Chapter 6: The Shattered Muse

Chapter 6: The Shattered Muse

The silence Rose left behind was louder than any scream. It was a vacuum, sucking the air from Luka’s lungs, filled only by the frantic thumping of his own heart. He stood panting in the middle of his living room, staring at the open window she had impossibly used as an exit. Three stories down. No fire escape. No ledge. The logical part of his mind, the small, rational corner that still survived, insisted it was impossible. But the rest of him, the part that had seen through the window in the armor, knew that the rules of his world no longer applied.

Her words echoed, a venomous whisper in the silence. “He loves it. The Lord. He’s listening!”

He was being listened to. Watched. The Man in the Suit was the observer, this 'Lord' was the audience, and he, Luka, was the unwilling performer, broadcasting his daily agony to a dimension of madness. And Rose… she had tuned into his frequency. He had tried to save her by cutting her off, and instead, he had turned her into a receiver for the abyss.

Panic gave way to a feverish, desperate energy. His sanctuary had been violated. His ritual of silence was a failure, a child’s blanket held up against a hurricane. But it was the only thing he had. He had to reinforce it. He couldn't let her get back in.

He slammed the window shut, the old wood groaning in protest. He hammered a nail through the frame, sealing it. But it wasn’t enough. The main point of entry, the one she'd used to get past his triple-bolted front door, was a mystery. He couldn't solve that puzzle. So he focused on what he could control. He would shrink his world again. The living room, with its large, vulnerable window, was compromised. His new safe zone would be the hallway and his bedroom. The padded closet remained the heart of his fortress.

He dragged his heavy wooden bookcase from the bedroom and shoved it against the living room door, wedging it tight. He piled his dresser next to it, then his kitchen table, creating a crude, heavy barricade. He was walling himself in, creating a prison within his prison. As he worked, sweating and trembling, he imagined her outside, scrambling up the brickwork with unnatural agility, her fingers like spiders, her eyes glowing with that terrifying, ecstatic light.

The rest of the day was a blur of paranoid waiting. He sat in the dim hallway, his back against the barricade, listening. Every creak of the old building, every footstep from the apartment above, sent a jolt of terror through him. The clock ticked on, a relentless metronome counting down to his next performance.

At 4:40 PM, he retreated to the closet. The familiar ritual felt different now, imbued with a new layer of dread. This wasn't just about surviving a vision anymore. It was about surviving what the vision could attract. He pushed the earplugs in, pulled the headphones on, and strapped the mask over his eyes, praying the layers of insulation would be enough to hide him.

4:42 PM.

The echo that hit him was a tidal wave. It was exponentially more violent than anything he had ever experienced. The muffled pressure was a physical, crushing weight, as if the small closet was being compressed around him. The vibration wasn't just in his bones; it was a grinding, tectonic shift that seemed to shake the foundations of his reality.

And this time, through the layers of silence, he felt something else. A presence. Not the vast, indifferent gaze of the Lord in the abyss, but something closer. Something familiar and horribly changed. He felt Rose. He felt her manic excitement, her ecstatic devotion, a psychic shriek of praise that pierced his defenses. She was out there, somewhere, listening. And she was drawing the Lord’s attention directly to him. The echo wasn't just a broadcast anymore; it was a duet.

The silent scream was ripped from him, a raw, internal agony that left him feeling flayed. He was a tuning fork, and she was a resonator, and together they were amplifying the unholy chord.

Then, at 4:43 PM, it stopped. Not faded, but cut. As if a switch had been flipped.

The silence that followed was absolute. Profound. It was deeper than the silence provided by his headphones. The ambient hum of the building, the distant traffic, the very thrum of life—it was all gone. He was floating in a dead, empty void.

He stayed in the closet for a long time, too terrified to move. Finally, with hands that shook so badly he could barely control them, he removed the mask and headphones. He cracked open the closet door and listened.

Nothing. A perfect, horrifying silence.

He stepped out into the hallway. His barricade was untouched. The heavy bookcase was still jammed against the living room door. A wave of shaky relief washed over him. He had kept her out. The barricade had worked.

Then his eyes fell on the sliver of space beneath the barricaded door. A faint, cold draft was seeping out. And with it, a smell. Ozone, iron, and something else… a cloying, sickly sweetness like overripe fruit.

His gaze lifted from the barricade to the wall above it. The web of cracks spreading from the corner of the ceiling now had a new, thick, black artery running directly to the top of the living room doorframe.

Slowly, his mind screaming in denial, he began to dismantle his own fortification. He pushed the dresser aside. He strained, grunting, to shift the heavy bookcase. He didn't need to. It moved with an unnatural ease, scraping against the floor.

The door behind it was ajar.

He pushed it open. The smell hit him with the force of a physical blow. The living room was bathed in the dim, grey light of the late afternoon. The window he had nailed shut was wide open, the nail bent and twisted in the splintered wood.

And in the center of the room, she was there.

Rose.

But it was a sculpture of Rose. A monument to a nightmare. She was suspended in the air, a foot off the ground, her body a grotesque tableau of fractured reality. Her head was tilted back at an angle that snapped the spine, her mouth open in a silent, ecstatic scream. One arm was stretched towards the ceiling, but it existed in multiple places at once—a solid, flesh-and-blood limb overlapping with a shimmering, semi-transparent version of itself, and again with a hyper-dense, crystalline echo. Her torso was twisted, her ribs visible through a tear in spacetime itself, revealing not organs, but a swirling, kaleidoscopic vortex of the same screaming colors from the abyss.

Her corpse was a glitch in the world, an object caught between dimensions, a gruesome testament to what happens when a human body is exposed to the raw, unfiltered power of the echo. The very fabric of her being had been shredded and reassembled by a force that did not understand physics or flesh.

Luka fell to his knees, a strangled sound of horror caught in his throat. His vision was no longer just a vision. His curse was not just a curse. It was a weapon. A weapon that didn't just kill. It unmade.

He looked at the shattered muse hanging in the silent room, at the wreckage of the woman he had tried to save, and knew with chilling certainty: He hadn't just attracted this horror. He had aimed it. His scream had been the bullet, and her corrupted soul had been the target. He wasn't just a victim anymore. He was the monster.