CHAPTER 53: CHAPTER 52: WORLD INSIDE THE LIGHT

At first, there was no sound.

Just pressure.

Buzz floated in it — weightless, skin burning, heart hammering too fast to keep up. He couldn’t tell where his body ended and the light began. Everything pulsed in rhythm. Every pulse hurt.

The air around him shimmered like liquid gold, folding and unfolding. Threads of energy moved through him, each one cold at first, then scalding. When he tried to move, they moved with him — like veins that didn’t belong to him anymore.

He forced his jaw open. "Get... out."

No voice came back. Just vibration.

Then another pulse. Stronger. A shape began to form in front of him — not solid, not smoke. Something between both. It flickered through faces: the Queen’s, the doctor’s, Zza’s. It lingered on the last one too long.

Buzz’s teeth clenched. "You don’t get to wear her."

The thing tilted its head, mimicking his movement. Then, without sound, a phrase rippled through his mind. *You are a good template.*

Buzz laughed once, rough and dry. "Yeah? You picked the wrong idiot to copy."

The light thickened, wrapping around his chest. It wasn’t squeezing. It was *listening.* Reading his pulse, matching it. His heart skipped a beat; the light skipped with it.

Buzz tried to tear free. His claws met resistance, like tearing silk underwater. Gold flared around his hands, but the more he fought, the heavier it grew.

Then the whisper came again, clearer. *We will finish what she began.*

The words struck something deep — memory, fear, rage. Buzz pushed against the light, shouting until his throat cracked. "You’re not her!"

The light responded by burning brighter. His reflection split apart across the walls — five, ten, a hundred versions of himself. Each one moved a fraction late, lagging behind like ghosts.

They all spoke together. *You are never alone. We are everything you were too weak to be.*

Buzz snarled. "Then prove it."

He charged.

His claws tore through the light, sending shards of gold spiraling. The impact felt like hitting bone and thunder at once. Pain shot through his arms. The entity rippled backward, then collapsed into itself, reforming instantly.

It hit back.

The force threw him across the void. He crashed into nothing but felt it anyway — ribs screaming, lungs emptying. The entity’s shape loomed over him, humanoid now, its surface rippling with faces that weren’t faces.

Buzz grinned through blood. "Finally got ugly."

He leapt again.

They collided midair — light against light, claws against sound. Every strike bent the world around them. Each impact left a scar of static that hung suspended before vanishing.

Buzz’s thoughts bled together — half instinct, half memory. Zza’s voice cut through the noise, not real but remembered. *Keep your rhythm. Don’t let it write over you.*

He found his breath again. Moved faster. Hit harder.

The entity shifted tactics — its form expanding, splitting into threads that whipped around him. One caught his wing, slicing deep. Another wrapped his neck, squeezing until the edges of his vision blurred.

Buzz slammed his head back, breaking free. "You want to overwrite me?" he growled. "Try surviving *me* first."

He slammed both claws into the light beneath him. Gold erupted upward, ripping through the space like a scream.

For a heartbeat, the entity fell apart.

Then it spoke — and this time, the voice was his. *You fight like you’re scared.*

Buzz froze. The tone was perfect. The rhythm, the inflection, even the smirk hidden between words.

The voice repeated. *You fight like you think you can still lose.*

He blinked once. "That’s cute. You sound better in my head."

*We are your head.*

The world around him tilted. The light curved inward, forming walls that pulsed like veins. Memories bled into the space — the tunnels, the Queen, Zza’s face — all flickering and warping, blending with the entity’s form.

Buzz’s breath hitched. "No..."

The light pressed closer. *Surrender your boundaries. End the noise. Be whole.*

He screamed back, claws striking through the wall of light. "I’m already whole!"

The blast threw them both apart. Buzz landed hard, panting, bleeding gold. He didn’t notice the cracks spreading across his chest until the pain hit — sharp, bright, cold.

The entity reformed in front of him, crouching low. Its eyes glowed faint blue now — colder, calmer. *You are almost finished.*

Buzz spit blood and grinned weakly. "So are you."

Then the floor under him gave way.

He fell through the light.

And the forest came crashing back.

---

The forest was breaking.

Not burning, not dying — breaking. The trees twisted, their roots lifting like ribs. The air rippled with heat and something worse — a rhythm, deep and cold, that made every creature in the clearing move a step slower.

Zza pushed forward anyway. Her wings stung with static. Every time she blinked, her vision doubled — light bleeding through her skull. She could *feel* him somewhere inside that storm, thrashing, stubborn, alive.

"Keep moving!" she shouted.

The Scarabs clattered behind her, shields raised against the rain of gold dust. Glowbeetles lit paths through the smoke, their lights cutting short, fading mid-air. Centipedes crawled low, dragging silken ropes across broken roots to anchor the survivors.

The Elder drifted just behind her, threads stretched thin, trembling. "The forest sings with something unnatural. Every note belongs to him and not to him."

Zza didn’t stop. "Then we follow the part that still feels like Buzz."

Another tremor rolled through the earth. The ground cracked open, veins of blue and gold light bleeding upward. Zza stumbled, caught herself, then leapt across the fissure. The Scarabs hesitated.

She turned back. "If you stay behind, you die slower. That’s the only difference."

They followed.

The storm thickened. Every gust of wind carried whispers that weren’t wind — fractured echoes of a voice she knew too well. Some begged. Some laughed. Some just repeated her name.

Her chest tightened. "Buzz, you better not be doing this to mess with me."

A Glowbeetle beside her flickered, let out a low hum, then dropped dead mid-flight. Its body hit the ground and disintegrated into motes of gold. Zza froze. "He’s losing control."

The Elder spoke softly, every word vibrating through its silk. "No. Something else is gaining it."

Zza clenched her fists, claws digging into her palms. "Then we take it back."

She reached the ridge and looked down into the crater. The light had grown thicker — not like fire but like a living ocean. Shapes moved inside it. Buzz’s outline flared once, then vanished again, swallowed whole.

"Zza!" a Scarab called, shielding its eyes. "We can’t go through that!"

She ignored him. "You can’t. I can."

Before anyone could stop her, she ran straight into the light.

It hit her like a wall — hot, sharp, heavy. Her wings folded instantly, her breath catching. Every nerve screamed, but she didn’t stop. She forced her claws forward, tearing through the brightness like cloth. Every inch burned, but behind the pain was something else — a pull. Familiar.

She could hear him, faint but steady. *Don’t come in here.*

She smiled through the pain. "Too late."

Behind her, the Elder’s voice called out, distant but strong. "She’ll be crushed! The current is rewriting matter!"

The Scarabs roared in defiance. "Then we’ll rewrite it back!"

They charged the edge of the crater, slamming shields into the ground to steady the earth. The Centipedes coiled tight, weaving silk anchors to keep Zza from being dragged under. The Glowbeetles rose high above, bursting light into the haze to mark her position.

Zza crawled through the burning mist, vision fading. Her claws found something solid — a body. She grabbed hold, shaking. "Buzz?"

The shape twitched, half-buried in gold. His shell glowed, cracking, splitting between light and blood. His eyes flickered between blue and gold. He wasn’t gone — not yet.

Zza’s voice broke. "You don’t get to die like this."

A psychic shockwave rippled out from his chest. She screamed as it hit, throwing her back into the dirt. The light responded, flaring brighter — not as attack, but as reaction, like the whole storm was breathing through him.

The Elder shouted from above, "He’s being consumed from within! Every thought he fights creates more of it!"

Zza forced herself up. "Then he stops fighting alone."

She plunged forward again, silk streaming from her claws. She wrapped the threads around his arms, his chest, his wings, anchoring him to herself. "If you fall, I fall too."

The light around them pulsed harder, almost angry. Voices echoed inside it — Buzz’s, the Queen’s, hers — all blending into one endless scream.

The Elder’s threads reached down, trembling. "You cannot hold him! He’s turning into a signal!"

Zza’s silk tightened. "Then let him hear something real."

She leaned close, pressing her forehead against his. Her whisper came raw and shaking. "You’re not alone, Buzz. Not this time."

Something shifted. The light wavered — not much, but enough. The hum changed pitch.

For a moment, she saw his eyes again — not gold, not blue. Brown. Real.

He spoke through a breath that wasn’t entirely his. "Zza... you shouldn’t be here."

"Yeah, well, neither should you."

He laughed once, weak and broken, but it was him.

The ground rumbled again, cutting him off. The glow behind them surged, rising like a wave. The Elder screamed across the link. "It’s awakening fully! You must get out!"

Zza turned toward the crater wall. The air itself was cracking. The trees around the rim bent inward, dragged toward the storm’s heart.

She looked down at him, trembling. "You’re coming with me."

Buzz shook his head, blood and light dripping from his mouth. "Can’t. It’s inside everything now. You pull me out, you pull it with me."

"Then we burn it out."

Before he could argue, she gripped him tighter, silk pulsing with light. "We end this together."

The storm screamed.

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