The Shattered Archive
The *Last Bastion* limped through a starless void, its hull groaning like a wounded beast. Lira lay unconscious in the med-bay, her shriveled arm encased in a stasis field glowing faintly with Syra's neural energy. The rune **Θ** etched into the floor pulsed rhythmically, as though breathing. Ignar paced nearby, his magma skin flickering erratically.
"She's stabilizing," Syra said, her voice hollow. Her neural tendrils were still plugged into the ship's systems, sifting through corrupted data streams. "But whatever she did… it rewired her biology. The dark matter isn't just part of her arm anymore. It's in her *blood*."
Ignar glared at the rune. "And that thing?"
"A message. Or a map. The First Ones used **Θ** to mark points of convergence—places where realities overlap." Syra's eyes narrowed. "There's one nearby. A place called the **Shattered Archive**. If the Maw is using Aeloria's energy to evolve, we need to find the next shard before it does."
Lira's eyelids fluttered. "...Tastes like burning," she slurred.
---
The Archive wasn't a planet or a station. It was a **wound**—a jagged tear in reality, its edges frayed with glowing filaments of dying physics. Inside, Syra glimpsed towering shelves of crystalline data-stacks stretching into infinity, their contents flickering with holographic records of dead civilizations. But the Archive was collapsing. Sections of it disintegrated into fractal dust, consumed by the same violet-black energy that had birthed the Huskers.
Ignar anchored the Bastion to a stable platform. "Stay sharp. This place is a tomb."
Lira staggered to her feet, her good arm gripping a rusted support beam. The ashen remains of her dark matter limb had regrown into something thinner, sharper—a blade of obsidian threaded with starlight. "It's *singing*," she muttered. "The Archive. It's screaming for help."
Syra's tendrils bristled. "Because we're not alone."
Above them, the vaulted ceiling rippled. **Maw-Scribes** descended—hybrid creatures with skeletal bodies and ink-black wings, their faces featureless except for jagged mouths filled with rotating teeth. Each carried a pulsating shard of Aeloria's light in their clawed hands.
"Targets acquired," Ignar growled.
---
The Scribes attacked in a blur, their movements precise, surgical. They didn't fight to kill—they fought to *steal*. One latched onto Syra, its teeth sinking into her shoulder as it tried to rip her neural tendrils free. She screamed, flooding its mind with a telepathic burst of white noise. The creature exploded into ink, but not before syphoning a fragment of her memories.
*Lyra's last stand in the Time Labyrinth. Aeloria's blade piercing the Forge. The Maw's laugh echoing through the void.*
"They're data-miners!" Syra shouted. "Don't let them touch you!"
Lira danced through the fray, her new blade slicing Scribes apart. Each kill released a burst of Aeloria's energy, which her arm absorbed hungrily. "They're using her shards as batteries! Greedy little roaches—"
A Scribe slammed into her back, its teeth closing around her throat. Before it could bite, Ignar incinerated it with a magma-coated fist. "Focus, Lira!"
The team fought toward the heart of the Archive, where the central data-stack throbbed with a corrupted light. Inside its core floated another shard—larger than the last, its glow dimmed by tendrils of Maw-energy.
---
As Syra reached for the shard, the ground beneath them liquefied. The Bastion's platform collapsed, plunging them into a sea of liquid memory. Viscous, silver fluid flooded Syra's lungs, dragging her into a vision:
*She stood in a pristine chamber, facing a being of light and shadow—the **Archivist**, last guardian of the Shattered Archive. Its voice was static and sorrow.*
**"The Maw has infiltrated my systems. It seeks the First Ones' greatest secret: the Nexus Codex, a blueprint for rewriting reality. Your Aeloria is the key to activating it."**
Syra choked, clawing at the vision. "Where… is it?"
**"Buried. Protected. But the Codex is not a weapon—it is a *trap*. The First Ones designed it to lure entropy into a cage of its own making. The Maw knows this. It wants to corrupt the Codex… and turn it into a black hole that devours all existence."**
The vision shattered. Syra gasped, hauled onto a floating debris slab by Ignar. Lira clung nearby, her blade speared through a Scribe's chest.
"The shard!" Syra coughed. "We need to purify it—*now*!"
---
The corrupted shard hovered above them, orbited by Scribes. Ignar launched a magma plume, scattering the creatures, while Syra telekinetically yanked the shard toward them. But the Maw's influence was too strong; violet tendrils lashed out, binding Syra's mind.
"It's… too deep…" she strained. "Can't… sever the link!"
Lira leapt, her blade piercing the shard. Dark matter and starlight erupted, engulfing her. "*Hungry*," she whispered—and then her body *changed*.
Her form dissolved into a vortex of opposing energies: one side devouring the Maw's corruption, the other radiating Aeloria's purifying light. The Scribes screeched, disintegrating as the vortex expanded.
"LIRA!" Ignar roared.
She couldn't hear him. The vortex collapsed inward, and Lira reappeared—kneeling, her blade shattered, the shard now clean and clutched in her hand. Her eyes were voids.
"I saw her," Lira murmured. "Aeloria. She's… *fractured*. Trapped in the Codex. The Maw's feeding on her to break the seal."
---
The purified shard floated into place beside the first, their combined light revealing a holographic map. A single coordinate pulsed—a dead galaxy known as **Kurth's Maw**, its center marked by the same **Θ** rune.
"That's where the Codex is buried," Syra said. "And where the Maw's taking Aeloria."
Ignar's fists smoldered. "Then we drag her out."
Lira stood, her void-eyes fixed on the coordinate. "We're not ready. The Codex isn't just a prison—it's sentient. And it's *terrified*."
The Bastion shuddered as the Archive's collapse accelerated. Behind them, the Maw's puppet-Aeloria materialized, her skeletal face contorted in mock sympathy.
**"You begin to understand,"** it hissed. **"The Codex will not choose you. It will choose survival… and survival requires sacrifice."**
Lira's blade regrew, darker than before. "You talk too much."
The puppet laughed, dissolving into ink. **"Come to Kurth's Maw. Let us end this dance."**
---
As the Bastion fled the dying Archive, Syra studied the shards. Their light flickered in unison, a Morse code of desperation.
Ignar powered up the engines. "Next stop: hell's belly."
Lira stared at her reflection in the viewport. Where her eyes should have been, twin vortices swirled. "She's not the only one fracturing. The Maw's got claws in me too. Next time I unfold… I might not fold back."
Syra placed a hand on Lira's shoulder. "Then we make sure it's worth it."
Outside, the void rippled. Somewhere, the storm was growing louder.
---