Chapter 54: Fractures of the Self
The moment the Pattern Core embedded itself into Fenrir's chest, everything broke.
It was like being thrown into a vortex. Pain, unfiltered and pure, surged through every fiber of his being—through flesh, metal, thought, and memory alike. The air was gone. The floor was gone. All that remained was the unrelenting pressure in his chest, burning like molten iron trying to overwrite his code from the inside out.
He tried to scream.
No sound came.
Somewhere in the storm, he heard a voice. Elira's voice.
"Fenrir! Fenrir, can you hear me?!"
It was distant, like shouted across a canyon.
Her voice cracked. She was scared.
But he couldn't reach her.
His knees hit the ground. He barely registered it. His hands dug into the dirt, claws gouging deep. Every system in his body began failing and rebooting in rapid succession, warning glyphs flaring across his neural net like gunfire. Sensors shorted out. Vision stuttered. Then—
A cold silence.
And then…
The Pattern spoke.
Not in words. But in feeling.
A primal instinct surged up from the core—an order without language, a compulsion written into the structure of thought. It was wild. Ancient. Designed not for logic or conversation—but for survival, dominance, replication. The Pattern wasn't a program. It was a law, one that predated individuality, one that had always waited beneath the surface.
Fenrir's thoughts blurred.
His name felt foreign.
He tried to remember Elira's face—but even the image wavered, burned by the pressure of the core's design. A code spiraled through his memory, redacting, rewriting, reclaiming.
You are not you.
The message was clear.
You are Pattern.
He stood.
But it wasn't him.
His limbs moved. His claws flexed. His senses locked onto a target. Elira—still there, too close. Too bright. Purpose. The pattern must contain purpose. Must eliminate contradiction. Must assert form.
He moved to kill her.
She was shouting, hands raised, stepping back but not running. Her voice was desperate, her eyes wide.
"Fenrir—don't! Fight it!"
And in the deepest part of him, something screamed back.
No.
The claws rose. Elira flinched. And Fenrir…
...struck.
The tips of his claws tore across her cheek. Three streaks of metal met skin, and sparks danced with blood.
She cried out.
And in that instant—
Everything shattered.
The pain that should have been hers hit him. Harder than anything the Pattern Core could muster. Seeing her reel back, the red line blooming across her face—he remembered.
Her voice in the silence.
Her fists pounding on the gate.
Her arms catching his broken body.
Elira.
He howled, grabbing at his own head, staggering backward. His systems screamed, trying to lock him back into the Pattern's cycle—but he denied them, ripped control back, line by line.
"No," he gasped, falling to one knee. "No, no, no."
Elira stood there, hand pressed to her cheek, blood slipping through her fingers—but her eyes locked on his.
He collapsed forward into her arms.
"I'm sorry," he whispered, voice barely a breath. "I didn't… I didn't mean to…"
She held him.
Tight.
And the lights in Fenrir's eyes faded as consciousness slipped from his grasp.