The Web began to thin.
Not unravel. Not fade.
Just… stretch.
The threads around Hector and Vicky grew longer between anchor points. Their shimmer dimmed. Their music—a delicate, endless harmony they'd grown used to—was now warped.
The notes bent strangely, like a familiar tune being played backward underwater.
> "Something's wrong," Hector whispered.
Vicky didn't answer at first. She was staring into the distance, into a patch of Web that wavered like heat. But there was no warmth—just a wrongness that made her flicker defensively.
And then they heard it.
A sound that wasn't a voice—but had once been one.
> "h̸͍̔e̵̡̫͍͌̎l̸̝͐͝p̷͓̘͛̅͠ ̵͔̯͖̍͋͝m̶̖̥̓̅͊è̶̛̩̭̞̈́"
It came from the dark place. A soft whisper from within the threads.
They moved closer.
Hector reached out instinctively, using his echo-sense—trying to track the shape of the pain. But the thread wasn't like others. It didn't resonate. It absorbed.
> "Don't," Vicky warned. "That thread doesn't want to be found."
But the sound repeated.
> "m̸̗͌o̶͙̻͌͑t̶̺͋̓ḣ̴̺͝ë̸̗͕͚́̓̕r̴̠̀.̶̰̄.̷̟̱̔.̶̮͈͛̕ ̵̢̞̃p̸͔͋̕̕l̸̳̒e̵̠̽̀a̶̢̮͑͠s̴͈̰͒͠͠e̷̞̓͂͘"
It wasn't speech. Not entirely. More like a half-formed echo, something left behind by a soul that never finished becoming.
Vicky took a half-step closer. Her shell shimmered in caution.
> "Do you think it's… someone like us?"
Hector didn't answer. He couldn't. The closer he got, the less he could feel anything at all.
> "It's a hollow," he said finally.
Vicky tilted her light. "What?"
> "That's what Ozoz called it. When something forgets what it is, but keeps existing anyway. It's… caught in its own noise."
They looked ahead.
The Web fractured here—not broken, but sick. Threads overlapped in impossible loops. Knots bound to nothing. Echoes played endlessly, twisted into begging, crying, or just... nonsense.
Shapes moved between them. Not like the shapeless gods.
These things twitched.
They resembled flickers of consciousness that tried to remember themselves—and couldn't.
Some had voices, stuck on repeat.
Others drifted in spirals, muttering sounds that weren't words.
Vicky instinctively conjured her grief-form, the protective shell Vemathi had taught her. It hardened around her like smoke turned to bone.
> "We should leave," she said quietly.
But Hector didn't move.
He'd seen something.
At the very edge of the corrupted place—barely holding shape—was a tiny flicker of light. Fainter than a memory. But real.
It pulsed—once, twice—then almost faded.
> "That one isn't lost yet."
He pointed, and Vicky followed his gaze.
The flicker was trying to mimic the Web's rhythm, trying to harmonize with a thread that no longer held shape. Its light sputtered with every attempt, dimming further.
> "It's… fighting," Hector murmured.
> "It doesn't know how," Vicky replied.
They moved, carefully.
Around them, the dissonance screamed without volume. Fractured echoes spun by like windblown scraps. One moaned for forgiveness, another laughed in reverse. A third repeated only one word: stay. stay. stay.
The closer they got, the harder it became to keep form.
Hector felt himself begin to blur—his sense of self thinning at the edges.
> "What burns away was never truly yours."
Ozoz's voice echoed in his memory.
> Then let it burn.
He released the part of himself that clung to certainty, and steadied again.
Lighter. Clearer.
Vicky reached for the flicker.
It trembled.
Then hissed:
> "n̷̠̔̽͘o̶̙̐̔t̵̡̞̤̾̓̓ ̷̡͌̈́r̶̯̱̽̀e̸̯̓̕a̴͕͋͒̓d̴̤͍̥̈́͑y̷̱͑̈.̴̡̘̳̈́̆"
> "Then let us help you hold on," Vicky whispered.
She didn't force. She simply hovered beside it.
Offered shape. Offered stillness.
Hector joined her. He didn't speak, didn't probe. He simply listened.
Together, they hummed.
Their code. The sound no one had ever sung to them.
That hum wrapped around the flicker—not to change it, not to claim it—just to remind it.
And slowly…
The light grew steady.
It didn't form. It didn't speak.
But it held.
One echo at a time, it found a rhythm again.
Hector pulled a nearby thread—delicate, broken, but still intact—and anchored it beside the flicker. The moment the thread touched the light, something rippled outward.
A single sound.
A new hum. Weak. But real.
Then the space began to push them away.
Not forcefully—naturally.
The dissonant place could not hold harmony for long.
As they drifted back toward the stable Web, Vicky turned once more.
Many of the corrupted echoes didn't react.
But some… paused.
For a second, silence fell over one of the loops.
A single echo stilled its spinning.
Not healed.
But aware.
And in this place, even awareness was a rebellion.
---
Back in the stable threads, Vicky collapsed inward briefly, her light pulsing with exhaustion.
> "I didn't think we could… help like that."
Hector hovered close.
> "We didn't fix anything. But we reminded it it was."
A pause.
> "I wonder how many are like that," she said. "Almost gone. But not quite."
The Web around them tightened slightly. A pulse of affirmation.
Hector answered softly.
> "Too many."
They floated there in the quiet.
And the Web sang—just briefly—a single note of sorrow.