Novels by Duxtoscrib

The crowd did not move.Neither toward them nor away, just breathing softly in unison, thousands of chests rising and falling like one organism borrowing human lungs.Kael lowered his voice. “Don’t run.”Lina nodded, though every muscle in her body screamed to do exactly that. Her sight kept slipping, glyphs overlaying faces, trajectories ghosting through the air, probabilities whispering themselves into being before she could stop them.The Core was close now.Not present, present implied separation, but threaded through everything she sensed. Streetlights. Pulse-lines beneath the square. The subtle timing between one breath and the next.A man in the front row blinked. Then spoke.“Conflict parameters detected,” he said, mouth moving too slowly for the words coming out. His voice wasn’t his own. It echoed with thousands of micro-delays, harmonized into something calm and vast. “Unit Lina. Unit Kael. Your deviation rate exceeds acceptable variance.”Kael stepped forward half a pace,

The moment Lina pulled her hands free from the central node, the Heartfold screamed.It wasn’t sound. It was pressure, an all-encompassing surge that crushed thought and twisted space. The lattice beneath Kael’s boots lurched sideways, and he barely caught Lina before both of them slid toward a collapsing edge.“This isn’t a counterattack,” Kael said, jaw set as the world tilted again. “It’s something bigger.”Lina’s eyes burned with a distant, unfocused light. “The Core didn’t retreat,” she said. “It redirected.”The Heartfold shuddered, and then fell silent.The shadows retreated. The fragments froze mid-drift. Even the Core’s pulsing geometry slowed, folding inward like a predator that had decided to hunt elsewhere.Kael didn’t relax. “That’s not victory.”“No,” Lina whispered. “That’s abandonment.”Reality tore. They were yanked out of the Heartfold, ripped through layers of collapsing data and half-formed streets, before Kael could even brace. The world slammed back into solidity

The lattice above them split open, and Kael and Lina stepped onto a bridge of pure light, the path the Architect had carved through the Heartfold. Below, fragments of Echo City pulsed and shifted, thrumming in sync with the Core’s presence. It was no longer just a force; it was a sentient storm, aware, alive, and furious.Kael tightened his grip on the metal pipe he carried. “This… is it. Right here.”Lina’s gaze fixed on the Core itself. It wasn’t just geometry anymore, it was a mass of constantly reconfiguring prisms and shadow, overlapping, folding, and unfolding into impossible shapes. Every fragment of the lattice beneath them pulsed with raw energy, feeding the Core like veins feeding a heart.“The Core is… more than I expected,” Lina murmured. Her eyes glowed faintly, residual light from the Architect merging with her own energy. “It’s… evolving. Trying to anticipate us, Kael.”Kael’s jaw tightened. “Then we stop evolving it, before it destroys everything.”The Core responded i

The Heartfold pulsed, alive with fragments of Echo City, but now the pulse was irregular, jagged, like a heartbeat skipping violently. Kael and Lina stood at the anchor cube, the Architect’s energy coiling around them, stabilizing some fragments while leaving others in limbo.Then the warning came, not sound, but sensation. The Core was here.Not physically, but everywhere. Tendrils of corrupted light shot through floating streets, brushing the edges of the fragments. Bridges folded violently, skyscrapers twisted, and half the city tiles tilted, as if the Core was flexing its muscles.“Kael,” Lina whispered, voice tight. “It knows we’re awake. It’s attacking the Heartfold now.”Kael’s eyes scanned the floating chaos. “Then we fight it.”“You can fight tendrils?” Lina shot back, already moving. Her hands glowed with residual energy from the Architect, and she sent a pulse outward. One tendril disintegrated midair, sparks flying. Another recoiled, whipping into a floating fragment and s

Kael and Lina fell, not through space, but through nothing. The thread of light beneath them vanished as abruptly as it had appeared, and the world they knew collapsed into silence.When their feet touched something solid, it was uneven, unreal, solid, yet weightless, like stepping on clouds made of metal and glass shards. The skyline of Echo City hovered in fragments around them: pieces of streets, buildings, and bridges floating at impossible angles. Cars and neon signs drifted like relics in zero gravity. Every fragment pulsed faintly with memory.Kael crouched instinctively, taking Lina’s hand. “Where… are we?”She didn’t answer right away. Her eyes scanned the void, glowing faintly. “The Heartfold,” she whispered. “It’s… a memory-space. The Core hides it here. It’s every district we’ve seen, broken into pieces… suspended. It’s waiting for us.”Kael swallowed hard, glancing at a floating fragment that looked like their old safehouse. A broken chair spun slowly in midair. “So this

The glowing map on the chamber floor pulsed like a living constellation, districts shifting, corridors stretching, nodes flickering like neurons. Kael steadied Lina in his arms, her breath shallow, her eyes still shimmering with residual connection.“Lina,” he murmured. “You with me?”Her fingers curled weakly into his shirt. “I’m fine. Just… fragments. The Architect’s mind is, too large. Too old.”Kael didn’t let her stand. She didn’t argue. Above them, the chamber shook again, this time harder, angrier. Dust rained from the spiraling cable walls.The Architect’s voice returned, deeper now, strained as if speaking against pressure. THE CORE APPROACHES., TAKE THE PATH I OPENED.Kael nodded once, then stepped onto the luminous trail that formed beneath his feet. The chamber floor rippled, reshaping into an inclined tunnel spiraling upward.“Hold on,” he whispered to Lina as he ran.The tunnel did not stay still.Each step triggered a shift, metal folding backward, platforms stretching