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Chapter 82: Through What Shouldn’t Open
Malik pressed himself against the stone, chest heaving as the echoes drifted closer in trembling, glitching motions.A dozen fractured silhouettes hovered inches away, their hands flickering between shapes, wanting, reaching, remembering. He whispered, “Please… please don’t…”The guardian-shadow raised its jagged head. “THEY SMELL YOUR RETURN. THEY WANT WHAT YOU WERE GIVEN.”Malik swallowed hard. “What, my life?”“YOUR COMPLETION.”The echoes surged as one, but stopped. Every shape froze mid-lunge, limbs suspended in the air, like someone had hit pause on a nightmare.Malik blinked. Then he felt it. A pulse, sharp, clean, familiar, cut through the cavern. His pulse. Rina. He looked up, and the boundary tore open like a wound of black light.Rina stepped through. Her boots hit the stone. Her breath fogged. Her eyes scanned the darkness, determined, terrified, unbroken.The echoes recoiled from her presence, retreating in jittering, stuttering waves. Some whispered in broken chords:“S…h
Chapter 81: The Layer That Should Not Be
The shadow lunged. Malik dove sideways, slamming shoulder-first into jagged stone. A shock of pain ripped through him, but he forced himself upright.The thing wasn’t solid, but it wasn’t smoke either. It moved like memory, like a sound made visible, flickering and bending as if gravity meant nothing.“RETURNED ONE…”Its voice scraped like something dragged across metal. “…YOU TRESPASS WHERE THE SPINE CANNOT FOLLOW.”Malik’s pulse hammered. “Good,” he rasped. “Means it can’t drag me back.”The shadow twisted, its center brightening with a sickly violet glow. “THIS PLACE HUNTS ALL WHO ENTER.”Malik swallowed hard. “And what does it hunt with?”The shadow smiled. He didn’t know how, it didn’t have a face, but he felt the smile slide across his skin like a cold finger. “WITH WHAT IT HAS ECHOED.”The darkness behind it rippled, and Malik saw dozens of warped shapes flickering at the edge of the cavern, like human silhouettes bent at impossible angles.Echoes. Fragments of others the Spine
Chapter 80: The Door That Shouldn’t Exist
The white-gold doorway flickered like a candle in a storm, barely holding shape, barely real. But Malik stepped toward it anyway.The moment his foot crossed the threshold of light, the cocoon screamed. Not with sound. With pressure, crushing, furious, panicking.The walls shook, pulsing red-gold in frantic waves. Resonance wrapped around Malik’s arms like hands grabbing him, pulling him back. “No” he gasped, fighting the drag.“I’m not… staying…”The First Note’s figure towered behind him. “THE PATH IS NOT MEANT FOR ESCAPE.”Malik gritted his teeth, muscles trembling as the cocoon tried to anchor his feet to the floor. “Then consider me the exception.”The doorway crackled, dimmed, fought to stay open. Malik pushed forward. And the cocoon tore itself apart.A shockwave of white-gold resonance detonated outward, the walls rippling, splitting, shuddering as if every layer of the Spine felt the betrayal.The floor heaved under Rina’s boots. Caleb slammed into the wall. “WHAT was that?!”
Chapter 79: Breaking Point
The Spine pulsed again, a deep, territorial thrum rolling through the stone and into Rina’s bones.Maya backed away from the glowing veins crawling across the wall. “This isn’t just resonance… it’s claiming him.”Caleb swallowed hard. “Rina, whatever the Spine is doing, it’s integrating Malik into its structure. Like he’s… part of it.”Viktor stepped forward. “We can’t stay here. We need distance. We need a plan.”But Rina didn’t hear them. Not really. All she heard was Malik, the silence where his voice should be,the absence that felt like a wound in her chest.Her hands curled into fists. “I’m not letting it keep him.”Caleb blinked. “Rina”“No.”Her voice was sharp, cold, certain. “I am done running. I’m done reacting. I’m done letting this place decide what I lose.”The Spine pulsed again, stronger, as if daring her to try. Rina stepped toward the glowing wall, jaw tight. “Malik is mine to fight for. And I’m going in after him.”Maya grabbed her arm. “Rina, you can’t break into t
Chapter 78: Taken Back
The tunnel spat Rina’s team out into a hollowed chamber, small, dark, barely holding together.A half-functioning support arch flickered with unstable red light, the only thing keeping the ceiling from falling in on them.Caleb collapsed against the wall, breath tearing out of him. “We… we made it. Temporarily.”Maya dropped to her knees, hands shaking. “The Spine sealed everything behind us. We’re cut off. Completely.”Viktor leaned forward, hands braced on his thighs. “We need to regroup. Think. Plan.”Rina didn’t sit. She stood in the middle of the chamber, fists clenched, breathing like she still had dust in her lungs.Her eyes kept drifting back toward the collapsed tunnel, toward where Malik had disappeared. “He’s alive,” she said quietly.Caleb nodded. “Yeah. But we don’t know for how long.”Rina looked at him sharply. “No. He’s alive,” she repeated, this time like a vow.“And I will get him back.”The chamber lights dimmed again, the Spine groaning deeper in the stone. Maya sw
Chapter 77: Inside the Cocoon
The chamber didn’t simply seal around Malik, it exploded outward, red-gold shockwaves tearing through every seam of the Spine.Caleb threw an arm over his face as a blast of resonance sent debris flying. “We have to get OUT -now, this whole place is collapsing!”Viktor grabbed Maya’s wrist and dragged her toward the only intact corridor. “MOVE—before the next pulse hits!”But Rina didn’t move. She was still at the base of the rising stone shell, slamming her fists against it, breath coming in frantic, broken bursts. “OPEN—OPEN—GIVE HIM BACK”Her voice cracked until it was barely sound.The Spine answered with another violent pulse, knocking her backward. Caleb caught her before she hit the ground. “Rina—we don’t have time!”She struggled against him, eyes wild. “I’m not leaving him! He’s in there ALONE”A third pulse hit, the strongest yet, a concussion of resonance that shook the entire chamber like the heart of a beast slamming against bone. The ceiling cracked. Dust rained.The exi
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