Echoes Of Empire Novels & Stories

The student body went into applause. “Any question?” Chloe asked “What was behind the name Empire?” Cami was the person to ask the question. Yes Cami was still in school, she was still a grade away from graduating high school. “That is a great question. Empire was the name of my late Godmother; I owe her a lot so I named everything I own after her.” Chloe replied with a smile

Me and Delano… What on earth? Who on earth took this picture? I should have known. Men from the empire were everywhere watching us, and I took the risk to kiss him. It was the only thing I could think of at that moment, but now…it felt stupid. I sighed, swiping the photo off my screen and going into my contact list. A. I pressed the number. It rang. Once. Twice. “Hello?” “Where are you?” “Huh…” “I know you are the country. Don’t even pretend like you don’t know what I’m talking about.”

I opened my eyes to the dark. “Then let him come.” Far from Hollow Base, beneath the ruins of the first lab, Subject One stood in silence. Behind him, rows of dark figures rose from long-sealed chambers. They are not clones and not soldiers either. They are Echoes, early test subjects that were rejected and forgotten. Now waking. He turned toward them, eyes glowing violet. “She’s ready,” he said. “And so are we.” And the mountain shook.

Bash disappears into another door on the other side of the room and returns with a glass of water, the condensation already blooming in the glass. The seagulls scream again, at that time, I can hear the waves crashing on the rocks somewhere far away. As I sip the water, it's fresh and clean, and somehow the most refreshing glass of water I've ever had, I take in my surroundings. We are in a large room with ruined plaster walls that look like they were painted in a shade of emerald galactic colonies. I notice that there are three rectangular windows to my right with open wooden slatted shutters, this place has no screens on the windows, seeing where the light enters.

No one looked twice. No one asked questions. This was how empires kept breathing—on silence, on fear, and on corpses.

Aunty Dora asked, concern evident in her voice. I took a deep breath, preparing to explain what we'd just committed ourselves to, the war we were about to wage against an enemy that spanned continents and possessed knowledge that rivaled cosmic forces. "The Consilience," I said simply. The Balance's presence intensified around us, the harmonics of their voice taking on a weight that made reality itself seem to bend. The golden light that formed the surface beneath our feet pulsed with each syllable, creating ripples that spread outward into infinity.

A sound of distress. Anya met them at the edge of the village, her face etched with a new worry. “You’re back,” she said, her relief palpable. “We have a problem. It’s the Echo Valley.” Liora’s heart sank slightly. The Echo Valley was a place of breathtaking beauty, a deep basin where sound was known to ripple and multiply, creating a natural symphony. It was a place of celebration, where communities gathered to share news and music. “What’s happened?”

It wasn’t physical—it was musical. The melody of the world stuttered, as if two tones had struck at once and refused to resolve. And then she heard it—a hum beneath the harmony, low and wrong. An Echo stepped from the shadows of the valley. Unlike the others, its body was jagged, fragmented, edges flickering like broken glass. Its voice rasped through the air, discordant and sharp. > You let us live, it said, but you forgot what silence means. The ground trembled. Rivers rippled backward for a heartbeat.

Inside rested dozens of old albums. The earliest dated back nearly seventy years. Seraphina pulled on a pair of gloves. Then began searching. Hours passed. Photographs blurred together. Business meetings. Family vacations. Award ceremonies. Birthdays. Funerals. The history of an empire. Most proved useless. Then Seraphina froze. "Damian." His head lifted immediately. "What?" She held up a photograph. His expression changed the moment he saw it. The image looked old. Approximately fifteen years old. Taken at some formal gathering.

"He already apologized to you. Why do you have to keep clinging to it?" She took a deep breath, suppressed her anger, and offered a solution. "Did you not want to study abroad? Go overseas for a few years. By the time you return, no one will remember any of this. If you still want to be a host, or do anything else, you can." Everything sounded so easy when it came from her mouth. She looked at me and sighed, then bent down, picked up the torn paper from the floor, and left. When loving words rot, they become ghost stories.