Chapter 31 — Shards of War

The world shattered into pieces.

Threads burst with a noise like breaking glass underwater, plummeting Yusuf into a storm of memory-fragments. He staggered as the ground underfoot dissolved into a mosaic of half-remembered places: his mother's kitchen table, Rae's ravaged archive, the river-world smothered in silence, his father's study with books piled to the ceiling. All collided, layering like torn pages trapped in the wrong book.

The Harvester howled. It towered over, an amalgam of darkened threads, faces embroidered on its flesh—smiling, crying, screaming. Each face was someone remembered, eaten, destroyed. Its hands reached out, not claws but quills, serrated and dripping ink like blood.

And before it stood the hooded man. Calm. Immobile. His voice sliced through the chaos:

"Do you see it now, Archivist? Memory is war. Always has been.".

The Codex tore apart in Yusuf's hand, pages whipping frenziedly in the gust. Red light leaked from the spine, spinning protective threads around him and the boy without a face.

Yusuf's heart raced. "If this is war," he yelled, "then I battle for what's worth remembering!"

He drove the Codex ahead. Threads sprang out like arrows, weaving shields, spears, whole walls of memory—shapes crafted from Rae's laughter, the smell of river reeds, the feel of his brother's voice. Every detail he had preserved was turned into a weapon.

The Harvester shrieked and plunged. Ink-quills lashed against the shield of threads, daubing darkness on the world. Every drop that struck the ground corroded it, erasing fragments of memory until blank emptiness yawned.

The figure in the hood acted too, twirling black and white threads that wrapped around Yusuf's. Where Yusuf built walls, the figure reshaped them into cages. Where Yusuf formed weapons, the figure reshaped them into stone monuments—useless, heavy, immovable.

“Preservation is stagnation,” the figure’s voice boomed. “What survives must be made new. Otherwise it rots.”

“Then you’re no better than the Harvester!” Yusuf spat, yanking threads into a spear. He hurled it forward.

The figure caught it effortlessly. “On the contrary. I’m its master.”

The Harvester lunged again, claws aimed at Yusuf’s chest. He barely twisted aside, but the faceless child screamed—its small form caught in the swipe.

"No!" Yusuf cried out. He flung threads around the child, pulling them close even as the Codex blazed yet brighter. Its words rearranged themselves, glowing, burning on the page:

Weave or be unwoven.

Power surged through him. Threads wrapped his arms, his chest, his throat. The world pulsed with the beat of a thousand forgotten hearts.

Yusuf felt himself being rent by two desires:

To save.

To remake.

The battle wasn't with the Harvester and the hooded figure anymore. It was with his own will, his own teachings, his father's legacy.

The hooded figure stepped forward, threads forming into a sword of burning recollection.

The Harvester recoiled, its ink pouring down like a storm.

And Yusuf screamed, raising the Codex high.

The collision came like thunder tearing the skies apart.