The construct pulsed above Pale Harbor like a second sun—if a sun bled light instead of casting it.
Ilen watched it rotate slowly in midair, each revolution accompanied by the dull throb of heartbeats not quite in sync. The floating people swayed beneath it, mouths open, whispering in voices that didn't belong to them.
"Find the anchor," Uel had said."Destroy it, and the construct dies.""Fail, and the Womb-Eater inherits a self."
Ilen stepped carefully around the floating forms. Their toes hovered just above the ground, twitching like puppet limbs at rest. Some wept silently. Others smiled with eyes sealed shut. None reacted to his presence.
He passed beneath the shade of the construct.
And froze.
A shape drifted inside it.
Not just an unborn soul.
Something more.
A fetus.
But huge—larger than a man—curled in a translucent membrane of thought. Its spine was fractured and reforming constantly. Its mouth opened and closed as if it were trying to speak.
And when its eyes opened, it looked at him.
Ilen stumbled back.
Not just dreaming… watching. It knows I'm here.
He clutched the obsidian disc the Librarian had given him. It glowed faintly, revealing glyphs he hadn't seen before: inverted runes for "self," "memory," and "hunger."
Suddenly, the floating figures turned in unison.
All of them now faced him, midair.
Their mouths moved in perfect unison.
"He comes bearing denial. Let us remember him."
Their eyes opened.
And they began to scream.
The sound wasn't loud—it wasn't even truly sound—but it burned. Memory turned sour in Ilen's mind. He tasted his mother's laughter, inverted. Saw himself in a mirror from a childhood that never happened, dissolving into static.
He dropped to one knee.
"Ilen!" Uel's voice cut in through the mist. "I'm triangulating. The anchor's below you—beneath the docks. Cut through."
Ilen clenched his teeth.
With effort, he drew one of the scripts burned into his forearm. A blade of black light formed in his hand—a Word-Knife, shaped from anti-languages long erased from time.
He slashed the ground.
Wood and stone parted, not broken but reversed, unbuilt into the concept of not-there.
A hole opened beneath him.
He fell.
The underdocks were not part of the town.
They were deeper.
Wet tunnels of coral and bone, humming with thought. The air tasted like old ink and fermented dreams. Writing covered the walls—not in paint or blood, but in skin. Script made of living flesh, squirming faintly as he passed.
He walked carefully, the Word-Knife humming in his hand. It glowed dimly, reacting to the script around him.
The glyphs whispered as he passed.
"Help me…""I almost was…""I can be real if you let me wear your name…"
He ignored them.
The tunnel widened into a chamber—a submerged chapel of sorts.
At its center stood the anchor.
It was not a thing of metal or stone.
It was a person.
Or what used to be one.
A woman, suspended in midair by dozens of red umbilicals connected to her spine, skull, and heart. Her body was pale and bloated with fluid, her mouth gagged by a ribbon of scripture that wrote itself as he watched.
Her eyes were open.
She watched Ilen with pure despair.
A voice rose from behind.
"Beautiful, isn't she?"
Ilen turned.
The Womb-Eater had no true form, but it wore one now—a parody of humanity. A figure of stitched flesh, its face constantly shifting between different expressions, none lasting more than a second. Its hands had too many fingers. It bled backwards, the red mist flowing into wounds instead of out.
"She volunteered," the Womb-Eater said, stepping closer. "A dreamer who offered her soul to anchor a new one. She wanted her unborn child to live—even if she had to die dreaming it."
Ilen raised his blade.
"You're not a child. You're not a dream. You're a parasite."
The Womb-Eater tilted its head. "Is there a difference?"
It reached toward the suspended woman. "She dreamed of being a mother. I offered her a way."
Ilen stepped between them. "You're not a soul. You're a collection. Patchwork hunger. You're trying to build a self from parts that don't belong to you."
"So are you," it replied softly.
That stopped him.
"You're not a person, Ilen. You're a contradiction. You walk with another man's memories. Your body wasn't born. Your choices aren't truly yours. How are you different from me?"
He said nothing.
The Word-Knife pulsed in his hand.
"You sever," the Womb-Eater said. "I stitch. We're both surgeons. Let me show you what we could be—together."
It stepped back.
And the anchor screamed.
The umbilicals burned red, the fluid in her body boiling. She thrashed in the air, unable to break free.
The chamber shook.
"She's dreaming the harbor into existence," the Womb-Eater said, its body distorting. "Kill her—and you collapse the entire echo. Everyone here dies. Every soul fragment lost."
Ilen raised the knife.
"But if you cut the bindings," the Womb-Eater continued, "she survives. And so do I. I become real. A child born from willing sacrifice."
Ilen hesitated.
"Isn't that what you want, Echo-Walker? A purpose? A name of your own?"
The Word-Knife began to dim.
He lowered it.
The woman looked at him.
Her eyes—pleading.
Tears ran upward into her brow as the dream reversed itself.
Ilen whispered.
"I'm sorry."
And threw the blade.
Not at her.
At the wall.
At the scripture.
The blade struck the glyphs holding her bindings in place—the dream-code sustaining the Womb-Eater's echo-loop.
And severed it.
Reality cracked.
The woman collapsed.
The umbilicals withered into ash.
The chamber screamed.
The Womb-Eater staggered, its form unraveling, bits of memory and stolen soul spilling like smoke.
"You fool!" it shrieked. "She was the dream! You killed the harbor—!"
"I freed her," Ilen said.
And the ceiling fell.
He awoke on the Archive floor, coughing mist from his lungs.
Uel knelt nearby, one hand on his shoulder.
"You collapsed the echo."
"She's free," Ilen said hoarsely. "The anchor's soul—it was never meant to hold that thing."
Uel nodded. "I saw it from my side. Beautiful work."
The Librarian stepped into view, her mismatched eyes flickering with approval.
"Two distortions neutralized. One consumed. The balance holds—barely."
Ilen sat up. "It won't stop, will it?"
"No," she said quietly. "The Womb-Eater will try again. With a new soul. A new city. A new false god."
Ilen looked down at his arms.
Symbols glowed beneath the skin.
"Then I'll sever them all."