Act 3, Chapter 114: The Harp (Patreon)

Day in the story: 1st February (Sunday), past 7:00 a.m.—approximately 9 hours and 21 minutes remain until the record time is lost

Alexandra May

Sophie stayed at the entrance, watching me disappear into the tunnel without a trace of hesitation. She didn't call after me, didn't offer one more word of encouragement. She simply stood there, her unwavering faith following me farther than her voice ever could.

I wished I had that same certainty.

I was grateful for the strength she'd lent me, but my own confidence fell far short of absolute. The Shadow World had taught me too much to cling to comforting illusions. Shadows weren't simple echoes or reflections—they were people too, beings with hearts capable of changing, growing and choosing on their own. However much Ali and I shared, she wasn't merely another version of me waiting to be understood. She was herself, caught in this delicate dance with me, one where we both led and let ourselves be led in turn. Sophie believed I'd find what I was looking for in here regardless, and somehow that belief filled in the places where my own resolve went shaky, letting me move forward with my head held just a little higher.

The tunnel welcomed me with a virtuous melody, strings playing along to the tune of the wind.

Builder spiders covered every surface, their countless tiny bodies clinging effortlessly to walls and ceiling alike, unbothered by gravity as they kept weaving the immense living structure. One after another, they paused to watch me pass, their paper-like eyes tracking my every step with innocent curiosity before turning back to their endless work. Threads of silk stretched in every direction, catching streams of colorful shadowlight that flowed through them like liquid rainbow. Every filament glowed with gentle hues, violets melting into blues, emeralds fading into gold, until the darkness itself turned soft and inviting instead of empty. Without the spiders, the heart of the instrument would have been swallowed by shadow. Instead, they'd turned it into something like the night sky woven into tangible form.

Barely half a minute of being carried brought me into the instrument's heart.

I stopped for a moment, just to take it in.

What had once been little more than an intended meeting place, somewhere I planned to gather with anyone reckless enough to join me in my schemes, had turned into something breathtaking. An immense spherical chamber unfolded around me, every inch wrapped in layer upon layer of immaculate white silk, reflecting the spiders' shadowlight until the whole hall shimmered with a pearlescent glow. The walls curved so perfectly that it felt less like standing inside a room and more like finding myself in the hollow interior of some melodious cocoon, waiting patiently for a miracle yet to hatch.

The broad tunnel I'd entered through remained the largest opening, and through it flowed a steady breeze carrying the fresh scent of the outside world. It brushed against my skin, cool enough to raise goosebumps before slipping past with the quiet whisper of moving silk. Around the chamber, nearly two dozen other tunnels branched off in every direction. Some were barely wider than a single builder spider. Others were wide enough for whole caravans of arachnids to pass through at once. Each entrance could be sealed with a delicately woven trapdoor, blended so seamlessly into the surrounding silk they looked like flower petals folded shut, waiting for the right moment to bloom. Each one had its own group of assigned workers, and they started operating them to shape the music the second my minions' legs carried me into the middle of it all.

The countless strands stretched taut around me sang beneath the touch of the wind. Every draft that entered through one tunnel and escaped through another plucked the immense web like the strings of a harp beyond mortal imagination alone, while the tiny movements of the builder spiders added harmonies too intricate for any orchestra to reproduce. Together they rose into a single, ever-growing melody that filled the spherical chamber, as though music itself had become a tangible thing woven into the silk.

The first note found me in the tips of my toes.

It was a delicate tingling that seeped through my feet before slowly climbing my legs. It rolled over my ankles and calves like warm water, reached my knees, then continued upward with patient inevitability until every muscle hummed in quiet resonance. At the same time another current began in my fingertips, spreading through my hands, wrists, and forearms before flowing across my shoulders and collarbones. Those countless tiny vibrations wandered through every inch of me until, as though guided by an invisible conductor, they converged within my chest.

The moment they met, the entire world resonated.

The sensation struck with such overwhelming intensity that my breath caught. My body vibrated in perfect sympathy with the colossal instrument surrounding me, every heartbeat finding itself woven into its rhythm until I could no longer distinguish which pulse belonged to me and which belonged to the chamber. I slid from the armchair onto the pale silk below, where the webbing yielded gently beneath my weight, cradling rather than catching me.

Only then did I truly perceive the rhythm that permeated the chamber.

The spiders that had carried me hurried forward, and through their many eyes I caught sight of myself. The necklace resting against my chest trembled violently, three of the five pearls singing in harmony with the web around me. Shadowlight leaked from it in shimmering wisps, not as a steady glow but as though the music itself shook the radiance loose from within the silver dragon, allowing it to drift across my skin like luminous mist.

Builder spiders descended from the surrounding walls the instant I touched the silk. They came in dozens, then hundreds, raising their foremost legs as one. There was no panic in their movements, only quiet resolve. They placed themselves between me and the minions who had carried me here, gently but unmistakably driving them back until they retreated from the chamber altogether.

I could not stop them, but I would not attempt to do so even if I was able. If this was what the chamber had been built for, I wanted to see it through to the end, even if that end turned out to be mine.

The music deepened around me.

It no longer entered through my ears alone. It flowed through the countless tiny hairs upon my skin, through my bones, through every thread of silk beneath me. For the first time, my body felt the same way my spider creations experience every waking moment. The web became another sense entirely, a world perceived through vibration, where every movement carried meaning and every note painted an image far richer than sight could ever offer.

I surrendered to it completely.

Time dissolved into the melody. Moments stretched until they seemed eternal, while eternity itself collapsed into a single sustained note. I could no longer tell whether seconds or hours had passed before the chamber quietly vanished around me.

Light so complete it erased the very idea of shape swallowed me whole. It closed in from every direction until sight itself stopped existing, washing away not just my vision but every borrowed sense I had. The spiders' perceptions went first, then all my Personas, every painted eye and ear, every brain with its quiet calculations, then my own awareness of the chamber, the wind, the silk, even the weight of my own body.

I floated within absolute brilliance and it was the most complete isolation I had ever known. And yet, strangely, it was not lonely. For the first time in what felt like forever, there were no expectations pressing upon me, no burdens to carry, no roles to fulfill. The countless voices that usually occupied my thoughts had fallen silent. The world's demands no longer reached me.

There was only me. Nothing more. Nothing less.

And that state of me lasted some time. It stretched and thinned within the light until a shadow appeared, like a smear of charcoal on white paper. Just vague shapes and an outline of pure black against equally clear white. It too was me—broken and destroyed from head to toe as I landed within the Domain, which itself was shown only as mellowed-out shapes, contours, and suggestions rather than anything definitive.

I barely moved after the materialization that placed me there. Somehow, I understood the situation as a memory, of what had happened. Of me coming here after Robbie had almost killed me, after I had almost ended him in his own house before he got away.

Within that black-and-white representation, I saw my heart beating inside those shapes. They undulated, breaking the lines that constituted me, and with every beat there came a distortion that slowed the overall cadence. When I finally lay on the bed to rest, to regain my strength, that beating soon stopped entirely. I died then.

With my death, the eternal whiteness surrounding me began cracking, and I too felt like I was dying, my very essence seeping away through those cracks. It was in that moment that I realized whose memories I was witnessing.

I, as Ali within the soul core, emitted a pulse of some kind. It ran throughout the Domain like a black wave, revealing the shapes of things within. Just outlines in charcoal before they dissolved back into the cracking, ever-present whiteness.

I panicked. I suffocated while watching the body on the bed lie dead and unbreathing. I felt my connection to it breaking with every passing second, and as it weakened, I too was dying.

But with the pulse I had sent, something replied from within my world. It spoke in the language of restoration, of bringing back, of restoring and healing. Yet with those voices came others that shouted alongside them. They were discordant. They spoke over one another, out of tune, painful. Beneath them came another set still that thought in shapes, outlines, rules, and control.

I saw it painted in broad black lines now, that necklace of a dragon and its eggs. It wanted to be captured. It wanted to no longer be alone. And it offered a solution.

Out of options, I reached for it, accepting the price, binding it to myself in a furious attempt. Immediately I was fighting with the other cores. There were spirits within them too, trapped and wanting out, leashed by the dragon that held them, ruled by him, and yet he was willing to listen to me.

The others hated me for it. They mocked me and prayed for my demise, for their own release from this unyielding grasp. Their other halves had never reached for them to reclaim them. They suffered.

I reached for one among that pitiful crowd and subjugated it anyway, despite its protests. My soul cried while doing so. I felt like I would never have done this before if not for the connection to my evil twin and the influence she had on me, for her selfishness and relentless will to survive.

If it had been just me, I would have accepted my demise. But here I was, faced with her death, and I followed her morals, forcing another to do my bidding.

I shaped the power in my spiritual fingers, guided it out of me and into her unmoving body lying still on the bed. I poured as much as I could from the hateful vessel that wished me oblivion with every passing second until the shapes started stirring again and the heart restarted.

That restoration repaired whatever was absolutely necessary, but it fought me over everything else. Out of mercy, and against the ruthlessness my other self would have chosen, I let it go. The crack disappeared over the moments that followed. With every soulbeat of mine the Domain that was I healed too.

She fought when she woke up, moving in and out of my territory, seeking further healing. She remade herself to be less mobile, but healthier in the process, and her mind accepted it because it was set on other goals again. Always seeking something more than she already had, never accepting that what was, was enough.

And in that inglorious pursuit, she reached for the new power that animated things. It was like a wave that existed within me. She molded it in her fingers, guiding the Authority I offered and sending it, willed and shaped as she desired, into the empty vessel. In doing that, she awakened part of herself to exist as both her and something else.

That's when the shouting one struck. With his hateful voice, his commands reached the delicate strands of Shadowlight that carried the necessary Authority and moved them ever so slightly out of tune. Over the following days, he did the same with everything she created, nudging it away from harmony whenever she played upon those cosmic strings.

That new leg she bound to herself became a constant struggle. A strained connection whose melody was always just a few notes shy of what it should have been. Always part of her. Always there to support her. Yet also there to strip away the movement it was meant to provide.

Each time she needed it most, wanted it most, sought to have Authority over herself or another part of herself, she played the wrong strings. And as they were struck, they reached back for her as well, throwing the power into discord.

I reached for the healer, pleading. He was not malicious like the discordant one, but he refused to be taken advantage of any longer. He would heal when it was absolutely necessary, but he no longer wished to be a slave.

Sigils was different, more willing in the help she offered. She had surrendered any attempt at restoring herself to her previous owner long ago. Instead, she offered a solution. A way to reach beyond the crystal and to my hurting half.

I was to build a complicated three-dimensional sigil of sound and, through it, reach her and share my memories.

I sent another pulse throughout the Domain, and it washed over the minions my other self had already created. I borrowed that design and let it permute through my ability to conjure life within myself. With it, I began creating those who would answer only to my wishes, only to my will.

They ventured into the woods and carried back the necessary fragments to create this crucible. With their glands, they spun silk to bind it all together, shaping it into the sigil it was meant to become, guiding the air in ways that painted it with sound and vibration.

I moved farther along the timeline. I saw another shape outside this place, yet still connected to me, and I felt danger reaching for her. Once again, I had no choice. Because I loved her so very much, I pressed against the discordant one with a fury I hadn't known I possessed. The bullet meant for her head turned in the air, curved, and struck me instead—so close to the heart. I bloomed in white. I bled blackness.

But in those final moments, I reached for the healer once more and forced from him what was necessary, mending the shattered chest and leaving Sophia for my other self to guide out of further danger.

I met her later within me. It was brief, but sweet. My little bloom. My love, forever. I spoke with her and told her about the three that held me in the binding—that I struggle against—knowing that, with what she possessed, Alexandra would find the truth.

It was difficult to find the right words. My mind, shattered and torn apart at the moment of my creation, had left me little more than an imbecile. And yet I made it. I am here now.

"You are here now."

"Thank you." I was back within my own frame of mind, out of the memory, but something within me had changed forever. There had always been a connection between the past captured by the mind and the art already, but this experience changed me. It forced me to see it in a truer form. A more genuine one.

"It is but a show," she said slowly. I felt her rather than saw her. More spider now than human, at least according to her own self-image. She had always seen herself as an artist and a helper, someone who built connections between people through her care and her art. "There is still... no. There are still adjustments to be made."

"Adjustments? To the Shadowlight links?"

"Yes. To bring them to the right tune."

"How?"

"Stay here. The Harp will make them for you now."

"That's great!"

"It's... temporary. Problems will return later..."

"Can I readjust them again?"

"Yes, but I am bound and can't break... it. Need your help."

"Of course. How can I help?"

"The Harp is not finished. It will... become a bridge. To those that are bound."

"To the other Domains? To enter them?"

"Yes... I need you to free them from the Dragon's grasp. I feel it's only fair, for what... they gave us. Please."

"I can also just destroy them, or the link, or the necklace if I have enough strength, right?"

"Right... reasons. That's... what Sophia said. It's time for doing the... right thing too." I felt her response and, at the same time, wanted to exhale, but I lacked a body to do so. My instinct was to choose the shorter path, but she was right. I should try to give back what I had been offered, even knowing it was Discord who had worked so tirelessly against me. He had saved Sophie with his power, even if he hadn't wanted to and had been forced to do so.

"Fine. I will do it. I feel like we have a lot to talk about."

“We… do.”