Chapter 1560: Story 1560: Shards of the Gate

The survivors clung to the jagged light, their breaths ragged, their voices cracked raw. The boy’s song still threaded them together, but its grip was tenuous, fragile as glass. Every pulse of his note cost them more of themselves.

And the Unborn knew it.

The fissure above convulsed, black storms churning inside its depths. Then—without warning—it struck. Not with voice this time, but with force.

A shard of shadow, jagged as obsidian, tore from the Gate and hurled downward like a spear. It slammed into the lattice, splintering sparks across the battlefield. The survivors screamed as the impact rattled through their minds, shattering their borrowed harmony.

The widow staggered, clutching her temples. “It’s breaking us—splitting the song apart!”

Kael raised his blade, its glow flaring in rhythm with the boy’s faint heartbeat. “Hold! Don’t let it shatter—feed the chains!”

But feeding the chains meant giving more of themselves, and they were already spent.

Another shard fell, ripping a gash through the lattice. This time, the farmer collapsed, blood streaming from his ears as his voice faltered. His grief-thread snapped, and with it, part of the choir’s strength dimmed.

The scarred woman snarled, grabbing her spear again. “He’ll kill us one by one until nothing’s left! The boy is the crack—if we close him off, the Gate closes with him!”

“No!” Elara screamed, shielding the child even as his body writhed with the song’s backlash. Her arms shook violently, but her voice poured into the lattice, trembling but defiant. “You are not a crack, my love. You are the light that binds the breaks.”

Her words steadied the boy. His eyes fluttered open, blazing dimly with two lights at once. He lifted a shaking hand toward the fissure, and for a heartbeat the shards froze midair, quivering as if caught in invisible strings.

The survivors felt it—a reversal. The boy wasn’t just singing into the chains. He was pulling the shards into himself, absorbing them into his jagged melody.

Kael’s heart clenched. “No, boy. Don’t—you’ll tear yourself apart.”

But the child didn’t stop. His voice wavered, rising above the chaos, weaving the shadow shards into the lattice like stitches of darkness. Where the Unborn struck, he answered not with rejection, but with inclusion.

The lattice flared brighter, reforged by wound and scar alike. The survivors gasped as the song steadied again—but at a price. The boy’s small body arched in Elara’s arms, smoke rising from his skin as though he was burning from the inside out.

The Unborn’s voice thundered, no longer mocking but furious. “You twist my essence into your feeble choir? Then drown in it! I will hammer until the song itself devours you!”

Another volley of shards rained down. This time the survivors met them head-on, voices ragged but unbroken, their song clashing against the storm.

Kael roared above the din, his blade blazing in tandem with the child’s note. “Then let the Gate hear us—we are scars, and scars do not break!”

The battlefield burned with fractured light, the choir bracing for the storm yet to come.