The screaming didn't stop when the ritual ended.
It just moved—from Coren's mouth into his mind.
His body staggered away from the cathedral ruins, limbs sluggish, sweat chilling fast on his skin. The mask had come off somewhere during the ceremony—he didn't remember removing it, only the way it had melted off his face like wax. His breath came ragged, as if he'd run a mile with a storm behind him. His face pale, as if all blood had been drained from his face.
The others had already vanished. No goodbyes. No warnings. Just smoke, fire, and the scent of blood left behind in the sigils.
Now he walked home beneath a sky he no longer trusted, each streetlight flickering like an eye on the verge of waking.
---
He dreamt of coils that night.
Endless, heaving loops of scale and bone, curled beneath the city like the veins of a god.
They shifted when he looked at them. As if aware.
Not threatening. At least not yet.
Just observing.
Like a parent, unsure whether to cradle a child… or consume it.
---
Coren awoke to silence.
But not peace.
He felt watched. Not from outside—but from within. As if something in him had grown eyes.
The Spiral didn't burn that morning.
It purred, just like a cat.
It made him shiver unconsciously.
That terrified him more.
---
At the archives, people stared.
Subtly. Quietly. But they stared.
He wasn't sure what they saw—what had changed. Only that it was enough. Enough to unsettle. Enough to make Master Archivist Brennon "forget" to assign him any new material.
He spent the day pretending to read a tome on pre-collapse funerary rites, all while the Spiral occasionally twitched under his glove, humming with anticipation.
By midday, he couldn't take it anymore.
He left the archives.
---
Faye found him in an alley near the Silent Market, arms crossed, foot tapping on stone.
"You're walking too loud," she said.
"I'm not saying anything."
"It's not your voice. It's your mind. You're carrying it like a cathedral bell. All thoughts swinging wild."
Coren grunted, wiping sweat from his brow. "The… thing. Beneath the city. I saw it."
"We all did," she said, tossing him a flask. "That was the point."
"What is it?"
Faye's gold eyes narrowed.
"Depends who you ask."
"I'm asking you."
She leaned back against the wall, tilting her head toward the sky. "Some say it's the First Memory. A god who chose to forget itself to escape death. Others think it's the source of the Spirals—truth before it learned to lie. Doesn't matter."
"It does to me."
Faye glanced at him. "Then call it what it is: the Old Coil. The One Beneath. The thing Viremore is built over, and built to contain. Pick your myth."
Coren tried to steady his breath.
"I felt it looking at me."
She smirked. "It always is."
---
That night, a letter arrived beneath his door.
Folded tight. Ink black as coal. A symbol waxed into the seal—a candle half-melted, the flame coiled into a spiral.
He didn't recognize the emblem.
But the message was short.
"Tomorrow. The Hollow House. Wear no mask. Bring no name."
He barely slept.
Again.
Fearing what he might go through again.
---
The Hollow House was a myth. A children's rhyme turned urban legend. It stood at the edge of the northern cliffs, just before the drop into the black coast.
No foundation. No history.
One day it had simply been there—windows boarded, door rusted shut. People said it whispered to those who slept too close. That it moved when no one watched. That it bled when it rained.
Coren had always dismissed it.
Until now.
At twilight, he walked alone down the ragged coastal path, the false moon rising behind him.
The Hollow House greeted him like a corpse with a locked jaw.
But the door was open.
---
Inside, it was worse than he imagined.
No furniture. No light. Just shapes.
Everything was off—walls slightly bent, floors sloping the wrong way, angles that made the eye ache.Old , withering walls that made it look like it had a lot of history. A house shaped by forgetting.
Seven candles flickered in the center room, each placed at the corner of a spiral.
A man waited at the center.
Unmasked. Unsmiling. With an emotionless face.
Hair dark, skin drawn. Eyes gray like wet ash.
"You're late," he said.
"I wasn't invited," Coren replied.
The man didn't blink. "That's not how the Spiral works. You're here. That's enough."
Coren stepped into the room.
"The others?"
"They are… elsewhere. Preparing."
"For what?"
"For the asking."
Coren paused.
The Spiral pulsed once in his palm.
"You mean a question?"
"No," the man said softly. "The Asking. Capital A. The first one. The only one. The question that the city hides from itself."
He motioned to the center of the spiral.
"Sit."
Coren hesitated. "I don't even know what I'm doing."
"Good. That means you're not lying yet."
Coren knelt at the center.
The candles dimmed.
And something filled the room.
Not air. Not sound.
Weight.
It settled on his shoulders like an old, wet shroud.
"Say your truth," the man commanded.
"What truth?"
"Any. Yours. Now."
Coren swallowed. Thought.
And then, voice shaking: "I'm afraid of not being real anymore."
The man didn't react. Just nodded.
Another weight lifted.
A different one settled in.
"Say another."
"I never believed the city was real to begin with."
Another nod.
Another shift in pressure.
And then the final one.
"Say what you wish were true."
Coren hesitated.
His tongue felt made of stone.
But he said it anyway.
"I wish none of this had started with me."
Silence.
Then,
The Spiral lit up like a furnace in his chest.
A blaze of light beneath his glove, visible even through cloth.
And the air changed.
From weight to presence.
The man stepped back.
"You've been seen."
Coren looked up. "By who?"
"No one you can name."
The floor cracked beneath them.
Not broke. Cracked.
And something began to whisper up through it.
A voice with too many mouths.
A word without vowels.
The candles blew out.
The room inhaled.
Corens eyes widened.
And Coren Vale fell into the Spiral once more.