Seam of All

Days after her encounter at the Innsmouth lighthouse, Eliza Marrow is a ghost of herself. Her memories are fragmented, her name a faint echo she clings to like a lifeline.

Plagued by dreams of shimmering fractals and a hum that never stops, she’s tracked rumors of a new outbreak of disappearances to New Detroit, where a viral video called The Signal mirrors the horrors she faced.

Samir Khan, meanwhile, thought he’d destroyed the cult’s server farm, but The Signal persists, spreading faster, and his identity frays with each sleepless night. The hum in his skull grows louder, whispering of a place where the Veil is thinnest.

Drawn by forces beyond their control, Eliza and Samir converge on an abandoned industrial pier in New Detroit, where the Order of the Unraveled prepares a final ritual to summon Zhul’thar. The two must confront the entity as realities merge or lose themselves forever.

The pier jutted into Lake Erie like a broken spine, its rusted cranes clawing at the fog. Eliza Marrow shivered, her coat too thin for the November chill, her flashlight flickering as if reluctant to pierce the dark.

The hum was deafening now, a pulse that drowned out her thoughts. She’d followed cryptic X posts to this place, messages from faceless accounts whispering of “the Seam” and “the Warden’s awakening.”

Her reflection in a puddle rippled, her face half-gone, one eye a void of fractal light. She whispered her name—Eliza—but it felt like a lie.

Samir Khan crouched behind a shipping container, his breath ragged. His phone was dead, but the hum lived in his bones, guiding him after The Signal reappeared on every screen in New Detroit.

He’d seen his face in a hacked billboard, featureless, dissolving into static. The USB drive, reloaded with a new kill script, felt useless against the weight of what he’d glimpsed in his dreams–a shimmering abyss, its tendrils threading through reality like a virus.

The pier’s center glowed with an unnatural light. A circle of figures—some in robes, others in hoodies—stood around a massive, cracked touchscreen panel embedded in the ground, its surface pulsing with The Signal’s fractals.

Cables snaked from it to rusted machinery, humming in sync with their chant–“Zhul’thar, unweave us. Zhul’thar, unmake.” The air shimmered, reality splintering like glass, and through the cracks, tendrils of iridescent void coiled, infinite, and hungry.

Eliza stepped forward, her voice trembling but defiant. “Stop this! You don’t know what you’re summoning!”

A figure turned, their face a blank expanse of flesh beneath a glitching AR mask. Their voice was a chorus, echoing from the air, the cables, the cracks. “We know, Eliza Marrow. We are the Unraveled. You bear the Warden’s mark. Why fight the unmaking?”

Samir emerged, clutching his USB drive, his eyes wild. “You’re killing people! This thing—it’s not freedom, it’s oblivion!”

The figure’s mask flickered, showing their faces—Samir’s, Eliza’s, then nothing. “Oblivion is truth. Zhul’thar is the Seam of All, where names dissolve. You both hear it. Look, and be unbound.”

The touchscreen flared, and the cracks in reality widened. Eliza and Samir froze as Zhul’thar emerged—not fully–but enough.

A shimmering void, vast and empty, its fractal tendrils branching through the air, ground, and their minds. The pier warped–concrete twisting into non-Euclidean spirals, the lake boiling with colors that burned the eyes.

Eliza’s flashlight shattered, and Samir’s phone sparked, its screen showing their reflections—faces unraveling, eyes bleeding light, mouths screaming without sound.

“Who… am I?” Eliza gasped, her hands clawing at her face.

Her skin felt soft, like clay, dissolving under her fingers. She saw her life—every choice, every regret—fracture into countless versions, each collapsing into dust.

Samir staggered–the hum a scream in his skull. “I’m Samir! I’m—”

But the name broke, and he saw himself as code, lines of identity deleting. The tendrils brushed his mind, and he felt nothing—no past, no self, only the pull of the void.

The figures chanted louder, their forms flickering, dissolving into motes of iridescent ash. The touchscreen pulsed faster, the cracks merging into a single rift.

Zhul’thar’s presence grew, its hum a cacophony of whispers–Unweave. Unmake. Eliza’s vision swam, and she saw Samir, his face half-gone, reaching for the panel.

“Do it!” she screamed, her voice barely her own. “The script!”

Samir lunged, slamming the USB drive into a port on the panel. The kill script triggered, and the touchscreen screeched, fractals collapsing into black.

The tendrils recoiled, the rift shuddering, but the hum didn’t stop. It grew, vibrating in their bones, their souls. The figures wailed, their blank faces splitting, leaking void before they vanished entirely.

The pier trembled, reality snapping back—but not completely. The rift lingered, a hairline crack in the air, and through it, Zhul’thar watched.

Not with eyes, but with an awareness that crushed. Eliza and Samir ran, the hum chasing them, their reflections in the lake showing strangers, then nothing.

They collapsed in an alley miles away, the city’s neon flickering like a dying star. Eliza tried to speak, but her name was gone. Samir stared at his hands, unsure whose they were. The hum was faint now, but it never stopped. In the distance, a street screen glitched, showing a 17-second clip of static and fractals.

Above, unseen stars align, and Zhul’thar lingers.