Chapter 44: Shattercore

The path ahead was scorched black. The once-living weave of the Loom—vibrant threads that pulsed along the stone—was now brittle, frayed, and silent. Rafael moved at the front, each step deliberate. His party followed, weapons drawn, eyes sharp. No one spoke. The air was wrong—thin, vibrating, like a scream stuck in its throat.

Stanley paused beside a broken conduit, frowning as he traced a hand over a bundle of tangled resonance. The glyphs didn't respond. They felt drained, more than just damaged—they felt devoured.

"Nothing here has died naturally," he said. "It was stripped. Hollowed."

Calyx scowled. "By what? We beat the construct. We beat Echo. What the hell is left?"

Lira's eyes narrowed as she studied the distant shimmer of collapsed sigils. "Something that doesn't need a body to move. Something that eats the Loom itself."

Dasha moved up beside her, the spear on her back already buzzing with restrained charge. "If it eats thread, it's going to love this next fight."

A low thrum passed beneath their feet. Not a tremor—something worse. A distortion. Beatrice raised her blade, and the hair along her arms stood on end.

"We're not alone."

They weren't. From the walls, twisted figures emerged—humanoid silhouettes woven from dying thread, their features indistinct at first... until they weren't. Each one morphed into the visage of someone from Rafael's memories.

The one before him wore his sister's face.

She stepped forward with the same lilt to her gait, the same soft hands that had once held his when the world was cruel. But her eyes were voids, the kind of absence that made everything else seem unreal.

Clara stepped between them. "Rafe—don't. They're not real."

"I know," he said hoarsely, raising his threads. "That's what makes it worse."

The phantoms attacked.

It was chaos. No coordination—only raw survival.

Each party member faced a nightmare torn from their hearts. Calyx fought a mirror of herself—colder, crueler, every insecurity weaponized into merciless technique.

Dasha was swarmed by burning shadows shaped like the kids she'd failed to save in a raid gone wrong.

Lira struck with calculated calm against a figure with her mother's voice, begging her to stop.

Stanley faltered, his spells flickering as a doppelganger mocked every choice he'd made.

Beatrice didn't see a face she recognized—just a thousand masks all shifting, each one whispering a different betrayal. She cut through them, but they kept coming.

Clara and Rafael fought back-to-back. Her threads wrapped around his, strengthening their projection. They moved like a single weapon, carving illusions from the dark. But even together, they could feel the drain. The Shattercore was more than just a parasite—it was a mimic.

A puppeteer.

The phantoms learned. Each time they fell, they came back stronger—borrowing tactics, mimicking weaknesses.

"We're not fighting them," Beatrice growled, kicking through another hollow shell. "We're feeding it!"

"The Shattercore," Lira shouted, her voice ragged. "It's here. It's feeding on memory, on fear!"

"Then we give it something real to choke on," Rafael snarled. He took a step forward and opened his glyphs wide. Too wide.

"No!" Clara cried. "Rafael, stop! That's too much!"

He didn't. Power surged through him—raw, untamed. He didn't guide it. He became the storm.

The Loom's frayed strands howled as he ripped them open, pulling luminous essence from every angle. The phantoms screamed, dissolving in the maelstrom. Illusions evaporated like mist.

The storm consumed everything false. And then, it reached deeper.

A crack tore through the corridor as the very foundation of the Uncore shivered. The Shattercore's voice rang out—not in sound, but in thought: a thousand broken truths screeching at once.

'You are not whole.'

'You are borrowed.'

'You are already mine.'

Rafael staggered. Clara caught him before he fell.

"You idiot," she said softly, voice trembling.

He coughed. "We're all idiots. But we're alive."

Slowly, the storm dissipated. The Loom glowed faintly—injured, but mending.

Stanley surveyed the surroundings. "It's not dead. It just... recoiled. That was a feeler. The true core is deeper."

Beatrice helped Calyx to her feet. She was bleeding, but grinning. "That was intense."

"Don't enjoy it too much," she muttered. "We're not done yet."

Lira gathered some of the residual threads, binding them into a storage glyph. "These echoes are getting more aggressive. If the Shattercore adapts again..."

"We won't survive the next one," Dasha finished.

Rafael steadied himself. "Then we don't give it time. We go down now. We finish this."

He looked at each of them—Clara, Beatrice, Lira, Calyx, Dasha, Stanley—and saw the truth. No one was whole. But together, they didn't have to be.

Suddenly, a soft clink echoed in the air. A series of faint glyphs lit up on the wall behind them, revealing a hidden passage that pulsed with unstable threadlight.

Stanley stepped forward, eyes wide. "This... this wasn't here before. The Loom is shifting in response to Rafael's outburst."

"Another route?" Calyx asked.

"Or a trap," Dasha muttered.

"We don't have the luxury of caution," Rafael said. "We take it."

They moved through the new corridor, deeper into the belly of the Uncore. As they walked, the walls throbbed like veins. Memories flickered in the air around them—echoes of their pasts twisted into cruel mockeries.

Rafael saw Clara's first rebellion against her summoners; Beatrice watched herself walk away from a burning village she'd failed to save. Stanley flinched as the voice of a former master whispered failure into his ears.

But they kept walking.

Below, deeper still, the true Shattercore pulsed like a rotten heart.

Waiting.

***