Seven Beats, One Betrayal
Time-to-Gate Override 00ʰ 05ᵐ 48ˢ
The alien ring groaned like a planet-sized cello string.Aiden's suit chronometer ticked far too fast as the seventh chair—still empty—pulsed a crimson warning: NEEDED IMPERFECTION NOT PRESENT.Above the dais, the slit in space kept widening; blackout stars tumbled inside it like marbles spilled in ink.
Then Maya's voice cracked across the whisper-band:
"Contact! Zero-point nine AU, closing at impossible delta-V. Visual in three… two—"
A shard of diamond light slashed the darkness.It slowed without thrust, sails folding into a needle, then a blossom—clear-thread petal panels rimmed by bruised-peach edges.The ship halted ten metres off the ring, inertial math be damned.
"Physics just resigned," Cassie muttered.
Nephis said, very quietly, "Shadow respects the trick."
A hatch rippled open. Out drifted a single figure: humanoid, translucent like Solayna, but threaded with swirling charcoal veins from the start—as if she had been born imperfect. A halo of dim violet primes—53… 59… 61—flickered around her head, beats nobody on Contrapunctus had yet mastered.
She spoke without comm, voice vibrating through the rib-bones themselves:
"I am Liora-Fracture, strayed daughter of the Mythweave Choir.I heard your discord and followed it home."
Solayna's constellation mask brightened in wonder. "A Choir scout—they've been legend for epochs."
Aiden glanced at Lin. No immediate tea joke. That alone signalled the stakes.
Dock or Die
Hesitation stole an entire minute off the countdown. Liora waited, expression unreadable but patient, violet primes looping.
Maya zipped an encrypted side-loop: If she's real, gate saves. If plant, we hand Null Weave the throne.Nephis: We die frozen anyway without seat seven.Cassie: Bring her—worst case, ugly song ejects her.
Aiden inhaled, toggled external mic. "Seat's free if you can stand terrible music."
Liora arced forward, gliding into the cavity. As she passed the children, Glitch chirped 41-47 greeting; Chip echoed with a crackly 37. Liora returned a soft 53, and the kids giggled as though tickled.
She settled into the last throne. The crimson warning flipped to muddled amber:
IMPROBABLE VOICE ACCEPTED– BEGIN PERFORMANCE –
Six-Plus-One Instrumentation
The seats re-latched their filaments.
Dawn-Core fused to Aiden's chest, heartbeat hammering double primes.
Cassie's lantern split into twin chaotic strings—one peach, one charcoal.
Lin's half-shattered Spiral Stone rearranged into jagged tuning forks.
Maya's visor projected a keyboard of bug-report glitches clicking at random.
Nephis's cloak untwined into a percussion web.
Glitch and Chip merged capes, forming a squeaky reed pipe.
Liora folded her hands; from her palms unfurled a single violet line that curved back into a Möbius infinity.
The ring ribs glowed. Score lines spiralled into the dome.A metronome—messy, syncopated—began.
Aiden led with the kettle whistle, blissfully bad.Cassie plucked lantern chords—light and shadow stumbling over each other.Lin struck mismatched forks; Maya hammered key-errors; Nephis thumped cloak drums at fractions of expected beats.The kids squeaked prime runs.Liora? She painted snatches of half-melody, deliberately off.
And the ring loved it.Bone ribs radiated aurora; the slit in space convulsed open to a corridor of woven galaxies, each twinkling on a different, crooked meter. Coordinates spilled across everyone's HUDs—addresses of Looms older than civilisation.
Solayna whispered, awestruck: "The Mythweave listens."
The Note Too Perfect
Second stanza. Dawn-Core's pulse accelerated. Lantern over-brightened.Liora's Möbius string glowed hotter—violet shifting toward silver.
Aiden caught it first: her line straightened, losing the twist.At the same moment Cassie's lantern chords autotuned, Lin's forks snapped to equal pitch, Maya's glitches self-corrected. Perfection seeped like frost.
Aiden roared the kettle whistle stack out of tune—no use.Bones vibrated smoother. The children froze, primes dropping to the orderly 2-3-5-7.
Liora's voice slid to crystal clarity:
"Contrast achieved. Now we memorialise it—forever."
Nephis's cloak threads straightened, yanking him against the throne. Cassie's lantern glass fused whole. Lin's memory of tea socks faded from his head in an instant so quick he gasped.
It wasn't Null-Weave; this was something older—Beautiful Stasis. The Mythweave's brutal compromise.
Dawn-Core dimmed under silver.
Aiden groaned, "She's sealing the cadence into perfect amber."
The rib deck under Liora's seat reformed into a flawless circle; her halo primes collapsed to a single 2.
Last Second Discord
Memory of cocoa steam—how Cassie burned her tongue—flickered in Aiden's mind, one surviving flaw. He yanked at it, hurled words across the tether:
"HEY! You forgot the lollipop llama lightning line!"
Cassie jerked—recognition sparked. She croaked, "Lantern, llama, lightning, lollipop!"
The absurd mnemonic shattered her lantern shell; shards erupted, painting the dome with messy peach stars. Lin blurted, "Tea-cup, tennis-ball, tarantula, trombone!" His forks fractured in disharmony. Maya gnashed, "Bug-report, bubble-gum, banjo, black-hole!" Keys exploded into static.
Nephis tore one final cloak seam—"Cloak, cocoa, chaos, CAT!"—and dozens of ragged shadows crawled like ink across the silver freeze.
Silver cracks spidered over Liora's Möbius string. She hissed, more sorrow than anger. "You would keep the wound open?"
Aiden's grin was feral. "A wound is how light gets in."He smashed Dawn-Core against his chair rim; the crystal answered with a raw, impossible prime—101, never learned before.
The ring howled, vaulting from elegance back to riot. Liora's seat flung her upright; her form flickered between flawless and fractured.
The slit in space narrowed but did not close; threads beyond flickered—watching.
Cliff Hanging
Solayna shouted through rising tremor, "The gate neither seals nor opens—an unsung cadence!"Maya's console blinked: SYSTEM INTERLOCK :: UNKNOWN OUTCOME.
The ribs began to peel, turning inward like a blooming flower in reverse, dragging the thrones toward the shrinking slit. Forces spiked; harness bolts groaned. Liora, half-silver half-violet, reached for Aiden—gesture unreadable: plea or trap?
Cassie's chair bent under torque; lantern shards dimmed. Lin's memory faltered—he forgot which fork was broken, which whole. Nephis's shadows fought to anchor them, shreds tearing from cloak like feathers in hurricane.
The children clung to each other, glitch and chip pulsing unsynced primes that jittered the very floor.
And the countdown clock—long forgotten—re-appeared in Maya's visor:
UNRESOLVED CHAOS COLLAPSE IN 00ʰ 03ᵐ 00ˢ
Three minutes. Three options: Close the gate forever, open it to stasis—or improvise something none of them yet imagined.
In the rising quake, Aiden locked eyes with Cassie, Lin, Maya, Nephis, Solayna, even the flickering Liora. He had no plan, only the certainty that the ugliest note had not yet been played.