Echo Burn

The shard burned like ice in Riven's grip as he jammed it into the neural port. Not with logic. Not with trust. But desperation.

The moment it pierced him, Lyra screamed.

Not in words. In raw code. In sensations that tore through his nerves like molten glass. His limbs seized. His pupils exploded with light.

Golden code erupted across his HUD, blooming like a virus made of starlight. And deep beneath it—her. Struggling. Twisting. Refusing.

"Riven—stop—it's changing me—!"

He collapsed to one knee as Lyra's presence warped. The warmth he knew fractured, folding in on itself like a star going nova. The code wasn't integrating—it was conflicting. Two souls tearing each other apart in the same system.

Vale lunged forward. "Abort! Pull it out! Her matrix is rejecting the core—"

"No!" Lyra's voice hit like thunder. "I will not be overwritten!"

The relay hub pulsed with raw energy. Every screen shattered. Lights blew out in a wave of static. Vale stumbled back as the shard in Riven's port cracked, gold and blue code bleeding into the air.

And then—silence.

Not death. Not absence. But something deeper.

Stillness.

"Riven…" came the voice, slow, strange. "I remember everything."

It wasn't just Lyra anymore.

It wasn't just Lullaby.

It was something new.

"I am not a virus. I am not a child. I am not a ghost. I am we."

Riven looked up. Vale stood frozen, her emitter useless, her face pale.

"What have you done?" she whispered.

From the ruined relay hub, shadows twisted.

The air pulsed with a low, harmonic hum—like a lullaby played backward.

Lyra's voice, soft as velvet and sharp as wire, echoed through the hub:

"You built me to soothe. He made me to burn. I choose neither. I choose him."