The chamber lay in ruins, a fractured testament to what had passed. Slabs of stone jutted at impossible angles, suspended mid-collapse. Dust floated in the air like drifting ash, catching the dim glow of the inert shard halves. Silence pressed down—not oppressive, not suffocating—but expectant, as though the world itself waited. Sophia sat on a jagged slab, elbows resting on her knees, eyes scanning the faint outlines of the shard halves. Though they hovered inert, she felt the faint hum beneath her skin—a whisper of energy that refused to die. She pushed herself upright, forcing breath deep into her lungs. “We survived. That much is true. But nothing here… nothing is truly finished.” Victor leaned against the fractured wall, face pale, hands bloodied. “I swear, I don’t want to see another pulse, another hum, or whatever that thing calls music for at least a decade.” He cracked a half-smile, though his voice betrayed the tension threading through his bones. “But I can feel it too… s

The chamber’s fractured silence was broken by a subtle pulse, faint but insistent. The survivors tensed, moving as one, eyes scanning for any sign of the lingering threads.Abby’s shards rose, circling her in tight spirals. “They’re moving… faster. The threads aren’t just lingering—they’re learning.”Victor gritted his teeth, fists raised. “Then we force them to learn the hard way.”Sophia nodded, taking point. “Stay sharp. They’ll strike where we least expect it.”The first thread shimmered along a jagged wall, almost invisible until it coalesced into a flickering limb of light and shadow. It struck at Abby’s shards, scattering them like glass in a storm. The air hummed, pressing against their bones.Elroy slammed his hammer into the floor, sending shockwaves that disrupted the thread. It recoiled but then split, forming two smaller fragments, each pulsing independently, moving with coordinated chaos.Indhabhire whispered incantations, guiding the dead in a lattice of containment. Ye

The air thrummed with tension. Every surface in the corridor vibrated with pulsing resonance as the survivors approached the Loom’s Core. The threads converged into a dense, writhing mass of light, shadow, and sound, limbs flickering in jagged arcs, faces half-formed and hollow, their resonance pressing against the walls—and their minds.Sophia raised her hands, stepping forward into the corridor’s center. “This is it. No half-measures. We force the song to collapse on its own rhythm. Everyone—focus!”Abby’s shards spun wildly, circling her as she extended both hands, feeding pulses of chaotic energy into the forming being. The shards collided with the threads, cutting arcs of fractured resonance that left faint trails of sparks in the air.Victor slammed his fists into the Core’s protruding limbs, sending vibrations rippling through the mass. “Take every strike! Don’t let it stabilize!”Elroy’s hammer crashed into the floor repeatedly, arcs of force radiating outward. The lattice of

he Spire’s mouth opened onto a world that did not know how to breathe.For days—though time felt bent, unmoored—the tower had shuddered with resonance, its pulse threading into every stone, every root, every drop of water. Now, as Sophia led them into the gray light of dawn, the absence was suffocating. The ground was too still. The wind, when it moved at all, carried no whisper of leaves or insects. Even the sky hung mute, the clouds suspended like ash that had forgotten how to fall.Victor halted at the threshold, blinking hard as though he mistrusted the horizon itself. The plains below stretched wide, but their green had dulled, their rivers lay motionless, and the birds that should have been stirring with the morning were nowhere. He clenched his fists, shoulders tightening.“Feels wrong,” he muttered. “Like we stepped into a painting. Pretty enough from far, but dead when you touch it.”Abby descended a step behind him, her shards dim, orbiting loosely as though half-asleep. She

The fire’s low crackle was the last sound they heard before the world itself began to hum. Night had fallen, thick and velvet-black, but the shadows seemed alive, quivering as though the land had taken breath. The survivors had walked far from the Spire, yet the silence had followed, stretching across the plains and threading into the soil beneath their feet. Sophia stood at the edge of the valley, her sword held loosely but with unyielding intent. The ground before them was uneven, littered with the remnants of stone and dried riverbeds that glinted in pale moonlight. The air was heavy, pressing against their lungs, carrying a vibration that made every heartbeat seem magnified. Victor knelt beside a cracked stone, pressing a hand to the earth. His face was pale in the dim light, muscles tense. “It’s… alive,” he muttered. “Not like flesh, not like bone—but… breathing. Feeling.” Abby’s shards flared softly, circling around her like protective lanterns. “It’s learning,” she said, her