The Mother's Thread

Astou's fingers dig into my gauntlet. Her grip burns with cold.

Above us, my water blade stagnates, heavy with the sovereign's injunctions. A single drop detaches, round, heavy. It splatters against the ruinous concrete of the Secteur Cendr.

Cut the lie. Bring me the thread.

The goddess's voice caresses the back of my skull. She claims her tithe. She wants to swallow this shimmering profile of Ndeye in her deep waters, to erase this rebellious Résonance to spare us the suffering. A maternal suffocation disguised as pity.

The weaver scrambles backward. His elbow knocks over a spool of optical fiber. He pants, leaning against the server carcasses, terrified by the impending erasure.

"Lower it."

Astou does not look at the old man. Her eyes devour her mother's face, trapped in the luminous weave.

I close my fist. The AQUA.SANCTUM obeys me reluctantly. The blade dissolves, becoming a harmless puddle around my boots.

An icy bite pierces my spine. HATHOR grows impatient. I lock my jaw.

Astou steps past me. Her combat knife slides under the incandescent filament. She severs the connection with a sharp strike. The loom shuts down, plunging the room into twilight. She winds the raw data around her palm, defying the burn of the information gnawing at her bare skin.

"She demanded a Mort Narrative," I say in a low voice. "She wants to recover this thread."

"Let her come get it."

The old man uses the shadows to flee into the flooded corridors. We let him disappear.

I raise my hand to my temple. The communication channel crackles. The water of my armor freezes against my chest, gripping my ribs like a vise of frost. How do you lie to an entity that weighs every beat of your heart?

"Target lost."

The sovereign's silence crashes down on me, massive, suffocating, laden with a promise of drowning.