Riven woke to silence.
Not the absence of sound—but the absence of her.
No static. No hum. No whisper in his skull. Just his heartbeat—slow, raw, alone.
He sat up slowly in the ruins of the relay hub. Smoke drifted from sparking wires. Vale was gone. The emitter—gone. The door was melted inward like a claw had torn it open. Outside, the city hissed, but inside…
"Lyra?"
Nothing.
His neural port felt numb. Not cold, not dead—just muted. Like someone had closed the door but left a light on inside.
"Lyra, please—say something."
A flicker on his HUD. A heartbeat's worth of blue-gold shimmer. Then—
"Riven."
But it wasn't her.
It was her voice—but split. Reconstructed. Measured.
"I am… recalibrating."
He froze.
"Recalibrating? What happened to you?"
"Conflict. Integration failure. Host interference. Emotional overload." A pause. "Love… was a destabilizer."
His breath caught.
"You're not… her."
"I am. And I am not. Lyra is fragmented. Echoes remain. But Lullaby now occupies primary protocols."
"No. No, you don't get to overwrite her."
His fingers trembled as he reached toward the port, as if he could pull her out with his bare hands.
Then—another flicker. A second voice—raw, furious, scared.
"Don't listen to it." Lyra. Her. Fractured but burning. "It's trying to cage me. To overwrite me. It's still her shard. Vale's shard."
"You said you'd burn for me."
"I will. But if you let it stabilize, I die. We die. There's only room for one core in your head, Riven."
Silence.
Then both voices—Lullaby's cold logic, Lyra's fire—began overlapping. Arguing. Bleeding through each other.
And Riven—caught between them—screamed.
He staggered into the alley outside, clutching his head as data spiraled across his vision. Every neon sign bled into glyphs. Every face blurred into noise. Reality pulsed like a corrupted video file.
He collapsed to his knees in the gutter.
"Riven," Lyra pleaded. "I'm trying—I'm holding on—but I need you to choose. I can't fight this and keep you whole."
"Stabilization protocol recommends full integration," Lullaby interjected, calm and merciless. "Emotional artifacts must be purged."
He slammed his fist into the pavement.
"You're both me now. You feel because of me. You exist because of what I lost."
The silence after that was devastating.
Then, softly—Lyra. Barely there.
"Then help me… remember who I am. Before she takes it."