The Maw’s Last Laugh
The singularity forged from the First Ones' relic hung in the *Last Bastion's* cargo hold, a seething orb of compressed rage and dead stars. Aeloria stood before it, her reforged body flickering between corporeal and cosmic. Syra monitored the energy spikes, her neural tendrils frayed from days of nonstop calculations.
"It's destabilizing," she warned. "The singularity needs a catalyst to detonate inside the Maw's core. Something… *alive*."
Ignar slammed his fist into the bulkhead, magma splattering. "We're not sacrificing anyone else."
Lira snorted. She sat cross-legged on the floor, her corrupted arm bound in stasis chains that hissed and sparked. The dark matter had spread to her collarbone, veins of void branching beneath her skin. "Relax, lava-brain. I'll do it. Already halfway to monster anyway."
Aeloria turned, her Codex-forged eyes narrowing. "No. The Maw wants *me*. It's why it let us take the singularity—it's a trap. I walk in, it consumes me, and the cycle continues."
Syra's tendrils stiffened. "Then we don't play its game. We rewrite the rules."
The comms crackled. A familiar voice, warped but unmistakable, echoed through the ship.
**"You cannot rewrite what was never written."**
Lyra's voice.
---
The Bastion's systems went rogue. Holo-displays flickered to life, showing Lyra—or a grotesque mimicry of her. Her image decayed in real time, flesh sloughing to reveal the Maw's obsidian bones beneath.
**"Did you think you won?"** it mocked. **"The forge, the Codex, even your 'rebirth'—all threads in my web. Come to my heart. Let me show you true finality."**
Coordinates flooded the nav-system: **The Maw's Nexus**, a quantum abscess at the edge of existence.
Aeloria's blade materialized, its edge singing with Codex energy. "It's time to end this."
Lira stood, snapping her stasis chains. "Took you long enough."
---
The Nexus defied logic—a recursive labyrinth of screaming spacetime, where every corridor folded into a memory of loss. The Bastion's hull buckled as they breached the threshold, reality itself rejecting their intrusion.
Syra gripped her console. "The singularity's resonance is attracting Maw Proxies. They'll try to disarm it."
"Let them try," Ignar growled.
The Proxies came. **Eclipse Wraiths**, their bodies made of folded shadows and stolen faces. Lira met them in the halls, her corrupted arm devouring them whole, but each bite accelerated her transformation. Her laughter turned guttural, alien.
Aeloria cut a path to the bridge, her blade severing Wraiths at the atomic level. "Syra! Can you stabilize the singularity?"
"Working on it!" Syra's nose bled freely as she recalibrated the containment field. "We need to—*augh!*"
A Wraith phase-shifted behind her, clawing at her neural ports. Ignar vaporized it, but not before Syra's left eye was shredded.
"Go!" she screamed, detonating an emergency shockwave that cleared the bridge. "I'll hold them here!"
---
Aeloria and Lira plunged into the Nexus's core—a cavernous void where the Maw's true form loomed. Not a creature, but an **idea**: a fractal equation of annihilation, its voice the sound of every star that ever died.
**"You are mine,"** it boomed. **"You always were."**
Lira's corruption surged, her arm swelling into a maw of its own. "Y'know… you talk too much." She charged, dark matter clashing against entropy.
The Maw laughed. **"You think this is a battle? This is a* ***conclusion*****."**
Lira's body began erasing, pixel by pixel.
Aeloria lunged, Codex-blade striking the heart of the equation. Light erupted—but the Maw absorbed it, growing stronger.
**"You cannot kill me with my own weapon,"** it sneered. **"The Codex is* ***mine***.**"
---
Syra's voice screamed through the comms. **"The singularity—now!"**
Ignar hurled the orb into the Maw's core. It hovered, inert.
"No!" Aeloria roared. "It needs a spark! A *soul*!"
Lira grinned, her body half-gone. "Told you… I'd eat it."
She tore her corrupted arm free and plunged it into the singularity.
The Maw recoiled. **"STOP! YOU WILL ERASE EVERYTHING—"**
"*Good,*" Lira whispered.
---
The detonation was silent.
Light died. Sound died. The Maw died.
Aeloria clung to the dissolving edge of reality, watching Lira's sacrifice rewrite the equation. The Nexus collapsed, its entropy reversed.
When the nothingness faded, she stood alone in a featureless white expanse. The Bastion floated nearby, intact but empty.
Except for one figure.
Lira—whole, human, and glaring at her palms in disgust.
"*Void*," she groaned. "Did I just become a *hero*?"
---
The Maw was gone. But the Codex's hunger remained.
Aeloria stood at the Bastion's viewport, watching newborn stars flicker to life in the cleansed cosmos. Syra, half-blind and wired into the ship's systems, sighed. "The singularity's blast purified the infected regions. But the Codex… it's still inside you. Still hungry."
"I know," Aeloria said.
Ignar entered, his magma scars glowing faintly. "What now?"
Lira tossed an apple core at the viewport. "Now we find a new snack."
Aeloria smiled. Somewhere, the storm still raged—but now, it had an eye.
And the eye was hers.
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