Mark lived in a world of ninety-degree angles and white marble. His apartment on the 82nd floor of the Obsidian Tower was a sanctuary of control, where every piece of furniture was placed with mathematical precision.

Then came the Echo.

It started as a rhythmic thumping in the walls, like a heartbeat that didn't belong to him. Soon, the Echo began to manifest as a shimmering, translucent figure that stood in the corner of his bedroom. It didn't speak; it mimicked. When Mark brushed his teeth, the Echo brushed its teeth. When Mark signed a million-dollar merger, the Echo signed a phantom contract.

But the mimicry was slightly off. The Echo’s movements were slower, heavier, as if it were dragging a weight that Mark couldn't see. It was a mirror of Mark’s own life, but stripped of the glamour, revealing the exhaustion and the quiet desperation beneath.

Mark viewed the entity as a flaw in his environment, a smudge on his perfect glass life. He contacted The Consultant, a man whose voice was as sterile as a surgical theater.

"The Echo is a residual psychic imprint," The Consultant explained via a holographic call. "It is a symptom of spiritual clutter. I can provide a Containment Headpiece. It will isolate the frequency of the imprint and allow us to extract it from your living space."

Mark didn't ask why the Echo was there. He only wanted it gone.

The extraction took place on a Tuesday. The Consultant placed the silver, mesh-like headpiece over the Echo’s flickering form. There was no struggle, no scream. The Echo simply collapsed into the device, its form shrinking until it was nothing more than a dim spark of light within the mesh.

"Problem solved," The Consultant said, packing his equipment. "Your environment is now spiritually sterile."

Mark felt a surge of relief. He returned to his perfect, silent apartment. But as he sat at his desk, he noticed a small, handwritten note on the marble floor—a note that hadn't been there before.

*The foundation is cracking, Mark. Look down.*

He looked at the floor, then at the ceiling. He realized that the Echo hadn't been haunting him; it had been trying to warn him. The "mimicry" was a desperate attempt to show him the collapse that was already happening in the depths of the building.

As the first tremor shook the Obsidian Tower, Mark looked at the empty corner where the Echo had stood. He had finally achieved perfect control, and now, he would be buried in it.

*** Objective Tensor Code: [M6:9, N2:0.7, K1:0.5, TI:35.0, Theta:180] OTMES_v2: {Core: (M6, N2, K1), Vector: [9, 0.7, 0.5], Status: T4-Regret}