Victor and Skyline’s Struggle

The device in Victor’s palm vibrated again, a faint echo of the Creche it had been taken from. Victor felt a surge of satisfaction. With it, he had already proven his superiority, his ability to strip them of their pretenses.

As he pocketed the device, Victor glanced at the cracked sky above the Waste. Somewhere out there, the Creche were watching, scheming, hiding. But he would find them. He would bring them to their knees—not because he wanted to destroy them, but because he believed it was the only way to save humanity.

For Victor, domination wasn’t self-interest. It was salvation. 

Victor’s satisfaction evaporated when Skyline pivoted toward the storm, as though recalculating its purpose.

“You’re turning on me,” Victor hissed.

“I am preserving life,” Skyline responded, its light intensifying.

Victor grabbed the orb, holding it tightly. “You’ll have to take it from me.”

Skyline made no move, but its tone grew firmer. “The storm exceeds acceptable thresholds. Continuing will result in irreversible damage to the people and this region.”

A splintered beam, spinning with deadly speed, hurtled toward Victor’s head. For a moment, Skyline hesitated, then reached out with a shimmering field, halting the splinters inches from Victor’s face.

The beam hovered, glinting just inches from Victor’s temple, its cold edge suspended in the electric stillness between them. Skyline pulsed faintly, its threads shimmering like the sky before dawn.

“How foolish,” Victor spat, his voice tight with fear and defiance. His gaze darted to the splinters in front of his face. “Killing me would’ve ended this—and yet you hesitate!”

Skyline did not reply. Instead, it withdrew the beam, pulling it farther from Victor’s face, out of range of harm. The Creche did not kill, not because they lacked the means but because they refused to forfeit connection. To sever a life, even one as fractured as Victor’s, was to close the door to understanding, to extinguish the fragile possibility of reconciliation.

For the Creche, harm was a form of entropy, an unraveling of the potential woven into the threads of existence. Victor could not see this, of course. To him, survival and power were absolutes, edges sharper than any splinters Skyline could wield. But the Creche’s gaze extended beyond absolutes, beyond the linear struggles of dominance and submission. To them, each moment carried the weight of all moments, each loss rippling outward into futures that could no longer be.

Skyline lingered, its form shifting imperceptibly in the air, as if reflecting. It was not without emotions, though these differed from human ones. There was no frustration, no rage, but an ache like a faint dissonance in a vast, harmonic system. It was a sorrow woven from the strands of Victor’s choices and the irrevocable harm they had caused.

Perhaps, somewhere in the storm of his mind, Victor might someday understand—not just the damage he had done, but the fractures within himself. This was not a hope born of optimism, but of principle. Every thread, however frayed, could be rewoven. Every connection, no matter how tenuous, deserved its chance to mend.

Skyline’s light pulsed faintly. “Victory at such a cost would not be acceptable.”

“Then you’re weaker than I thought,” Victor growled, shoving the still hovering beam aside and lunging at Skyline. In his scramble, the orb slipped from his grasp, landing in the dirt several feet away.

Skyline’s light surged, its containment field snapping around Victor just as he reached for the orb. The barrier pressed him back, his fists striking uselessly against the shimmering wall.

“Release me!” he roared, his voice raw with frustration.

“No,” Skyline said simply.

Skyline regarded Victor one last time before turning its attention to the others. Lyra knew her part, and the storm would be contained. But the Weaver carried with it the weight of this encounter—a memory of resistance, of restraint, and of the unyielding commitment to preserve what little remained.

And as it moved away, Skyline silently mourned. Not for itself, nor for the battle it had fought, but for Victor, a man who could not yet see the threads he had broken—or the ones still waiting to be tied.