Chapter 36
MAUG
Ciampa runs.
Or what passes for running now.
What’s left of him peels away from the shattered chamber in a spray of crystal dust and drifting spores, his feet slapping wet against the floor, gait uneven—lurching like a corpse dragged upright by habit instead of will.
The crystalline growths have eaten into his joints, fused his jaw half-open, split his throat into something that no longer understands how to swallow or scream.
But I can smell it.
The end.
Not just rot. Not just fungus.
Soul-deep decay.
The kind that comes from believing you’re right long after the universe has already passed judgment.
“History—” he croaks, voice warping through fractured crystal and ruined flesh. “I made history—”
I don’t answer.
Jillian is beside me now. Solid. Breathing. Alive in a way the station hasn’t been for days. Her eyes are clear—sharp with fury and something better beneath it. Purpose. Her hand grips my forearm, grounding both of us.
Ciampa stumbles, claws at a wall slick with melting crystal, leaving streaks of luminous residue behind him.
“You can’t stop it,” he insists, turning back toward us, desperate now. “The consciousness—it’s already spread. You’re standing in the future!”
His laugh breaks apart halfway through, turning into a wet rattle. Cracks race across the crystalline masses embedded in his face, reacting to Jillian’s proximity. To my blood still smeared across her hands.
She steps forward.
“No,” she says, voice steady as a blade. “You were just loud.”
The station trembles faintly. Somewhere far away, something explodes—maybe a system overloading, maybe the song unraveling thread by thread. The hum that’s haunted my skull since I entered this place flickers, unstable.
Ciampa’s eyes dart between us.
Calculation.
Fear.
But he still thinks he can win.
“Please,” he wheezes, holding out a misshapen hand. “I can show you—”
I bare my teeth.
“Enough.”
He flinches.
Jillian squeezes my arm once. A signal.
We’ve already decided.
She steps closer, shoulders slumping, posture loosening. Her eyes glaze just a fraction. Her breathing changes—subtle, but wrong.
She hums.
Soft. Off-key.
Ciampa freezes.
Hope flares across his ruined face.
“Ah,” he breathes. “Yes. There you are. You feel it now, don’t you?”
She sways, clutching her head, stumbling toward him. “It’s… it’s so loud,” she murmurs. “I tried—I tried not to listen—”
I melt back into the shadows.
Hold my breath.
Ciampa limps toward her, gloating, forgetting everything else. “Good. Good. Let it in. The pain stops once you stop fighting.”
He reaches for her.
And Jillian moves.
Fast.
Clean.
The hypo flashes silver in her hand. She drives it straight into the exposed crystal lattice at his neck and depresses the plunger without hesitation.
My blood.
Undiluted.
Ciampa screams.
Not pain—confusion.
Pure, unfiltered terror as the crystals embedded in his body react violently, fracturing from the inside out. The fungal masses convulse, emitting a sound like glass shattering underwater. Cracks spiderweb across his face, his chest, his limbs.
“What—what did you—” His words dissolve into static, then into nothing at all.
He collapses.
Hard.
The body hits the floor with a final, hollow thud.
Silence floods the chamber.
Not peaceful. Not yet.
Just… absence.
For one full minute, no one breathes.
Then—
The hum stutters.
Weakens.
Stops.
The song dies.
The station doesn’t cheer.
There’s no dramatic explosion. No triumphant fanfare.
Just a quiet so sudden it makes my ears ring.
Around us, infected crew members sag, confused, some collapsing to their knees. Crystals flake from skin and shatter on the floor like dead snow. Eyes blink—slow, stunned.
Human again.
I pull Jillian into my chest, breathing her in like air after drowning.
“You okay?” I murmur into her hair.
She nods, then laughs—short, sharp, half-hysterical. “Remind me never to do that again.”
I huff a breath that might be a laugh. Might be a sob.
Together, we stand amid the wreckage of a god that never should’ve existed.
And this time—
He doesn’t get to win.