Frozen Screams & the Thawing Note

The white aperture swallowed them whole. Inside the Athenaeum of Finality, silence wasn't absence; it was presence – cold, thick, pressing down like oceanic depths. Each breath Juni drew felt stolen, each heartbeat a defiant drumbeat against void. Beside her, Hank trembled with suppressed energy. Copper lines beneath his skin flared erratically, casting fractured gold across crystalline walls. His jaw clenched so hard she feared his teeth might shatter. Silence here was agony.

Gallery of Ghosted Worlds

Corridors spiraled without logic, showcasing the Athenaeum's "collection" – each wall a viewing pane into a caged reality:

Prism 7 Gamma: An alien city mid explosion, frozen in silent terror. Creatures with too many limbs screamed forever in stillness. Deemed "unpredictable chaos." Cataloged.

Prism 12 Theta: A feathered serpent skewered by a crystalline spear, rainbow plumage draining to grey as its young wept frozen tears. "Evolutionary instability." Excised.

Prism 3 Omega: Normandy hedgerows, June 8, 1944 – but wrong. Sarge stood rigid and blank eyed. Doc sedated a tree without purpose. Jenkins clutched his radio, no swing music, only static. Private Steele's dummy hung limp, not grim humor but a monument to silent obedience. "Flux Prime: Stabilized."

Hank made a choked sound and slammed his fist into the Omega prism. No sound came, but copper lines flared white hot, spiderwebbing cracks before the surface seamlessly reformed. Blood welled on his knuckles. His bravado dissolved into raw horror. This wasn't an abstract threat; it was the hollowed corpse of his family.

Juni didn't analyze the crystal's tensile strength. She grabbed his bleeding hand, pressed hers over it – not to heal, but to connect.

"Look at me, Rigby," she whispered. "That isn't them. That won't be them."

His storm cloud eyes met hers, reflecting his terror and her own revulsion. Her motivation solidified: Jenkins' lost stars, Sarge's silenced roar, Doc's extinguished curiosity. The hollow woman in ghost Hank's vision lurked in that frozen Jenkins.

"We break the silence. We bring the noise back."

The Custodians & The Weight of Soil

Figures glided into view: Custodians. Sleek, obsidian and ivory constructs, precise and joyless. One touched Prism 7 Gamma. The explosion compressed fractionally, becoming less chaotic, more dead.

"Preservation through reduction," ghost Hank whispered, his voice frayed thin by the crushing silence. "They tidy the graves. Make silence... perfect."

Juni opened the hakim's clay pot. The pungent scent of Dragonbone earth salve was a shocking assault on sterile air. She scooped a bit, smoothed it over Hank's bleeding knuckles and flickering copper lines. The erratic flares calmed to a warm, steady glow. The salve was more than medicine – it was earth, chaos, life, growth.

Hank's shoulders eased minutely. He looked at her hands, then at the Omega Prism, and gave a tiny nod. I'm here. I'm with you.

The Frozen Song

The ghost Hank tugged them deeper. Silence thickened, prisms grew larger, each a grave for a world. Then Juni felt it: a faint vibration, not heard but sensed through the Dragonbone in Hank and the hakim's salve – a single frozen note, straining to sing. Yoggy.

"Closer..." ghost Hank breathed. "Feel the cage?"

They entered a vast chamber. At its center: interlocking white rings humming with concentrated nullity. Suspended within, encased in shimmering stasis, floated Yoggy – not a blob, but a swirling nebula of frozen light, its trapped note radiating silent, desperate defiance.

Flanking it:

Prism Alpha: Ghost Hank's fragmented mind dissected, pinned like an insect. D Day without the bang. Sarge saluting nothing. Juni strapped down, hollow eyed.

Prism Beta: The Indian palace courtyard where Yoggy fell, frozen to anchor the nullity field.

Three towering Custodians faced Yoggy, filaments intensifying the nullity field. The note dimmed.

"They're... silencing it further..." ghost Hank sighed. "Erasing... the last echo... before dismantling me... Break... the field... free... the song..."

The Unsilencing

Custodian heads turned in unison. Anomalies detected. Initiate containment. Filaments hummed with nullity.

Hank looked at Juni. His eyes burned with focused fury. No grin, only resolve.

"M'lady Flux," he murmured, voice thick with everything – Jenkins, Sarge, Doc, Yoggy, the hakim, the Crucible, the frozen worlds. "I believe... it's time... for some noise."

She met his gaze. Tactical calculations overrode by primal truth: This wasn't a battle. It was liberation.

"Do it, Sergeant Fartquake," she commanded softly but with iron. "Unleash hell."

Hank didn't just open his mouth. He uncoiled. Weeks of suppressed chaos, Dragonbone Spark, the hakim's grounding salve, love for his found family, and fury at the Greater's desecration erupted as the Primordial Howl.

It wasn't sound as physics knew it – it was anti silence. Multicolored distortion shattered outwards, hitting Custodians first. Their filaments flailed; nullity flickered out. The Howl struck the nullity rings. Cracks spiderwebbed. The frozen note within Yoggy didn't thaw – it detonated.

The stasis crystal exploded in a supernova of sound and light. Yoggy's liberated song, amplified by Hank's Howl, became a tsunami of raw, defiant life. Prisms flickered. Prism Alpha surged with ghost Hank's coherence. Prism Beta rippled, reality straining.

Three Custodians recovered, nullity beams converging. Juni moved, not as analyst but as Valkyrie. She hurled the hakim's remaining salve into their beams.

"Taste the soil, you sterile bastards!"

Chaos met erasure. The salve detonated in shimmering static. Nullity beams sputtered and reflected, glitching Custodians mid motion like corrupted data.

Silence shattered. Chaos reigned.

Hank swayed, drained but exultant, copper lines blazing like victory runes. Juni stood beside him, breath ragged, salve smoke curling from her hair. Before them, Yoggy pulsed free and furious.

Ghost Hank's voice filled their minds, strong at last:

"THE CAGE IS OPEN! TO ME! NOW, RIGBY! FIND ME!"

His consciousness surged from Prism Alpha towards Prism Beta – the path to his core prison open. The Athenaeum shuddered. Alarms that had never sounded wailed – the Greater's scream.

The hunt was over. The rescue had begun.