Opening Monologue
"The truth is rarely a comfort.
It is often a key.
And when that key unlocks the fate of your people, you follow the whisper — even if it leads you into the realm of things that claim to repair the broken."
---
Scene 1 — The Outer Zones
Lullaby and the Orb Companion (Solin) emerged from the recessed tunnel into a region unlike anything before.
They had entered the Black Mechanus Fields (Lore 8) — the perimeter of the world's mechanical skeleton.
The air hung heavy with static and the metallic smell of charged ozone.
Colossal factory structures stretched endlessly: rusted conveyor belts, abandoned presses, massive pipes curled like dead serpents.
The land was stable… but the machinery was unpredictable, twitching like remnants of a sleeping titan.
Lullaby knew his target:
The Shadestitcher.
The rumored being that "repairs" the broken.
Solin projected a waypoint across his visor — a faint energy trail, the residue of the pure whisper carried from the Choir Caverns.
---
Scene 2 — The Trap of the Fields
Lullaby kept low, weaving between dead machines and silent production lines.
His instincts from the Inverted Wastes saved him repeatedly as uneven terrain shifted under his feet.
Then the factory itself awakened.
With a groaning seismic shudder, a skyscraper-sized hydraulic arm began to descend — slow but catastrophic.
Lullaby sprinted, diving beneath it just as the weight slammed down behind him.
But something was waiting beneath the press.
Curled in the shadows was an Orb Serpent (Bestiary 6).
Only this one was wrong — its core pulsed sickly green, its scales dim and fractured.
It lunged, eyes locking onto Lullaby's emotional wavelength, preparing to crush him with a micro-gravity burst.
---
Scene 3 — The Unstitching
Before the Serpent could strike, light cut through the darkness.
Thin, glowing threads shot down from the ceiling — binding the creature mid-air with surgical precision.
The Serpent shrieked. The threads tightened.
A figure descended after them, walking down a single tensioned thread as if strolling across a bridge.
The Shadestitcher.
A multi-limbed silhouette woven together with orbiting strands of luminous filament, its head surrounded by floating runes that radiated silent, mathematical thought.
It knelt beside the Serpent, tracing a single "stitch" of dark light across the creature's cracked core.
Instantly, the Serpent went limp — repaired, quiet, docile.
The threads lowered it to the floor like a completed piece of work.
---
Scene 4 — The Offer of Repair
The Shadestitcher turned its rune-head toward Lullaby.
Its "voice" wasn't sound — it was a cold, direct pressure inside his skull.
"The anomaly is restless.
You carry the stain of the Collector.
You are broken."
Lullaby gritted his teeth against the invasive analysis.
"I need to know where the Galabies are," he projected back.
"Tell me what 'suspended in the vessel' means."
The Shadestitcher lifted a limb.
Threads swirled, weaving a floating diagram — complex, beautiful, incomprehensible.
"Your query is inefficient.
Your form is fractured.
I can mend the corruption.
I can replace the memory of sorrow with the certainty of purpose.
Be stitched."
The threads drifted toward Lullaby, not as an attack… but as a gentle binding, inviting him to surrender his pain.
---
Scene 5 — The True Cost
Lullaby's instincts screamed with clarity:
To accept repair was to lose himself.
He planted his foot and reversed the Void Shield — drawing every shadow in the factory into a sudden, explosive burst of darkness.
The threads recoiled, light clashing with concentrated shadow.
Lullaby used the moment to speak the truth straight into the entity's mind:
"My memory is broken — but it's mine.
And my people aren't broken. They're waiting."
He vaulted backward, sprinting toward a massive ventilation shaft that dove deeper into the unknown.
The Shadestitcher didn't chase. It simply observed — cold, analytical.
"The anomaly chooses disorder.
Inefficiency noted.
You will return when fragmentation is complete."
Lullaby slid into the shaft's darkness, carrying the weight of his discovery:
The Galabies were not dead.
They were trapped — suspended in the Collector's vessel.
And his brokenness was no longer a flaw.
It was his edge.