The chamber no longer pulsed—it writhed.The shard’s light fractured across the stone like a score torn down the middle, its rhythm unraveling into jagged intervals. Chains lashed without pattern, some limp, others striking with feral spasms, their timing clashing against one another like musicians who had lost their conductor.Sophia’s sword shook with every impact, each clash ringing in her arms like discordant notes struck too hard on a warped instrument. Her ears ached. The noise wasn’t just sound anymore—it was pressure, pushing into her bones, making her thoughts stumble.Victor pressed his fists against a chain, shoving it backward with a roar. The sound reverberated around him, an ugly harmony of steel, voice, and stone. His face was pale, lips cracked, but his eyes burned with defiance. “It’s… tearing itself apart.”Abby clung to the wall for balance, one hand pressed against her temple. Her shards trembled in the air around her, each vibrating with the shard’s dissonant hum.

The silence did not last. It bent. The chamber’s air thickened, vibrating in slow, heavy pulses as the being straightened to its full, impossible height. It had no clear edges; every line of its body rippled, bending in and out of sight like waves. At its core, the shard halves continued their furious orbit, glowing hotter, faster, each flash a strobe that burned the eyes. Then the first sound came. A single note—low, resonant, drawn from no throat and no mouth. It poured from the being, vibrating through stone and flesh alike. It was not just heard but endured. Sophia’s teeth rattled, her joints ached, and her sword hummed until her hands went numb. She forced herself to move. “Strike it now!” Victor lunged, fists clenched, driving himself against the weight of the resonance. He slammed his shoulder into one of the being’s limbs. The impact burst with a metallic screech that shot up his spine. He grunted, forced to one knee, but his strike bent the limb backward, snapping light

The chamber could not hold them both. The being’s resonance surged, a tidal wave of dissonance that bent the walls outward until cracks bled light instead of dust. The survivors’ song—jagged, imperfect, human—rose to meet it. Two currents of sound collided in the heart of the chamber, each trying to devour the other. The clash was annihilation. Stone did not crumble; it rippled like liquid. Chains did not snap; they vibrated until their links unraveled into threads of molten metal. The air turned solid, dense enough to choke, then shattered into motes of light, only to reform in jagged shards that cut wherever they fell. Sophia screamed until her throat tore raw. Blood streaked down her chin, but she refused silence. Her voice was thin, fragile, yet every note was hers alone. She staggered forward, arms spread, daring the resonance to strike her down. Victor bellowed beside her, his roar ragged, veins bulging at his temples as he forced sound from lungs that wanted to collapse. H

The void beckoned like a wound in the world. Its edges pulsed faintly, light flickering in uneven arcs, a heartbeat counting down before the next surge. Sophia gritted her teeth, forcing herself forward. Each step across the fractured stone felt like walking on glass, though the shards did not cut—yet. Victor followed close, dragging Elroy upright. Abby’s shards floated erratically around her, trembling, faintly glowing as if they were uncertain whether to follow or flee. Indhabhire trailed behind, murmuring fragmented syllables that seemed to coalesce into commands only the dead could hear. “Stay close,” Sophia whispered, though the sound dissolved almost immediately in the lingering hum of the void. “We hit it together.” Victor grunted. “I… I hope we know what ‘together’ even means anymore.” The edge of the void stretched before them. Darkness warped, folding like smoke in slow motion, but within it, glimmers of fractured light betrayed movement. The being was not gone. Its body

The void was gone, but its memory lingered in every corner of the shattered chamber. Dust hung thick in the air, catching the faint light of the shard halves’ remnants. Stone slabs jutted at impossible angles, frozen mid-collapse, casting long shadows that twisted like fingers. Silence pressed against them, heavy and watchful. Sophia sat on the edge of a fractured slab, her chest heaving, palms pressed against knees trembling with exhaustion. Her eyes kept darting toward the void’s center, imagining the being still lurking in the shadows of what they could not see. Victor leaned back against another slab, one hand pressed to his bloodied face. His breaths came in ragged bursts, each one shuddering through his torso. “We stopped it… for now,” he said, voice hoarse. “But I don’t know if ‘for now’ is good enough.” Abby sat cross-legged, shards circling weakly around her. Their glow was faint, trembling with uncertainty. She pressed her fingers to her temples. “I can still feel it,” sh