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The Corpse-Sun of Mu
And the crystal heart below
by Tan'neave Snake Salme · Sep 13, 2026 · view history →
- Images from the sunscope Awa fashioned.
- And then, from deep within the caves:
- --- We were unable to do anything but stay caught in this loop until Chaya did .…
- Wolf and I returned to the heart, and through. Hm. An act of syzygy? Were able t…
- --- We attempt methexis on the heart, though it declines
- --- And the particular resonances for both Wolf and myself.
The Sun is, unambiguously, something’s corpse. It’s hard to tell what it is, even with the telescope’s exacting, magnificent detail. Something wingéd, at least; you can see the tattered wings outlined on the pages. It’s been shattered; there’s a hole torn straight through the middle of it.
It is, fundamentally, and visibly just from the slides, an unstable system. Pieces of it were in flux and in movement, as the images were etched. It must be being held together with spit and baling wire, so to speak, although you’re not sure how or by what means.
Furthermore, and perhaps most strangely, some of the slides are almost completely devoid of any image. The Sun’s light is an absolutely searing, aggressive admixture of flourishing, pellucid, and burning gnosis, of greater magnitude than you could have imagined; it is a wonder - and a testament to its creator and the artisans who constructed it, and to the perspicacity of its operator, that the sunscope survived long enough to produce these images.
ꙮ …why can’t I see them? 🙧
ꙮ They don’t look like anything to me. Just a blur.
They wouldn’t be able to hear you, if you described it. Which means you can talk about the images, as much as you’d like, without worrying about causing harm you didn’t intend to cause.
looks at the images carefully. Is there any sense of the size of the corpse? Is it larger than a human body, or is the admixture of gnosis creating such an aura around it that it seems sun-sized in the sky? Or is it closer than a sun should be? Is there clearly only one corpse?
It’s very hard to have any concept of scale, unfortunately, although to be as large as the Sun appears from the ground, it would have to be tremendously large.
ꙮ And then you turn one last tight corner. There is a cavern, and it is– bright? It’s bright. It’s bright with the light of the Sun, streaming in from crystalline panels growing out from the ceiling of the cavern that seem to be looking out into the sky of the desert itself, and– the light does not harm you, in such a way, it’s almost pleasant to be present in, after the cool damp of the caves, and that is, itself, wondrously strange, but it is not– it could not be– what draws your eye. ⁂
ꙮ That would be the absolutely enormous crystalline heart taking up the vast bulk of the cavern; big enough that you’d have to crane your neck all the way up to look at it all. Rainbows of light refract through it, billowing out from some point deep within; you can feel a pulse of stasis shoving outward from the surface of the heart like a physical force, billowing itself out into the world. There is the space of one breath, and then:
- You hear — and your Star hears — a song, echoing from the stillness: Eternity
ꙮ Light pulses through the crystal heart. For one beat, you are somewhere else. White stone beneath an immense weight. Green beyond it: leaves layered upon leaves, wet branches, a river catching sunlight. So much moves beneath that sky. So much is alive. Light shimmers off grey glass. ⁂
ꙮ Below you, the human looks at you, gratitude in their eyes, welling with their tears. They would be Unmade, if not for you. ⁂
ꙮ Above you, a shape interrupts the light. Wings as black as night, with pinpricks of starlight dusting the patagia. Talons, sharp as subtle obsidian knives. They fall towards you. You feel each point enter. The talons close upon something deeper than flesh, and draws it apart. ⁂
ꙮ There is a sound you have heard before—the world opening where no opening ought to be. Here it continues. Through the stone beneath you. Through the green beyond it. Through distances that had, until this instant, joined one place to another. ⁂
ꙮ The pain is immense. So is the love. It reaches toward the river, the leaves, the innumerable lives beyond the stone. There is no time to count them. There is no time to say anything to them. The talons tighten. Light pours through the wound. For an instant it catches the bent head above you, the claw buried to the wrist, the edges of vast wings. Then the wings come apart in the brightness, and the brightness remains. ⁂
ꙮ You know that light. You have crossed a desert beneath it. ⁂
ꙮ Light pulses through the crystal heart. For one beat, you are somewhere else. White stone breaking under your talons. The smell of damp in the air, well-tended but sprawling orchards and the wilds beyond. The sky observes, impassively. ⁂
ꙮ Below you, the human looks at you. They are still here. The Phthora did not, will not, take them. You will not allow that. ⁂
ꙮ Above you, a shape interrupts the light. Silver-gilt black-velvet wings, whose softness you know. Talons you’ve watched sunlight glint off. They fall towards you. They part your flesh, they grab hold of that which was, already, in every possible way, their own. ⁂
ꙮ There is a sound you have heard before, but it reverberates, a rippling crack, spiderweb fractures inverting every colour you love in the world, spreading in all nine directions. ⁂
ꙮ The pain is immense. So is the love. You reach out with every sense and feel the living world, in what you suddenly know are its last moments. That all will break; that all, perhaps, already broke. That the universe was born like this; that it was only a matter of time until rending light tore syzygy to shattered glass. Your wings shred in the light; you are torn, and torn, and torn– ⁂
ꙮ You know that light. You have crossed a desert beneath it. ⁂
ꙮ Light pulses through the crystal heart. Again. White stone beneath an immense weight. Green beyond it. Light shimmers off grey glass. ⁂
ꙮ The human looks up. Tears fall from their eyes. You reach to free them from their Unmaking. ⁂
ꙮ A shadow above. Betrayer-wings, black as night. Talons, falling. Catching on something, deeper than flesh. ⁂
ꙮ The pain is immense. So is the love. There is no time… ⁂
ꙮ You know the light. You have crossed a desert beneath it. ⁂
ꙮ Light pulses through the crystal heart! ⁂
— We were unable to do anything but stay caught in this loop until Chaya did … something.
knows this light. She has crossed a desert beath it. And more. She has stood in this light before, in this cavern, seen these moments, felt this pain. But today she will not stop. Today the cycle will not hold her. The light of the sun does not break her. She stands, resolute.⁂
The light of the heart does not break her. She endures, resolute. ⁂
ꙮ Starlight begins to rise, in whorls, around Chaya.
The weight of the world does not break her.⁂
She survives.🙧
- You hear — and your Star hears — a song, echoing from the stillness: Emet Mekheberet
ꙮ Starlight billows out behind her, like wings, like a shield, enveloping all of you–
ꙮ And you can breathe, you are here, and now, and not in the Heart’s eternal Moment. It still pulses, it still beats, of course. But your will is yours.
ꙮ 🙧
Wolf and I returned to the heart, and through. Hm. An act of syzygy? Were able to render the moment bearable. I am not sure we discovered anything particularly noteworthy but. We were able to get a slightly wider view of the moment the heart is caught in.
ꙮ The heart skips a beat. A single beat. Not much, in the grand scheme of things. But has that ever happened before? And then, you sing, and there was a word for this, once. Like wind and counterwind, melody and counterpoint.
ꙮ With each others’ voice, with one another’s song, for a moment there is more than the Moment.
ꙮ Fire and shadow, and shadow and fire, the one casting the other, the other accentuating the one.
ꙮ Two souls in syzygy.
ꙮ Light pulses through the crystal heart.
ꙮ The human looks up, love in their eyes. One half of their face is patched together with molten gold where it’s begun to crack and break apart. He did– he has done– he has been doing– he will do– everything he could. And yet. And yet. In this moment it is yours to know their will, and the look they give you is one of profound and utter gratitude. You remember that, too. You hold that in your Heart, too precious, yours alone.
ꙮ Light pulses through the crystal heart.
ꙮ …it does not overwhelm you, any more. It simply is. 🙧
ꙮ Oh, it would be so easy to fall in. It would be so easy to fall in that it would be impossible not to. And– there is one thing. There is one thing it would remember. There is one manner in which this entity would exercise what volition remains to it, and that is to refuse her offer, with profound gentleness. And yet, in that same moment, two things. ⁂
ꙮ First, a certain knowledge that the Phthora led to that sad circumstance, yes. A single, fragile human person, after everything. After everything that happened. Just one. You don’t even remember their name. ⁂
ꙮ Second, an image, impossibly brief, of a beautiful young man with piercing azure eyes and lightly tanned skin, smiling over his shoulder, mid-turn, holding a wooden flute in his hand. The most precious thing the Heart recalls, that which it holds the closest, and will not let go. This it shares with you. 🙧
ꙮ Wolf: Diana looked at you once with that very same smile.
ꙮ Salme: He could be, you think, the Awoken’s brother. The resemblance is uncanny. (As for the gentle refusal… that resemblance, too, is uncanny.)