The Wheel did not spin.
It pulsed.
A low-frequency hum trembled through the Field like a buried heartbeat, shaking every stone platform and fractured stair. Fog rose upward, not downward, and from the cracks beneath it, something clawed its way into existence.
Saylor stepped forward. He didn't need a system message to know what was coming.
"This one isn't being summoned," he said. "It's remembering itself."
Lucia drew her chain. Brant stood beside her, one eye twitching from the aftereffects of his mirrored self.
Then the fog parted.
And Myrix rose.
MYRIX, THE VOICE-FILLED STILLNESS
Not a god with flesh. A shape made of mouths. Hundreds. Thousands. Layered over a humanoid silhouette that flickered with each syllable it whispered.
It did not speak. It replayed.
The final screams of dead players.
The sobs of the Remnants.
The last words of gods that had fallen before.
Brant flinched. "It's using their voices."
Lucia clenched her teeth. "It's not talking to us. It's trying to undo us."
[FIELD CONDITION: VOICE CYCLE ACTIVE][GOD 4 MANIFESTED: MEMORY-BASED HOST FORMATION]
Saylor activated Echoshard. The result was immediate.
A flood of noise. Names. Arguments. Battles.
A girl crying, "Don't make me spin it again!"
A boy whispering, "I won… why do I still feel dead?"
Then a memory pulse slammed into him.
Flashback Fragment: Unknown Cycle
He was standing in a different Field. Red skies. Black roots. Spinning a rusted Wheel alone.
"I remember this," he whispered.
And Myrix responded in his own voice: "I remember this."
[WARNING: ECHO LOOP INITIATED][MENTAL INTEGRITY: 82% AND DROPPING]
Lucia activated Temporal Anchor. A ring of stabilizing energy pulsed outward, halting the recursive effect.
Saylor gasped. "It's not just showing memories. It's weaponizing them."
Brant shouted into the storm of voices.
"Shut up! That's not my voice! That's not my--"
But the echo finished for him.
"--my fault. I died before I mattered."
Saylor activated Reverent Link.
[MEMORY FRAGMENT: SYAL — UNSUCCESSFUL GODLING]
A flicker of energy formed around him. A burned silhouette. A girl with no face, but words carved into her arms:
I refused silence. Let me be it.
[NEW ABILITY UNLOCKED: SILENCE PULSE](Emit a suppression wave that nullifies god-tier vocal abilities for 8 seconds.)
Saylor stepped forward. The mouths around Myrix shrieked.
"You are not meant to silence us."
"No," he said. "But I'm not meant to survive either."
He activated Silence Pulse.
The Field went still.
Truly still.
No whispers. No memories. Only breath.
Lucia surged forward, chain blazing. She lashed it through Myrix's midsection and looped it around its legs.
"Hold!"
Brant threw his body into the creature's collapsing echo-form, pushing it into the anchor ring.
The mouths convulsed. Shuddered. Froze.
[VOICE FIELD INTERRUPTED][GOD THREAD UNRAVELING]
And then Myrix did something no god had done before.
It forgot itself.
The mouths fell silent. The shape lost cohesion. It became a blur of white noise and vanished.
No system message. No reward.
The Wheel did not spin.
Only one message floated in the air, dripping like ink:
[THE GAME IS REMEMBERING TOO MUCH]
Lucia stood trembling. "We just erased a god."
Saylor didn't smile.
He looked at the sky, now cracked with fissures of light and shadow.
"No," he said. "We gave it what it feared most."
"Oblivion."