"This wasn't just a fight.This was survival against memory itself."
The descent into the final chamber was like falling through a throat made of time.
The spiral tilted harder with every step. The walls grew slicker. The air hotter. The shrine's organic architecture clenched and pulsed, as if preparing to deliver something long overdue.
Violet gripped Matte's hand tighter as the final step flattened into a massive, open chasm—miles wide and entirely lit by the creature itself.
It was no longer a beast.
It was a world.
The Amalgamation's true form was unfolded now, draped across the hollow like a sleeping giant stitched together from every piece of suffering the shrine had ever absorbed.Its ribcage formed the arching ceiling—hundreds of ribs like cathedral pillars, humming with faint whispers.Its heart? A massive red core, pulsating in slow, terrible rhythm.Its body no longer had a face, but every inch of it was alive with mouths, hands, and weeping eyes. Some smiled. Some screamed. Some stared at nothing.
And at its base—directly beneath the exposed heart—stood a single humanoid figure.
Pale.
Hairless.
No mouth.
But it had Violet's eyes.
She froze beside Matte, her breath hitching like she'd been slapped.
"That's… that's not me."
He stepped in front of her.
"I know."
The figure didn't move.
But the heart above it did.
The shrine's pulse accelerated.
And the voices returned—not shouting. Singing.
"COME UNDONE.BLEED FOR THE BEGINNING.RETURN TO WHAT FED YOU."
Matte stepped forward, drawing his blade slowly.
His arm was still torn from the previous battle, blood dried and caked over the elbow. But his essence still pulsed—erratic, primal, determined.
The false Violet began walking toward him, twitching with every step like a puppet half-forgetting how to move.
Its body began to crack.
Peel.
And from its back, wings formed.
Not feathers.
Not bone.
Memory.
They shimmered like events long forgotten—images flickering across their surface: Violet's childhood, Matte's training, the tomb, the forest, Nyxia's voice whispering beneath screams.
The figure lunged.
Matte barely sidestepped—the air around it slashing like blades, each movement cutting reality itself.
He countered with a heavy slash of Essence—a vertical arc of soul-energy—that severed one of the wings.
The images within it shattered like glass.
And the Amalgamation above them screamed, the ribcage ceiling convulsing with fury.
Behind him, Violet dropped to her knees again, but this time not in fear.
In connection.
She pressed both hands to the floor.
And began to sing.
A melody she didn't know.A melody the shrine did.
Her voice echoed across the chamber like a forgotten prayer unearthed in a storm.
"You are not my past.You are not my blood.You are not what holds me."
The floor glowed beneath her.
Matte could feel it—a rise in pressure, not just physical, but spiritual. Like something in the shrine finally realized it couldn't hold them both.
The false Violet screamed—this time, audibly—as its form collapsed into a pile of shattered essence.
But the core above remained.
The heart.
Still beating.
Still alive.
Matte turned to Violet.
"Can you reach it?"
She looked up, her face slick with sweat and tears.
"I think it's tethered to me."
"Can you cut the cord?"
She nodded.
Slow.
Unsure.
But ready.
"I need time."
Matte turned toward the core.
And ran.
The shrine reacted.
Walls collapsed. Limbs burst from the stone. Faces screamed from the ground and tried to bite him mid-stride.
Matte dodged. Rolled. Struck.
He leapt onto one of the arching veins that fed into the heart—ran up it like a burning wire—and launched himself toward the pulsating center.
His blade connected—
And the world exploded.
The light wasn't blinding.
It was truth.
Memories he didn't recognize surged through him.
A girl burning in a temple.A boy chained in a tomb.A hand reaching for salvation and finding only teeth.
The Amalgamation was never one being.It was a choir of regret, fused together by a shrine that had never learned how to die.
And now—
"I will not become you," Matte whispered.
He drove his blade deeper.
Below, Violet rose fully, eyes glowing pure violet-silver.
"Let this song end."
She slammed her hands to the ground.
The glyphs on the heart's surface burned red-hot, then inverted—turning white.
A massive shockwave of Essence and soul surged through the chamber—
Tearing through the mouth-limbs.
Collapsing the ceiling.
Ripping the core apart.
The heart shattered.
The shrine screamed one last time.
The Amalgamation folded in on itself, hundreds of mouths silenced, one by one, until only the eye remained.
It looked at Matte.
Just once.
Not in rage.
Not in fear.
But in release.
Then it turned to ash.
Silence.
The true kind.
No singing.
No breathing walls.
No shadows crawling.
Just the sound of two hearts, still beating.
Matte dropped to one knee.
The blade fell from his hand.
Across the ruined chamber, Violet stood—cracked, bleeding, smiling.
"We're still here," she whispered.
Matte nodded slowly.
"For now."
Matte's breath came in ragged bursts.
The silence in the chamber was wrong. Not peaceful—hollow. Like the air had forgotten how to carry sound. He could still hear his own heartbeat, thudding slow and heavy, like it was searching for rhythm in a place where none existed anymore.
He stood, barely.
His legs trembled beneath him. Blood ran down his arm in thick, sticky streams. His essence was burned out—dry. Like a flame that had clawed at its own wick just to stay alive.
Violet approached him, slow.
Her hands were shaking. One of her legs dragged slightly behind the other. Her lips were pale, split in the center. But her eyes—those eyes that had mirrored the core—were clear again.
Clear, and sad.
They didn't speak for a moment.
Not because they didn't have anything to say.
Because there was too much.
Matte's voice finally broke the silence, low and hoarse:
"We did it."
Violet looked up at him.
"Did we?"
She glanced at the ashes where the Amalgamation's heart once hung. They were still smoldering, writhing faintly—as if whatever had been there hadn't quite accepted death.
"That wasn't just a creature," she whispered. "That was... trauma. Given shape."
She sat slowly, folding herself into the scorched ground.
Matte stayed standing, sword in hand, eyes scanning the high, broken ceiling above.
The shrine itself was cracking now—not violently, but like old bones finally admitting they couldn't hold weight anymore. Small fissures traced the walls. Faint rays of light began to filter down through the gaps, touching the ruins of a battlefield that felt like it had lasted centuries.
"I saw things in that heart," Violet said, voice trembling."My memories. My mother's. My sister…"
Her jaw clenched.
"They weren't just feeding off us. They were us. The worst parts. The pieces we lock away."
Matte finally turned toward her.
"But it's dead."
"No," she said quietly."It's contained."
He stepped forward and sat beside her.
They didn't touch.
Just sat shoulder-to-shoulder in the dust of everything they'd just destroyed. The walls still pulsed faintly. Not with life.
With afterbirth.
This place had given something up.
And now it was empty.
Violet turned her head, barely a breath away from him.
"I thought I was going to lose myself."
Matte's gaze didn't waver.
"You didn't."
"I did," she said."Just not in the way I expected."
She swallowed hard, her throat dry.
"When I screamed into the glyphs… something inside me woke up. Something I didn't know I'd buried."
"Was it power?" he asked.
She shook her head.
"It was rage.Rage so old it didn't belong to me."
Matte leaned forward, elbows on his knees, staring at the broken floor.
"We've fought monsters. But that? That was history. That was everything the world forgot… waiting to be remembered through our pain."
"It didn't want to win," Violet said."It wanted to leave something behind."
They looked at each other then—truly looked. Eyes hollow, yes. But not broken.
Not anymore.
Just...
Changed.
Matte stood first, offering his hand.
"We need to move before this place collapses on us."
Violet hesitated.
Then reached up.
Her grip was weak.
But real.
He pulled her up, and together, they limped toward the corridor beyond the chamber.
As they reached the exit, Violet turned for one last look.
The core was gone.
The body—gone.
But there, in the center of the ash…
A single glyph glowed.
Barely.
Faint.
Like a scar the world refused to heal.
"Matte?" she asked.
"Yeah?"
"When we find the next shrine…"
She didn't finish the sentence.
She didn't have to.
Matte's voice was low. Resolute.
"We burn it.Before it remembers who we are."