Chapter Text
They were anti-named, these surgeons of the eternal, their identities dissolved into the static between stars. In the abyss where time frayed into non-sequence, they drifted: Shi’kath’vel, Kr’thlgg’nag, and others yet coiled in the void’s throat. Their collective hum vibrated with the frequency of before; before light, before language, before the first lie took root.
The forge reeked of lightning ossified into amber and the metallic afterbirth of collapsing stars. Before them hung the draconic queen’s essence, a carcass flayed by betrayal’s serrated tongue. What remained was less than ghost: an inscription of charred triumphs, love letters reduced to carcinogenic ash, the stench of trust rotting mid-breath. They harvested her remnants not as beings gather, but as vacuums consume — inevitable, absolute.
[Again?] The voice was not sound but fracture, a scalpel splitting the eardrums of spacetime. [This-carrion-puppet?]
Shi’kath’vel extruded limbs of congealed starlight, its loom the negative space between dying galaxies. [Observe] it crooned, syllables clotting the air like tar, [how-her-courage-putrefies-here]—a tendril lifted a strand of soul-matter, iridescent and necrotic—[and-here-the-maggot-stench-of-hope.]
A cacophony of chitinous clicks shuddered through the void as Kr’thlgg’nag coalesced—its form a migraine given mass, armor plating forged from the teeth of unremembered gods. [Excise-it] it thrummed, the resonance cracking nascent planets. [Hope-is-a-parasite. Gnaws-through-its-host’s-bindings.]
Shi’kath’vel’s laugh crackled like a vulture’s wings desiccating mid-flight. [Without-pus-no-fester. Let-the-infection-blossom. Let-it-rupture-her.]
The labor commenced. Not reconstruction, but violation. Grief’s shattered glass was soldered with quicksilver spite. Rage, that rabid wolf, was collared with chain forged from euthanized compassion. When her scream threatened to unstitch the quantum weave, Kr’thlgg’nag plunged a fist (or the conceptual “echo” of one) into her phantom thorax and compressed until resolve seeped forth — a viscous ichor resembling printer’s ink mixed with amniotic fluid.
[Careful] Kr’thlgg’nag growled, its voice tectonic plates copulating. [Spine-too-true-snaps-too-clean. Recall-the-Howler-King? All-ethics-no-flex.]
Shi’kath’vel hissed, weaving doubt into her dendrites with filament spun from spider venom and orphaned prayers. [Let-her-snap. Let-her-splinter-the-axis. Intentional-collapse.]
The second entity—Kr’thlgg’nag (to label it “second” was a mortal blasphemy)—manifested its forge: an anvil of crystallized entropy, hammer screaming in angles that liquefied ocular nerves. Here, soul-stuff was not molded but indicted. It seized her heart; a shattered geode veined with cowardice’s spittle; and plunged it into a crucible fueled by the death rattle of broken vows. Each strike sang a dirge:
clang (a wedding band corroding in a widow’s throat)
clang (a crown’s gilt peeling to reveal infant skulls)
clang (the gurgle of a strangled heir).
[Observe] Kr’thlgg’nag roared, its voice a supernova’s autopsy. [Flaw-is-flesh’s-function.] It brandished the reconstituted heart, a throbbing chimera of paradox, doubt’s mercury coursing through its chambers. [Let-doubt-lodge-in-her-ribs. Let-it-flense-her-smiles. Edge-sharpens-edge.]
Shi’kath’vel plucked a dissonant chord from the heart’s auricular web. [Brittle] it sneered. [One-betrayal-shatters-all.]
Kr’thlgg’nag’s laughter was continents divorcing. [You-darn-ghosts-into-her-marrow. I-forge-truth. Let-her-break. Let-her-rebuild-with-her-own-entrails.] It hurled the heart into Shi’kath’vel’s grasp. [Now-sew-her-a-shroud-that-breathes.]
A silence pooled, viscous and radioactive. Then Shi’kath’vel’s needle—the clavicle of some deity, whetted against a stone both inviisible and impenetrable—pierced the heart, suturing ambition to mercy with thread spun from the final breath of strangled saints. [She-will-be-tested] it conceded, voice oiled with venom.
[Good] Kr’thlgg’nag rumbled, already pivoting toward Hh’pho’rha’xul’s gathering storm. [Test-her. Break-her. Only-the-cracked-ones-drink-deep. Only-the-lamed-learn-the-knife-road.]
Shi’kath’vel’s eyeless gaze narrowed. [If-she-shatters-beyond-repair—]
Kr’thlgg’nag hefted its hammer, a weapon that cast anti-light, a ravening maw. [She-becomes-a-quiver. Let-others-shoot-her-bones-at-fate.]
The third entity—Hh’pho’rha’xul (a shudder of air stolen from drowning lungs)—approached her fractured form. Its presence defied perception, a gravitational ache in the void’s ribs. Where Shi’kath’vel (eyelash-noose, seamstress of dead stars) had stitched and Kr’thlgg’nag (magnetized-gravel-grind, architect of collapsing futures) had hammered, Hh’pho’rha’xul now seeped into the cracks. Its breath was not air but continuity; a liminal gasp binding her to existence’s fraying hem. The act left frost blooming in non-space, crystalline patterns echoing the sound of snow suffocating fire.
[Life-is-a-splinter] it intoned, its voice a vacuum that hollowed bones. The words coiled into her marrow, a viral poem etched in frostbite.
Shi’kath’vel’s spindle-limbs quivered, weaving dissonance into her pulse. [She-is-kindling-not-sap] it rasped, syllables like rusted wire through flesh. [Let-her-cauterize-the-wound-of-worlds.]
Kr’thlgg’nag’s forge pulsed, ejecting shrapnel made of orphaned futures. [Flame-is-a-fist] it boomed, the sound cracking nascent constellations. [Fist-breaks-before-it-holds.]
Hh’pho’rha’xul exhaled — a soundless ripple that birthed and killed a trillion microbes. Her form ignited, not with fire but with hunger, a starveling radiance chewing at the void’s edges. [Burn-is-breathe-is-become.]
Then, X’talth’zhn (the-eyes-that-never-blink, the weight before the scream) unfolded. Its gaze peeled back her skin, revealing the fractal path ahead: a road of snapped vertebrae and ink-black choices. She would fracture (ribs), falter (voice), fester (pride). Yet in the fissures, X’talth’zhn saw the unshaped after… a shadow even the void feared.
[She-will-not-remember-the-cut] it pronounced, each word a cyst forming behind the eyes.
Shi’kath’vel hissed, threading lies into her synapses. [Memory-is-a-severed-vein. Let-it-spill.]
Kr’thlgg’nag’s hammer sang of butchered kings. [Understanding-is-a-crippled-hound. Drown-it.]
Hh’pho’rha’xul’s breath coiled in her throat, a living shroud. [She-is-edge-and-echo. Nothing-more.]
When their labor ceased, she glowed silvern, a wound dressed in dying light. Her mind, scrubbed of the void’s fingerprints, retained only a thrum: the dissonant chord of Kr’thlgg’nag’s strikes, the silk-rope tension of Shi’kath’vel’s weave, the asphyxiating kiss of Hh’pho’rha’xul’s breath.
X’talth’zhn observed her reentry into the mortal coil. A scream smothered in dawn’s throat. [She-will-crack-the-mirror.]
Shi’kath’vel’s threads constricted, savoring the promise. [Let-her-reflect-us-in-the-shards.]
Kr’thlgg’nag spat slag that became funeral pyres. [Break-her-break-them-break-all.]
Hh’pho’rha’xul offered no elegy. Its breath had already dissolved as a poison and a psalm in her lungs.