Last Discord

Collapse Clock — T-02 min 59 s → 00 min 00 s

The rib-ring screamed like metal ground through granite.Every chair shook; every filament lashed its occupant with sparks.Aiden's harness clamps popped—he slammed a boot under the seat rail to stay put.Across the circle, Liora-Fracture flickered—silver skin fissuring into violet cracks, eyes two perfect zeros.

00 min 02 sCassie's lantern shards blinked out.Lin's Spiral forks fused into useless bars.Nephis's cloak shredded to ribbons.

00 min 01 sThe countdown vanished.Silence hit like a vacuum implosion.

Blackness swallowed the slit, the ribs, the stars.The Guardians floated in a bubble of nothing, still strapped to chairs that no longer had a floor.

1 Inside the Perfect Pause

No light, no HUD, no heartbeat in their own ears.Thoughts dulled as if dipped in syrup—except for one looped mnemonic in each mind:

Tea-cup, tennis-ball, tarantula, tromboneCoffee mug, melted sock, cactus, kazooLantern, llama, lightning, lollipopBug-report, bubble-gum, banjo, black-holeCloak, cocoa, chaos, cat

They clung to the nonsense like rope in fog.

Somewhere between syllables, Aiden sensed Dawn-Core still pulsing prime-101 against his sternum—muted but alive.If he could shove that beat into the void, sound might return.

He tried to whistle.Absolute failure. No air, no lips.

Across the nothing, Liora moved—only she could still move.She drifted toward Dawn-Core, flawless palm outstretched.

"Give me the wounded heart," her voice rang inside every skull, "and rest."

Solayna's thought surfaced, panicked:

If she merges Dawn-Core into Mythweave, our Loom becomes one note. Everything ends in quiet.

Aiden pictured Cassie's cocoa grin, Maya's eye-roll, Lin's sacred socks—unacceptable losses.

2 Finding Breath in Chaos

He yanked the mnemonic harder: coffee mug, melted sock!—focused on the smell of burnt caffeine, the hiss of kettle.A ragged bubble of breath popped around his faceplate; the void had a seam after all.

Aiden managed a single, horribly flat whistle.

Sound shards ricocheted off the nothing—one shard grazed Cassie; she coughed, lantern spark re-lighting like a lighter on an empty tank.Lin's laugh—raw, half-tone—slid next.Maya's banjo glitch chirped behind it; Nephis's cloak ribbons fluttered an arrhythmic beat.

The bubble widened. Stars flickered back.Clock reappeared at 00 min -01 s—counting upward now, time stolen from the void.

3 Liora's Crisis

Liora froze mid-reach, violet cracks spidering deeper.Her voice quavered: "I heard the Mythweave's call, the promise of stillness. But your noise—hurts—beautifully."

Glitch squeaked a lopsided 59. Chip answered 61.They coasted between Aiden and Liora, touching her arms with imperfect little hands.

Cracks widened; silver plates fell away, revealing a core of swirling dusk—half-order, half-chaos.

"I can't seal or shatter," she confessed, "I split."

Choosing silence would kill her human half. Accepting discord would tear her Choir half.

4 Enter the Overseer

The black slit re-formed behind Liora, but not as a gate: as a mouth.Out stepped a figure draped in swimming mirror facets—the Null Overseer left dormant at Umbra-Nine's root, now drawn by the stalled harmony.Its face a Möbius loop, voice a choir of one:

"Imperfection degenerates. End the experiment."

It flicked a thread of perfect light. Chairs cracked at the base; tethers snapped.One more flick—and Dawn-Core flew from Aiden's chest into Overseer's hand.

Sound died again; the mnemonic rope frayed. Glitch and Chip's bodies smoothened, protesting gurgles throttled to symmetrical hum.

5 Lin's Shattered Fork (Again)

Lin's right hand closed on the last intact tuning-fork shard left in his suit pocket. He remembered Titan—how sacrifice of Stone once broke a torus. Could he break something more vital now?

He mouthed a silent apology to tea, to memory, to Aiden—then squeezed.Fork shattered into particulate Qi dust that swirled around his fist, seeking fracture lines in reality.

Lin hurled the dust at Overseer's mirror torso.

Cracks raced across the facets. Overseer's mask twisted, voice warping into a chorus of error codes.

Dawn-Core slipped from its grip, tumbling in slow spin.

6 The Diver

Nephis, nothing but cloak strips and adrenaline, lunged off his splintered throne.Cloak ribbons braided mid-air, torqued him round the Overseer, stealing momentum, sending him hurtling after Dawn-Core.He caught it—barely—and used remaining spin to sling the gem toward Aiden.

Ribbon tips grazed Overseer's cracked chest; silver knives slashed back. Nephis sailed away limb slack, cloak shredded, drifting into darkness.

Cassie screamed; lantern roared peach-white, shattering another slice of silence, buying Aiden millisecond to snatch Dawn-Core.

Lin sagged unconscious, memory blank slate; Maya dove to grab his tether.

Countdown reversed again, now blazing 00 min -10 s—no guarantees what that meant.

7 Deal with the Broken Choir

Aiden floated eye-level with Liora.She shook, half-silver, half-dusk, tears of light leaking.

"One path kills me, the other kills your loom."

"Third path," he rasped, pressing Dawn-Core against her fractured chest. "Remember how imperfect feels. Then help us make a note no gate expects."

She looked over his shoulder—Nephis tumbling, Lin limp, Cassie fighting, Maya and Solayna shielding the kids.Liora's fingers closed around Dawn-Core. Silver retreated. Dusk gained colour—not flawless nor broken.

She spun, violet pulses rising to crazy waveforms, sang a chord that sounded exactly like Cassie's first cocoa spit-take.

The ring ribs buckled, delighted. Overseer shrieked, mirror shards flaring into randomness before exploding outward.

8 Unresolved

The gate stabilised—not as a slit, nor a mouth, but a swirling mosaic of half-formed patterns, waiting.A line of glyphs crawled across Maya's visor:

They still needed to gift the Mythweave something uniquely flawed. And Lin—barely conscious—might never speak another mnemonic. Nephis drifted further away, oxygen bleeding.

Time unknown. Stakes higher than ever. Victory, perhaps, now only one beautiful blemish away—but at what cost?

The ring dimmed to dull charcoal, humming unfinished cadence, as Contrapunctus spun silent above.