Cursed Causality

The city of Varyas was a corpse picked clean by time.

Its cobblestones were a patchwork of eras—medieval slate spliced with neon-lit alloy, Roman mosaics devoured by creeping digital vines. Buildings leaned at impossible angles, their facades flickering between adobe huts and glass skyscrapers. The air stank of ozone and decay, the Tapestry's glitching wave a distant but ever-present rumble. Lysandra dragged Kael through the ruins, his weight uneven, his withered arm hanging limp.

"Almost there," she muttered, more to herself than him.

He laughed, the sound ragged. "Where's *there*, girl? Hell?"

"Worse. A tavern."

---

**The Stitched Hourglass** stood at the city's necrotic heart, its sign creaking in a wind that didn't exist. The tavern was a Frankenstein of timelines:

Walls of medieval timber grafted to steel beams.

A bar top of polished obsidian veined with glowing circuitry.

Patrons frozen mid-drink, their faces blurred as if smeared by time's thumb.

The bartender was the only moving thing. He polished a glass with a rag blackened by soot, his left eye replaced by a mechanical orb that whirred as they entered.

"No refugees," he said without looking up.

Lysandra dumped Kael onto a stool. "We're not staying. We need answers."

The bartender's eye focused on Kael's severed arm. "What's left of him isn't worth the questions."

Kael slammed his dagger into the bar, the obsidian cracking. "How about now?"

The man sighed. "You'll want Eryx. Back booth. Don't touch the walls."

---

Eryx was a relic of a dead Cartography sect, his face a latticework of scars, his right hand branded with a key-shaped burn. He nursed a drink that shimmered between ale and motor oil, his gaze tracking Lysandra's silver-threaded eyes.

"Veyra's little project," he said. "Heard she died screaming."

Kael leaned across the table. "Heard you're a coward who hid here while the Spire burned."

Eryx's smile revealed teeth filed to points. "Hid? Boy, I *built* this place. Only sanctuary left when the Tapestry turns. Or didn't your raven tell you that?"

Lysandra stiffened. "What do you know about the raven?"

He tapped his branded hand. "Same thing I know about you. You're a stitch in a wound that won't close. And him?" He nodded to Kael. "He's the infection."

Kael's dagger pricked Eryx's throat. "Talk clearer."

Eryx didn't flinch. "The Tapestry's not just hungry. It's *scared*. Why else send its golden pet to herd you here?"

---

The tavern doors burst open.

Three figures entered, draped in gauze like the hunters from the Scab, their masks fused clockwork and bone. The leader carried a chain whip forged from solidified time, its links glitching between solid and spectral. Patrons dissolved as it passed, erased from existence.

"Janitors," Eryx hissed. "You led them here."

Kael rose, dagger steady. "You're welcome."

The fight erupted:

The chain whip shattered tables, each impact erasing chunks of the tavern.

A janitor lunged at Lysandra, its mask splitting into mandibles that dripped temporal venom.

Eryx drew a pistol that fired shards of frozen light, pinning a janitor to the wall.

Lysandra's threads lashed out, but the Tapestry's influence here was stronger:

Her silver filaments frayed, eaten by the tavern's unstable air.

Kael's strikes slowed, his remaining arm trembling.

Eryx's pistol jammed, the frozen light backfiring.

The leader's whip coiled around Kael's throat. "Balance comes."

Lysandra *pulled* from Kael again.

The stolen power surged, raw and corrosive:

Silver threads, now edged in black, severed the whip.

Kael collapsed, vomiting blood that smoked where it struck the floor.

The janitors recoiled, their forms destabilizing.

Eryx stared at Lysandra. "What *are* you?"

She didn't answer. The tavern was collapsing, timelines unraveling.

---

The raven watched from the rafters, its golden feathers molting to reveal void beneath. It dropped a scroll onto the bar before vanishing.

Lysandra snatched it, the words burning into her mind:

*The Tapestry's heart lies in the Clockwork Labyrinth.

Bring the infection.

Cut it out.*

Kael gripped her wrist, his fingers cold. "Don't."

She shook him off. "We don't have a choice."

He laughed bitterly. "We *always* have a choice."

Eryx stood, brushing temporal dust from his coat. "I'll take you to the Labyrinth. For a price."

Lysandra met his gaze. "Name it."

He pointed to Kael. "His other arm."

The tavern trembled, its patchwork walls peeling into timelines like shredded skin. Eryx's demand hung in the air, sharp as the Janitors' glitching blades. Lysandra stared at him, her silver-threaded eyes narrowing.

"His *arm*?"

Eryx shrugged, reloading his frozen-light pistol. "The Labyrinth eats the weak. He's dead weight."

Kael leaned against the bar, his breath labored, the stump of his withered arm leaking black ichor. "Do it, girl. We both know you want to."

She didn't. But the Janitors did.

The leader lashed its chain whip, erasing a chunk of the floor. Lysandra's corrupted threads—silver edged in void-black—slashed back, but the Janitor dissolved into ash, reforming behind her.

"*Enough!*" she screamed, pulling power from Kael again.

It wasn't a thread this time. It was a *riptide*.

---

The stolen energy tore through her, warping the air into a vortex of screaming light:

Patrons frozen in time shattered like glass.

The bar top melted into a river of molten obsidian.

Eryx's mechanical orb-eye shorted out, sparking.

The Janitors recoiled, their forms destabilizing. Lysandra seized the moment, driving her threads into the leader's mask. It cracked, revealing the same hollow void as the hunters in the Scab—swirling sand, no face, no soul.

"What *are* you?" she demanded.

The Janitor's voice rasped through the mask. "*Balance.*"

She severed its head.

---

Silence fell, heavy and temporary. The remaining Janitors retreated into rifts, their chain whip dissolving mid-air. The Stitched Hourglass was a carcass, its timeline-spliced walls collapsing inward. Eryx grabbed Lysandra's arm, his branded hand burning her skin.

"The Labyrinth. Now. Before the Tapestry sends worse."

Kael slumped against the bar, his smirk bloody. "Forget it. I'm not paying his price."

Lysandra hesitated. The raven's warning echoed—*Bring the infection. Cut it out.* But the infection wasn't Kael. It was *her*.

She turned to Eryx. "You want payment? Take this."

Her threads lashed around his wrist, siphoning a sliver of her corrupted power. He screamed as the void-black energy seared his branded hand, the key-shaped mark bubbling into a scar.

"*What did you do?*" he snarled.

"Insurance," she said. "Now lead."

---

They fled through the city's corpse, the Tapestry's glitching wave gnawing at their heels. Varyas dissolved behind them:

A cathedral's spire inverted, stabbing into its own foundation.

A marketplace's neon signs rewound to candlelight, then to nothing.

The cobblestones bled upward, defying gravity until they rained as molten slag.

Eryx led them to a sewer grate, its rusted hinges squealing. "Down. Quickly."

The tunnels stank of stagnant water and burnt copper. Lysandra half-dragged Kael, his breaths growing shallower.

"Still with me?" she muttered.

He chuckled wetly. "Wouldn't miss this for the world."

---

The Clockwork Labyrinth awaited beneath the city.

Its entrance was a maw of grinding gears, each tooth a pendulum blade. The walls pulsed with bioluminescent fungi, their glow syncopated like a dying heartbeat. Eryx halted, his scarred hand trembling.

"Rules," he said. "The Labyrinth feeds on memory. Touch nothing. Feel nothing. *Regret nothing.*"

Kael snorted. "Easy."

Lysandra's scar ached. "What happens if we fail?"

Eryx's ruined eye twitched. "You become part of the walls."

---

The Labyrinth shifted as they entered, gears groaning. The first corridor was lined with mirrors, each reflecting a different past:

Lysandra as a child, threading a doll's hair with silver.

Kael kneeling at the Shattered Spire's altar, a younger girl's hand in his.

Eryx branding his own flesh with a Cartography key, screaming vows to a faceless master.

"Don't look," Eryx warned.

Kael looked.

His reflection morphed—the girl at the altar aged, her face Lysandra's. "You *remember*," the mirror whispered.

He shattered it with his dagger. "Fuck off."

---

The second corridor was a gauntlet of sound:

A child's laughter (Lysandra's sister, dead in a plague she'd forgotten).

The demon's voice (Kael's first bargain, slick and sweet as poison).

Eryx's mentor (a man dissolved by a rift, begging for death).

Lysandra clenched her fists, threads coiling. "It's testing us."

"It's *eating* us," Eryx corrected. "Move."

The third corridor was the worst.

It was lined with doors, each pulsing like a heart. Lysandra's scar pulled her toward one marked with a silver thread. Against Eryx's warning, she opened it.

---

**The Memory**

*She was seven, clutching her sister's hand in a burning plague ward. Their mother lay still on a cot, her face blistered black. A Cartography agent loomed, gray robes reeking of sulfur.*

*"Two souls," he said, pressing a key to Lysandra's forehead. "One for the Tapestry. One for the Spire."*

*Her sister screamed as the agent tore her thread free. Lysandra ran, but the memory rewound, again and again, until—*

---

She slammed the door, vomiting silver blood. Kael steadied her, his grip surprisingly gentle.

"You okay?"

She shoved him away. "Don't."

Eryx glared. "I said *don't touch anything*."

---

The Labyrinth's core was a chamber of gears and glass, its ceiling a kaleidoscope of fractured timelines. At its center hung an hourglass, its sands glowing gold and black. The raven perched atop it, void feathers fully molted now, its form a silhouette of absolute nothingness.

*"The infection,"* it hissed, not with Elyra's voice, but with the Tapestry's chorus. *"Cut it out."*

Eryx raised his pistol. "The hourglass. Shatter it."

Lysandra stepped forward, threads crackling. "What happens then?"

"The Tapestry's heart dies. The Labyrinth falls. We live."

Kael laughed. "And the catch?"

Eryx's gaze flickered. "The catch is you."

He fired.

---

The frozen-light shard struck Kael's chest. He crumpled, the impact freezing his sigils mid-flare. Lysandra's scream tore through the chamber, her threads ensnaring Eryx.

"*Why?*"

He grinned, blood bubbling at his lips. "The Tapestry wanted him dead. I wanted the Labyrinth. Fair trade."

She ripped the pistol from his hand, pressing it to his temple. "Undo it."

"Can't." His laugh was a wet rattle. "But you can."

He pointed to the hourglass.

---

The raven watched as Lysandra approached the hourglass. Its sands swirled—gold for order, black for chaos. Kael's frozen form reflected in the glass, his face pale but peaceful.

*"Choose,"* the Tapestry chorused.

She pressed her scarred palm to the glass.

The Labyrinth shuddered, gears shrieking. The hourglass cracked, sands spilling into the void. The raven dissolved, its final shriek merging with Eryx's dying breath.

Kael gasped awake, the frozen light melting from his chest. "What did you do?"

She stared at the crumbling Labyrinth. "What I had to."

---

They emerged into a wasteland reborn.

The glitching wave had passed, leaving behind a fragile calm. The sky was a bruise of twilight and static, the ground a mosaic of half-formed timelines. Kael's sigils glowed faintly silver, his demonic fire extinguished.

"Where now?" he asked.

Lysandra touched her scar, now throbbing with the hourglass's remnants. "Wherever the Tapestry fears."

Behind them, the Labyrinth's ruins shifted. A single gear rolled free, etched with a serpent swallowing its tail.