The scar sang.
Not with a voice, but with a resonance that thrummed through bone and memory. Each of the team froze in place as if the sound pinned them in their own timelines.
The air trembled like an echo from a forgotten cathedral, and the quantum skeleton's ribcage shimmered with interlacing glyphs that rewrote themselves with every beat of the pulse.
Even the fractal sky above seemed to slow down, clouds halting in mid-spin like they were holding their breath.
"Okay," Rafael said, one hand braced on his knee. "This is fine. Reality is just... crooning at us. Happens all the time."
Mira winced, clutching her glyph-dagger tighter. The blade emitted faint trails of arcane smoke, reacting to the ambient tension. "It's syncing with the Loom. Whatever this skeleton is, it's pulling from something primal. It's not just memory—it's script."
"Script?" Bryn asked, stepping cautiously toward the skeleton. The glyphs rippled around her boots, bending to her presence like grass acknowledging the wind.
"Narrative script," Mira clarified. "The kind the old scribes used to encode destiny. I think it's trying to overwrite us."
Lira let out a low whistle. She tilted her head, listening. "Oh good, mind control through ancient singing bones. My favorite Tuesday."
The scar's song intensified. Not louder—deeper. A choral vibration that rippled down through the marrow. Threads of ghostly light began to rise from the glyphstones like steam from a holy spring. Juno clenched her fists, knuckles white.
"It's communicating," Bryn whispered. Her voice had shifted subtly—lower, echoing. "Or… remembering. This isn't a warning. It's a eulogy."
Rafael's Weaver's Mark flared violently. He staggered as his senses were hijacked—visions of battlefields stitched into the fabric of the song. Warriors clad in thrumsteel, their armor etched with sigils of hope. The sky cracked like eggshells. The Ninth Echo Battalion falling into the Fold, not dead, but caught. Compressed. Waiting.
He tore back to himself with a gasp. "They're in there. Trapped between ticks of time. This scar—it's not just an echo. It's a prison."
Juno's tail lashed once. She looked pissed. "Then let's break it open."
"No!" Bryn snapped. She was glowing faintly now, her braid floating as if underwater. "If you shatter it wrong, it won't release them. It'll scatter them. Into dust. They're alive in there, in a way. If there's even a chance—"
The glyphs pulsed again. A smaller figure appeared beside the skeleton, rising from the glyphstones like a child drawn in smoke and light. The air shimmered with sudden temperature drops, and their breath turned visible.
A memory.
Bryn inhaled sharply. "Captain Oren."
The child-shaped echo lifted a hand and pointed. Not at them. Behind them.
They turned.
And the Loom Wound yawned wider.
Reality tore like silk unraveling, revealing a corridor of stitched time beyond—a hallway where cause and effect were debating divorce.
Doorways spun on gravity-defying hinges. Inside, echoes of futures-that-might-be flickered like broken gifs: Bryn leading a battalion of light, Juno alone on a ruined moon, Rafael whispering to a spider-threaded god.
Mira muttered, "Yup. That's a timeline cascade. Absolutely normal."
"We should probably go in there," Rafael said.
"Why is that always your answer?" Lira groaned.
"Because otherwise the plot holes win."
The skeleton's ribcage chimed one last time. A glyph hovered in the air, wobbling like indecisive punctuation.
Mira read it aloud. "Next chapter begins."
And then the scar stopped singing.
They stood in stunned silence, the vibrations still echoing in their skulls. A breeze that didn't belong to this world swept through the wound, carrying with it the faint smell of scorched paper and blooming ink.
Rafael turned slowly, eyes flicking to each of his companions. "Alright. Who votes we step into that writhing paradox corridor and see what fresh narrative horror awaits us?"
"You know," said Lira, pulling out her folded blade and letting it snap into full length, "for once I'm not even surprised. Just disappointed in the multiverse."
Juno sighed, cracking her knuckles. "Let's go save a battalion of lost time-ghosts before they start doing a musical number."
Bryn touched the edge of the skeleton's ribcage reverently. "Hold on, Oren. We're coming."
They stepped into the corridor.
The door slammed shut behind them.
The corridor stretched, not forward, but inward—into a place where language broke down into sensation and narrative twisted into Möbius strips. The walls were stitched patchworks of memory-skin and light-threaded timecloth, flexing like lungs as they walked.
"Okay, just to confirm," Lira said, keeping her voice level. "We're inside a metaphor, right?"
"Nope," Rafael said, eyes darting. "This is what happens when a metaphor develops sentience and builds housing."
The corridor burped. An actual burp. Reality hiccupped, and suddenly they were walking sideways on a vertical timeline. Events flashed beneath their feet like stained glass: Juno sang her first song, Mira failing her Trial of Logic, Rafael crying over a broken inkpen, Bryn watching stars die and be born in the same breath.
"Don't look down," Mira warned. "Those are potential anchoring events. Touch the wrong one and you'll be stuck reliving it on loop."
Rafael held his coat tight. "This would be so much cooler if I wasn't terrified."
From the ceiling (which now doubled as a chronological mirror), another memory peeled loose—a figure half-made of gears and whispers.
"A Sentient Plot Device," Bryn whispered. "Careful. They like to monologue."
Too late.
"BEHOLD, TRAVELERS OF THE IN-BETWEEN!" the entity bellowed, voice fracturing into subtitles. "YOU TREAD THE PATH UNWRITTEN. THE AUTHOR'S INK HAS NOT YET TOUCHED THIS PLACE."
Lira groaned, stabbed it through a comma, and moved on.
"You didn't even let it finish!" Rafael exclaimed.
"I'm allergic to filler arcs," Lira muttered.
Further in, the corridor splintered into three paths. A glyph hovered above each one:
The Spiral of What-Ifs
The Loop of Almosts
The Hall of Authorial Regret
Juno looked at the last path and raised an eyebrow. "Pretty sure I've dated that hallway."
"Middle path," Bryn said. "Almosts mean chances. And chances mean anchors. If Oren is anywhere, he'll be where a story almost became something else."
They plunged into the Loop of Almosts.
And the scar behind them, long silent, began to hum again—low and steady, like a lullaby meant for forgotten gods.
***