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Chapter 17 - Chapter 17 — The Spiral of Years

Opening Monologue:

"When the world spins out of control, you learn that gravity is just a consensus. Time is just a feeling. And what you know is infinitely smaller than the void still waiting to swallow you whole."

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Scene 1 — The Heartspindle Crash

Lullaby didn't just fall—he descended into a nightmare built by a god with no sanity left.

The Heartspindle Reactor wasn't a chamber. It was an impossible, spiraling world inside a world. Currents of molten gold twisted upward like liquid lightning, bending around colossal machinery that pulsed like a beating heart made of metal and madness.

The instant Lullaby hit the zone, his exoskeleton screamed under the violent heat. Gravity spun him sideways, upside-down, then through angles that didn't exist in normal geometry.

The Orb Companion flickered red, fighting desperately to stabilize him, but the reactor didn't follow the rules of physics. It bent them until they snapped.

Lullaby choked for breath as the pressure clamped his chest. The air tasted like molten metal and dying stars.

He wasn't falling.

He was being spiraled.

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Scene 2 — The Warped Second

He tried activating his mag-boots, but the gravity whirlpools shredded the magnetic field instantly.

Then—everything slowed.

The Orb Companion froze mid-spin, suspended in midair like someone hit pause on reality. Lullaby felt his own heartbeat stretch into an eternity.

Time dilation.

A drop of molten gold drifted past his face for what felt like hours.

Inside that stretched moment, a memory roared through his skull:

"The Door… it was never just a lock. The core… the core is the key…"

An Elder's dying voice.

A warning from before the Calamity.

Time snapped back like a rubber band.

He was flung into a black crystalline pillar so hard his vision turned white.

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Scene 3 — The Serpents of the Core

From the molten rivers below, something enormous uncoiled.

Black, sleek, and segmented like living obsidian — an Orb Serpent.

It didn't swim through the molten flow.

It commanded it, bending micro-gravity fields with every movement. Every segment on its body glowed with molten sigils.

Its slit pupils locked on Lullaby.

The vortex around its head tightened, dragging him toward its burning jaws.

Lullaby blasted his Memory Resonance outward — not an attack, more like smashing a speaker in the Serpent's brain. Its control faltered for a heartbeat.

That was all he needed.

"Solin! Now!"

The Orb Companion slammed into the Serpent's side, collapsing its personal gravity field. The Serpent froze like stone—locked in place by its own disrupted physics.

Lullaby launched himself off the pillar, barely escaping the pull.

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Scene 4 — The Tides of Light

He landed on a narrow ledge—barely more than a strip of cooled metal.

Below him: the infinite spiral of molten chaos.

Ahead: a stark, vertical crack in the wall.

Dark, cold… and laced with glowing veins of mineral light.

The Lumen Trenches.

A sudden shift. A natural break. A vein of the world itself.

Lullaby braced himself. He surged forward, using one last burst of Resonance to stabilize the air and launch off the ledge.

He slammed into the trench's wall—freezing cold biting instantly into his scorched suit. The temperature shift made his bones rattle.

But he was safe. Ish.

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Scene 5 — The Unseen Current

He slid downward, guided by the smooth mineral walls. The glowing veins pulsed softly, like something alive and dreaming.

When he finally stopped at the base, he collapsed to his knees, gasping.

The trench was quiet. Too quiet.

The kind of silence where the world was listening.

Solin hovered beside him, glowing a curious, searching green.

Lullaby stared upward, seeing nothing but an endless vertical canyon of glowing minerals, curling far beyond sight.

He hadn't escaped into safety.

He had fallen deeper into the living anatomy of this world.

The ground hummed beneath him, the veins brightening slightly… as if acknowledging his presence.

Lullaby swallowed hard.

The journey wasn't over.

It wasn't even close.

He whispered to himself:

"…one hell down. A thousand more waiting."

And he stepped forward into the glowing dark.

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