'd been gambling that the Echoform would take one of the bone blades instead. It did.
Then came the harder part.
He had to make himself look too weak to matter. Too broken to be a threat. Enough that the Echoform wouldn't bother flickering away from his grip.
Which meant taking hits. A lot of them. And betting that the monster wouldn't just toss the blade aside halfway through.
That was the risk.
That was the gamble.
And somehow, it worked.
Because at the end, Elias wasn't even a threat anymore in its eyes. Just something dying on its feet.
So it didn't resist.
Didn't think.
Didn't care.
That was its mistake.
Even now, Elias could hardly believe it had worked at all. He'd been so exhausted, so close to nothing, that it was almost ridiculous he managed to force that blade into the Echoform's chest in the first place.
Even if he hadn't been the one holding the bone blade, it didn't really matter anymore.
Elias stared down at the Echoform as it lay on the ground, writhing awkwardly in a pool of green blood.
A grin tugged at his face, teeth stained red. The sight of it like this—broken, helpless—sent a strange kind of satisfaction through him. So strong, in fact, that for a moment he didn't even care if he died right there.
But not yet.
At the very least, he needed to make sure the bastard stayed dead.
He started dragging himself forward.
His body scraped against the ground as he crawled, leaving a thin trail of blood behind him. Every movement felt like friction against broken bone, but he didn't stop.
When he reached it, Elias forced his shaking hands toward its waist and grabbed one of the bone blades.
The Echoform noticed.
It started to struggle, weak, panicked now—too late.
Elias pulled himself closer, right up to its face.
"Bet you never saw this coming, did you, bitch," he muttered.
Then he drove the blade into its left eye.
The Echoform jerked violently, letting out a sharp, broken cry that threw Elias off balance and sent him face-first into the ground.
He didn't stay down.
He pushed himself back up, crawling again, refusing to stop even as his body screamed at him.
Another strike—this time into the other eye.
The creature thrashed harder.
Again.
And again.
Green blood splattered across his face, warm and thick like rain he couldn't avoid.
"I promised I'd rip your eyes out," Elias rasped, voice low and shaking, "this works just fine."
Another plunge.
"I don't care about the billions you've killed… I really don't."
Another.
"But touching my family—"
His grip tightened.
"That's where your cursed race crossed the line."
He drove the blade down again.
Hard.
"And that line," he growled, "only gets paid back one way."
He plunged faster, the Echoform's face breaking down into a mess of torn flesh.
"Why aren't you dying yet, bastard… die… die… die…"
The Echoform's warped voice echoed through the canyon, broken and fading, cut apart between each strike. The only reply it got was the steady rhythm of blade meeting flesh.
Slowly, even that voice began to collapse into jagged, choking breaths.
And then—nothing but the sound of slicing.
For a while, that was all the canyon held.
[🎵🎵Silent Thread, you have slain the Fractured Howler, Bertholt, the Assemblage of Screaming Bones.]
[🎵🎵 Performance: Legendary.]
[🎵🎵 New Title Unlocked: Bone Slayer.]
[🎵🎵 Assessing Rewards…]
Another notification followed almost immediately.
[You have slain an Echoform.
30 Mission Points awarded.]
[Requirements met]
[System Inventory opened]
[System Store Unlocked]
[Open to view]
"Huh."
Elias lifted his head slightly from the ruined body at the mention of a title and the system messages, eyes widening in disbelief.
But he barely got the chance to process it.
The corpse in front of him vanished.
In its place, a single blue shard hovered—glittering like emerald under moonlight.
Before he could react, it shot forward and embedded itself into his chest with a strange, almost gentle force.
Elias let out a quiet sound—half breath, half something like pleasure.
And then it hit him.
The blood loss. The exhaustion. Everything he'd been holding back finally catching up at once.
His eyelids grew heavy as the system voice continued faintly in the background, still listing rewards he could no longer focus on.
And just like that, Elias collapsed into darkness.