Whispers of the Weavers

The passages here were different. Not the slick, moist tunnels of the ichor flows, nor the dry, groaning expanse of brittle bone, nor the hazy, gas-filled pockets of the previous days. This section of Viscera felt… wrong. Subtle.

Lyra walked slightly apart, her head tilted, not listening to the familiar creak of Kaelen’s boots or the soft swish of Seraphina’s scavenged cloth. She was listening to the *air*, or maybe the skin of the passages themselves. It felt like a low hum, beneath the usual biological murmur of Aethelgard’s decay. A manufactured hum.

A faint, shimmering line hung in the space ahead, like a spider silk catching the faint fungal glow, but thicker, unnatural. Kaelen almost walked right into it.

“Watch your head,” Seraphina said, her voice flat, devoid of warmth.

Kaelen stopped, peering at the shimmering thread. “What is that? Feels… weird.” He reached a hand towards it, hesitated.

Lyra’s voice was quiet, almost lost in the close air. “Don’t touch it.”

Kaelen pulled his hand back as if stung. “Why not? What is it?”

Lyra didn't answer him directly. Her gaze swept across the fleshy walls, tracing invisible lines. The textures were smooth here, unnaturally so, like scar tissue that had been meticulously sanded down. But beneath the polished surface, Lyra saw the faint, regular patterns. Not natural growth, but something imposed. Disguised.

She took a step closer to the wall, her fingertips brushing the cool, firm tissue. A familiar energy signature bloomed under her skin, like a prickle of recognition mixed with cold dread. Weaver sigils. Hidden, smoothed over, but undeniably there. Not etched onto bone, like the fragment Kaelen found, but woven into the very fabric of the god's form. Control points. Junctions in a network she knew existed but had only ever seen glimpses of.

Seraphina watched Lyra with narrowed eyes. “What are you doing, Viscerite? Found a soft spot to carve your initials?”

Lyra ignored the jab. The air around her seemed to thicken, pulling at her attention. Not just the hidden sigils, but a subtle current in the magic itself, guiding her. A side passage, almost invisible in the wall ahead, seemed to beckon. It wasn't just an opening; it felt like a vein humming with directed energy, leading somewhere specific. Deeper. Or perhaps, *aside*.

She felt the pull, a quiet insistence that was hard to ignore. This passage wasn't random decay; it was intentional. A path laid with specific purpose. A Weaver path.

“This place…” Kaelen murmured, shivering. “It feels… watched.”

Seraphina scoffed softly. “Everything feels watched down here, Kaelen. It’s a dying god. The walls have ears, if you’re unlucky.”

But Lyra knew what Kaelen meant. It wasn't the natural, decaying awareness of Aethelgard, the slow groan of bone or the shudder of ichor. This was something else. More deliberate. More… intelligent.

The hidden passage pulsed faintly in her awareness. A strong, silent invitation. Should she point it out? Tell them? Reveal that she felt this place differently, saw things they didn't, because she knew these patterns? Because she knew the Weavers? The fear tightened in her chest. The last time she’d shown even a fraction of what she knew, it had only led to suspicion. To distrust. And they needed whatever fragile trust they had.

No. Not yet. Let them see it first, if they could. Let them feel the strangeness without her naming it. She needed to understand this place more before she revealed anything. Understand *why* the Weavers were here, leaving their marks like breadcrumbs in the belly of a dying god.

Lyra straightened, forcing her expression blank. She turned away from the hidden passage, towards the direction they had been going, the way the artifact shard had indicated. The pull towards the hidden path remained, a silent hum beneath her skin, but she ignored it, fixing her gaze on the shadowed passage ahead.

She needed to watch them. See how they reacted. See if they noticed the subtle, manufactured wrongness of this place. Their lives, perhaps the fate of Atheria, might depend on what she knew. But revealing it felt like stepping off a cliff. So she walked, a silent observer in this eerie, manipulated space, keeping her knowledge coiled tight inside her.

The air, moments ago merely eerie, now ripped with a sound like wet fabric tearing. Lyra's breath hitched. Not mana. Something *feeding* on it. A distortion solidified in the shadows ahead, a hunched shape forming from coalescing darkness and a sickening sheen of corrupted tissue. It wasn’t natural decay; this felt like rot weaponized.

It moved with a sickening fluidity, too fast, limbs jointed at impossible angles. Its gaze, twin pinpricks of malevolent green light in the gloom, locked onto Seraphina. A low growl, wet and guttural, vibrated through the spongy floor.

Seraphina’s hand instinctively went to the empty space at her hip where a focus would have hung. Her nullification flared outward, a localized pocket of magical deadness, and the creature recoiled with a shriek that was more pain than sound.

“Stalker!” Kaelen yelled, his voice tight. “It’s after *you*, Nullifier! Your drain is like poison to it!”

He scrambled for his bone-chisel, the worn tool feeling laughably small and useless against the thing lurching towards Seraphina. The Stalker’s skin rippled, somehow absorbing the nullifying effect around its edges, adapting even as it screeched. It lunged, claws like sharpened bone shards extended.

Seraphina stumbled back, her face pale. She wasn't equipped for this, not against something fueled by the very thing her power negated. Her nullification was a shield, not a weapon, and it was only making her a target.

Lyra watched, a cold dread seizing her. The creature was fast, intelligent. Kaelen with his bone-singing, useful for shoring up structures, was useless against this moving, organic threat. Seraphina, whose ability was a passive, debilitating drain, was literally attracting its fury. They were going to die.

The Stalker closed the distance, its putrid breath hitting Seraphina. She ducked under a swipe that would have gutted her, the air filling with the stench of decay and something acridly sweet. Lyra’s mind raced. The Weaver techniques. The Shaping. It wasn’t designed for combat, not directly. But it could manipulate. Realign. *Unravel*.

Her training screamed *caution*. Her entire life had been about hiding these skills, using them only for mending, for quiet intervention. Exposing them here, now? To these two, already suspicious of her? But the Stalker was raising a clawed hand, aiming a blow Seraphina couldn't possibly dodge.

*Dammit*.

There was no more time for debate. A split-second decision, born of pure, desperate survival instinct. Lyra ignored the knot of fear in her stomach. She focused, not on the creature as a whole, but on the subtle, vibrant threads of corrupted mana woven into its very being, the energy that powered its unnatural form. She could feel them, a discordant hum against the god’s natural rhythm. Like loose stitches.

She didn't speak a word. Didn’t need to. A sharp, almost painful focus narrowed her world to those threads. Her hands, hidden in the folds of her tunic, moved in tiny, precise gestures, mimicking the intricate weaving patterns of the Loom, but this time, pulling *outward*.

A low, resonant hum originated from deep within her chest, a sound utterly alien to the god’s groans. The air around the Stalker didn't nullify, didn't freeze. Instead, it shimmered, a quick, violent blur that only Lyra truly saw. The threads within the creature, the corrupt mana holding its form together, didn't just dissipate – they snapped. Unraveled with impossible speed.

The Stalker’s lunge became a heap of collapsing, twitching tissue. The malevolent green eyes went blank, the unnatural sheen faded from its skin. It didn’t dissolve, didn’t explode. It simply… fell apart. Like a marionette with its strings cut, melting into a puddle of inert, foul-smelling biological matter at Seraphina’s feet.

Silence rushed in, broken only by their ragged breathing and the distant, constant groan of the god’s form. Seraphina stumbled back further, staring from the formless mess on the floor to Lyra, her eyes wide with shock. Kaelen lowered his chisel slowly, his mouth slightly agape.

Lyra’s heart hammered. Her hands trembled slightly. The hum faded, leaving a hollow ache in her bones. She forced herself to look away from the pulpy remains, meeting their gazes. Their expressions weren't grateful.

They were suspicious. Raw. Searching.

Seraphina’s voice was low, edged with something cold and hard. “What… what was *that*?”

Kaelen’s gaze flicked from the remains back to Lyra’s hands, then her face. “That wasn’t… normal. Not Mana-Surge containment. Not Bone-Singing. Lyra. What did you *do*?”

The truth hung heavy in the air. Her secret was out. She had chosen their immediate safety over her long-held need for concealment. And the cost was already clear in their eyes. The fragile thread of trust, barely woven, had just frayed under the strain.