*Day 13 - The Forgotten Foundry*
The Foundry didn't have walls. It had suggestions of walls—places where reality grew thick enough to imply boundaries. Walking through them was like pushing through syrup made of screams.
"This is deeply unpleasant," S'pun-duh said, pulling fungal matter from his beard that had started growing spontaneously upon entry. "Even my spores are disturbed."
Ora didn't respond. She couldn't. The corruption in her veins was singing—no, screaming—in harmony with whatever powered this place. Every step deeper made her feel more like herself and less like herself simultaneously.
The architecture was impossible. Stairs that went up led down. Doors that opened inward also opened outward. The ceiling was the floor was the walls was nothing at all.
"Welcome!"
Vorgoth stood in what might have been a workshop or an operating theatre or a temple. Tools that shouldn't exist lay on tables made of crystallized time. And there, in the center—
The God-Eater.
It was smaller than Ora expected. A sphere maybe three meters across, surface like oil on water, constantly shifting between states of matter. But she could feel its hunger from here—vast, patient, inevitable.
"You're earlier than expected," Vorgoth said, wiping his hands on an apron that might have been leather or might have been something worse. "I haven't finished preparing the ceremony."
"Where is Vash'nil?" Ora's voice came out in harmonics that made reality flinch.
"Ah, straight to business. I appreciate that." Vorgoth gestured to a corner that hadn't existed until he pointed at it.
The dragon egg—no, not egg anymore. Vash'nil had hatched but wrong. He was crystal and flesh and light and void all at once, suspended in a cage of his own solidified screams. His eyes—too many eyes—tracked everything and nothing.
"What did you do to him?"
"I gave him purpose. Before, he was just potential. Now he's interface. The bridge between my God-Eater and reality itself." Vorgoth's tone was conversational, like discussing weather. "Children adapt so much better than adults, don't you think?"
Ora took a step toward the cage. The Foundry shifted, putting infinite distance between them.
"Ah ah," Vorgoth waggled a finger. "Not yet. We have a schedule to keep. Malakor!"
The broken weapon emerged from shadows that had depth in too many dimensions. Half dragon, half human, all wrong. His movements were jerky, like a marionette with tangled strings.
"Father," Malakor said, and the word carried infinite hatred and infinite love braided together.
"Show our guest to her position."
Malakor moved toward Ora. As he passed, he whispered—not with voice but directly into her corruption: *Ask me about Mother now.*
"Malakor," Ora said loudly, "tell me about your mother."
The effect was immediate. Malakor stopped mid-step. His face—faces—cycled through expressions too fast to track.
"Mother?" The word cracked reality slightly. "Mother sang. Mother had hands that could hold broken birds until they remembered how to fly. Mother tried to stop Father from—from—"
"SILENCE." Vorgoth's voice carried command that bypassed free will.
But Malakor was already fracturing, the memory breaking his programming.
"She tried to stop you from making me. You killed her for it. Slowly. Made me watch. Made me help." Each word came out in a different voice—child, dragon, angel, monster. "You said it would make me stronger."
"It did," Vorgoth said simply.
"No." Malakor turned to face his father, and for a moment, all his aspects aligned. "It made me broken in exactly the shape you needed."
He moved—not attack exactly, more like gravitating toward his father with murderous intent. But Vorgoth simply raised a hand, and Malakor froze.
"Disappointing," Vorgoth said. "I'll have to recalibrate you later. For now—" He snapped his fingers.
Malakor's body moved without his control, grabbing Ora and dragging her toward the God-Eater. She could have resisted, but she saw something in his eyes—a plan behind the pain.
As they moved, he pressed something into her hand. A key made of crystallized memory. His mother's last song, compressed into solid form.
"The cage," he managed to whisper. "It opens with grief perfectly pitched."
Then they were at the God-Eater, and Vorgoth was speaking words that predated language, and reality began to thin.
---
**Meanwhile: The Dragons Gather**
Aetherios felt it the moment Ora entered the Foundry. Every dragon did. A wrongness so profound it made their guilt seem like comfort.
"She's there," he announced to the assembled dragons—all eighteen who remained free. "The Ashkore has entered the trap."
"We should attack," Umbraxis growled. "Burn it all. End this."
"And trigger the God-Eater ourselves?" Silenus shook his ancient head. "That's what Vorgoth wants. Dragon fire would catalyze the reaction faster than anything."
"Then what do we do?"
It was Vashtirel who answered, the female dragon who'd lost three hatchlings to previous wars. "We sing."
The others looked at her in confusion.
"The Dragon Chorus," she explained. "Not for destruction. For creation. For harmony. We sing the song Vash'nil would have learned if he'd grown properly. We give him the memory of what he should have been."
"That's... that might work," Silenus said slowly. "But the Chorus requires all nineteen. We're missing—"
"Pyrrhus." Aetherios spread his wings. "He's bound to the Abyss, but the binding has limits. If we call him, truly call him, he must answer."
"The Leviathans won't release him."
"They will if we offer something better." Aetherios's eyes were grim. "We offer them what they've always wanted—a dragon's voluntary transformation into their kind."
Silence. What he suggested was heresy. Dragons were sky. Leviathans were depth. To willingly become the other was worse than death.
"I'll do it," Thargolion said quietly. "I'm old. Tired. My guilt weighs more than my wings can carry. Let me have this purpose."
"Thargolion—"
"It's decided." The ancient red dragon spread his wings one last time. "Call our youngest home. I'll pay his price."
---
**In the Foundry: The Activation**
Vorgoth was drawing symbols in the air—not with light but with absence of light. Each symbol carved away a piece of reality, revealing the nothing underneath.
"You see," he explained as he worked, "the God-Eater doesn't actually eat. It remembers. It remembers the state before states, the choice before choices. And with the right catalyst—" he looked at Ora, "—it can make everything remember that too."
"Why?" Ora asked. "Why unmake everything?"
"Because 'everything' is broken. Has been since the first consciousness decided it was separate from the whole. Every war, every cruelty, every suffering—they all stem from that first mistake. The mistake of individuality."
"That's not a mistake. That's existence."
"Exactly." Vorgoth completed his symbol. "Existence is the mistake."
The God-Eater pulsed. Its surface rippled, reaching toward Ora with tendrils of un-light.
"But you're special," Vorgoth continued. "You're already partially unmade. Corrupted. Balanced between states. You can guide the unmaking. Ensure it happens properly. Peacefully."
"And if I refuse?"
"Then I activate it without you, and the unmaking is chaos. Painful. Eternal screaming as everything forgets how to be." He shrugged. "Your choice. Guided apocalypse or chaotic one."
Ora felt the God-Eater pulling at her. Not physically—existentially. It wanted to know her, to understand her state of being that wasn't quite being.
Behind Vorgoth, Malakor was moving again, puppet-strings loosened while his father focused on the ritual. He was approaching Vash'nil's cage.
"Choose," Vorgoth said. "Guide the ending or let it run wild."
Ora looked at the God-Eater. At Vash'nil. At Malakor fighting his own body to reach the cage. At S'pun-duh, who'd somehow covered half the room in aggressive fungal growth while everyone was distracted.
"I choose," she said, stepping toward the God-Eater.
But as she moved, she began to sing.
Not with her voice—voices lie. With her corruption. With the part of her that remembered being pure and the part that had forgotten. She sang Lyra's last song, the one her sister had been composing about bridging all differences through music.
The God-Eater hesitated.
That hesitation was all Malakor needed. He reached the cage and pressed his mother's crystallized song against the lock.
The grief was perfect. Pure. The exact frequency of loss without hope of recovery.
The cage shattered.
Vash'nil fell—not physically, but through states of being. Dragon to light to void to flesh to something new.
And in that moment of transformation, he heard something impossible.
Dragons. Singing. All of them, even Pyrrhus from beneath leagues of ocean. The Chorus restored, not for destruction but for welcome. Singing him home.
"No!" Vorgoth spun, realizing too late what was happening.
But Vash'nil was already changing. Not into weapon, not into battery, but into what he was meant to be—a dragon who'd survived the impossible. Who'd been broken and rebuilt and broken and rebuilt until breaking itself became strength.
He opened his mouth—so many mouths—and screamed.
Not sound. Pure force. The crystallized agony of months of torture released all at once.
The scream hit the God-Eater, and something unprecedented happened.
It cracked.
---
**The Unraveling**
A crack in something that exists between states shouldn't be possible. But Vash'nil's scream—the perfect frequency of suffering transformed into defiance—had done the impossible.
The God-Eater began to leak.
Not physically. Conceptually. Ideas bled out—half-formed thoughts about reality, probability waves that couldn't decide whether to collapse, the dreams of never-were gods.
"What did you do?" Vorgoth's composure finally broke. "WHAT DID YOU DO?"
"We gave him what you never could," Ora said, her hand on Sussurro-Vel's hilt. "A choice."
The Foundry began to shake. Not earthquake—reality-quake. The walls that weren't walls started forgetting their suggestions. The floor that was also ceiling began averaging into nothing.
"You've doomed everything!" Vorgoth pulled out tools that hurt to perceive. "I'll have to accelerate the process. Force the activation before—"
Malakor hit him. Not with fist or claw but with everything he was—all his broken pieces moving in temporary unity. Father and son crashed through several dimensions of wall, locked in combat that was part physical, part existential.
"Ora!" Kaelen appeared in a doorway that definitely hadn't been there before. Behind him, Marcus and others—survivors who'd been hiding in the Foundry's forgotten corners. "We need to leave! Now!"
"Not without him." Ora moved toward Vash'nil, who was still transforming, still becoming.
The young dragon looked at her with eyes that held too much pain for something so young. But also—hope? Recognition?
"Ash-kore," he said, voice like grinding glass. "Sister-self. Broken-but-whole."
She reached out, and he reached back, and when their hands-claws-concepts touched—
Light.
Not light.
The absence of darkness? The presence of possibility?
The God-Eater's crack widened, and through it, something looked back. Something vast and patient and older than existence.
The real God-Eater. The one in the Aetherium.
It had noticed its broken copy.
It was curious.
It began to reach through—
---
**The Convergence**
"NO!" Vorgoth's scream cut through dimensions as he threw Malakor aside. "You don't understand what you've done!"
For once, he was right.
The real God-Eater's attention was like being looked at by the concept of ending itself. Not hostile. Not benevolent. Just... aware. And its awareness changed things.
Reality began to average. The Foundry, already unstable, started calculating the mean between existing and not existing. Walls became half-there. Gravity negotiated with itself. Time flowed in all directions simultaneously.
"We need to close the crack!" Vorgoth was scrambling for tools, for solutions, for anything. "If the real one fully manifests—"
"Everything returns to potential," Ora finished. "I know."
She did know. The corruption in her veins, her nature balanced between life and death, let her understand what others couldn't. The God-Eater wasn't evil. It was just... thorough. It would unmake everything not because it hated existence, but because that was its purpose. Like winter ending spring. Natural. Inevitable.
Unless.
"Vash'nil," she said, turning to the young dragon. "Can you scream again?"
The broken dragon tilted his heads—he had three now, each one slightly out of phase with the others. "Hurts," he said simply.
"I know. But your scream, it has the frequency of suffering transformed. It's the opposite of what the God-Eater does. It takes pain and makes it into defiance. Takes ending and makes it into beginning."
"Can't. Too tired. Too empty."
Ora knelt beside him, and for the first time since her corruption, she did something she thought impossible.
She shared.
Not took. Not corrupted. Shared.
The corruption flowed between them, but gently. She gave him some of her strength, her rage, her purpose. And in return, she took some of his pain. Not all—that would kill them both. But enough.
Enough that he could stand.
Enough that he could breathe.
Enough that he could scream one more time.
But this time, he wouldn't scream alone.
"Everyone!" Ora called out. "Everyone who's suffered, everyone who's lost, everyone who's been broken—scream with us!"
Kaelen understood first. The scholar who could no longer lie opened his mouth and screamed his truth—terror and determination mixed.
Marcus joined, screaming for his lost family.
S'pun-duh's scream was subsonic, fungal networks resonating across miles.
Even Malakor, broken weapon, added his voice—a harmony of all his fractured selves.
And above, though they couldn't hear it directly, the dragons sang. Not their attack-song, but something older. A lamentation. A recognition that sometimes breaking is the only way to become whole.
The combined sound hit the crack in the false God-Eater.
And something impossible happened.
It began to heal.
Not seal—heal. The crack filled with something new. Not the original material, not emptiness, but scar tissue made of transformed suffering. Stronger than what had been before.
The real God-Eater, watching through the narrowing gap, did something that might have been approval. Or curiosity. Or nothing at all.
Then the gap closed, and it was gone.
The false God-Eater fell silent, inert. Not destroyed but changed. No longer a weapon of unmaking but a monument to the possibility of remaking.
Vorgoth stood in the ruins of his life's work, staring at the scarred sphere.
"You've ruined everything," he said quietly. "The world will continue to suffer. Wars will continue. Death will continue. There will be no peace."
"No," Ora agreed. "But there will be choice."
"Choice." He laughed, bitter and broken. "Choice is what caused all of this. If beings couldn't choose cruelty—"
"They also couldn't choose kindness," Kaelen interrupted. "I can't lie anymore, Vorgoth. I paid that price for truth. And the truth is, a world without choice isn't peace. It's death."
Vorgoth looked at them all—these broken, scarred, transformed beings who'd stopped his perfect plan.
"You'll regret this," he said. "When the next war comes, when the next genocide happens, when suffering continues endlessly—you'll regret this."
"Maybe," Ora said. "But that's our choice to make."
Vorgoth raised his hand, power gathering for one final strike—
Malakor's blade went through his chest from behind.
"Mother would have chosen their way," Malakor said softly. "She would have chosen the messy, painful, beautiful possibility of choice."
Vorgoth looked down at the blade, then at his son. "You were supposed to be perfect."
"I know," Malakor said. "I'm sorry I'm not."
Vorgoth fell, and as he died, he whispered something only Malakor could hear: "So am I."
---
**The Aftermath**
The Foundry began to collapse—not violently but wearily. Like it was tired of existing in impossible ways and just wanted to rest.
"We need to leave," Kaelen said. "Now."
They ran—or whatever movement meant in a space where direction was negotiable. Ora carried Vash'nil, the young dragon too exhausted to move. Malakor carried his father's body, refusing to leave it behind.
They burst out into normal reality just as the Foundry folded in on itself, becoming a point, then nothing, then less than nothing.
Where it had been, only a crater remained. But not a normal crater—one filled with flowers. Impossible flowers that grew from corrupted soil, each one unique, each one wrong, each one beautiful.
The dragons landed around them, eighteen massive forms creating a circle.
"The child," Aetherios said, his voice careful. "Is he...?"
"I'm broken," Vash'nil said from Ora's arms. "But I'm also whole. Does that make sense?"
"More than you know," Silenus replied.
Pyrrhus landed last, still dripping from his ascent from the Abyss. Behind him, a massive form rose from the ocean—not Thargolion anymore, but something between dragon and leviathan. The price of freedom paid.
"It's done then?" Pyrrhus asked. "The God-Eater?"
"Transformed," Ora said. "Like everything else. Like all of us."
She set Vash'nil down, and he tried to stand on legs that remembered being vapor. The dragons moved to help, but he raised a wing—just one, the others were still forming.
"I need to learn," he said. "To be broken and whole. To be what I am now."
"We all do," Ora said.
She looked at them all—dragons who'd destroyed her world, companions who'd walked into hell with her, enemies who'd become something else.
"What now?" S'pun-duh asked. "The world's still ending, just slower. The Distillers are still out there. Everything's still broken."
"Now," Ora said, touching Sussurro-Vel's hilt, feeling the blade's acceptance of this imperfect peace, "we do what broken things do. We continue. We choose. We become whatever we become."
"That's not much of a plan," Marcus said.
"No," Ora agreed. "But it's honest."
Above them, the sun set through clouds that couldn't decide if they were rain or snow or something else entirely. The world was still wrong. Still corrupted. Still dying.
But also still choosing to continue.
In the crater where the Foundry had been, the impossible flowers bloomed in defiance of everything that said they couldn't.
Just like everyone standing around them.
---
*End Chapter 14*
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