Callum began to crack sooner than expected.
Not loudly.
Not with weeping or wild pleading.
He cracked quietly.
Desperately.
Hunger gnawed through his bones faster than any knife ever could.
It began the night he killed the constable.
The look in the man's eyes — the terror, the recognition, the betrayal — it should have been enough.
It wasn't.
Callum needed more.
More fear.
More screams.
More proof that he existed.
Carmen saw it.
Julian saw it.
Neither said a word.
Because they knew exactly how this story ended.
They had written it too many times before, on too many nameless bodies.
In the quiet of the flat, Callum paced.
Back and forth.
Back and forth.
His boots wore angry grooves into the floorboards.
His hands shook when he thought no one was watching.
His eyes flickered too fast, too often, searching shadows for ghosts that weren't there yet — but would be soon.
Vivienne had cracked inward, folding herself into quieter and quieter screams.
Callum cracked outward.
Faster.
Louder.
More usefully.
Hargreave made his move under cover of smoke.
Not metaphorical smoke.
Real, ugly, gasping fire.
He set it himself — in the home of a councilman whose name would later be forgotten, but whose screams echoed long enough to feed the city's hysteria.
He didn't kill anyone.
He didn't have to.
Fear would.
Panic was a sharper knife than anything he could hold in his battered hands.
And in the heart of the city, where people still clung to the illusion of walls, the fire bloomed against the night like a promise: you will burn too.
Carmen stood by the window, watching the flames devour the dark.
She didn't smile.
She didn't frown.
She simply watched.
Julian came up behind her, resting his chin lightly against her shoulder, hands sliding slowly down the curve of her waist.
"They're burning faster than we planned," he murmured, smoke curling lazily from his lips.
Carmen tipped her head against his, letting the brief weight of him anchor her.
"Good," she whispered, voice soft as broken glass.
Julian smiled against her skin.
"They'll blame each other first."
"And then," Carmen breathed, eyes closing, "they'll pray to the wrong gods."
And none would listen.
Callum killed again two nights later.
Not a merchant.
Not a drunk.
A schoolteacher.
An old woman, harmless, whose only mistake was seeing something monstrous behind his smile.
It wasn't art.
It wasn't strategy.
It was rage.
Loud. Ugly. Stupid.
He stabbed too many times.
Left her broken body slumped across the schoolyard fence, blood dripping in awkward, ugly spatters.
Carmen found him crouched over the corpse, hands soaked, breath ragged, eyes wide and searching for approval.
Hopeful.
Like a dog bringing home something half-rotten, proud of the offering.
She knelt in front of him.
Smiled — small, gentle, almost kind.
And slid the blade under his ribs without hesitation.
Callum gasped, a small, wet sound of betrayal.
Confusion flooded his face.
He had believed.
He had loved.
And he died fast — not because Carmen pitied him, but because efficiency was a kindness monsters afforded only to their own.
"You did well," Carmen whispered into his ear as the light drained from his eyes.
"You did enough."
They left his body in the river.
Weighted down.
Swallowed without ceremony.
Another secret tucked into the city's gut.
Julian wiped his hands clean on a handkerchief and let it drift into the current.
Carmen stood on the riverbank, watching the ripples fade.
Not mourning.
Not reflecting.
Simply marking another piece of the spiral carved deeper into the city's flesh.
Julian watched her from the shadows.
He loved her most in moments like this — when she dropped every mask and stood revealed not as queen, nor villain, nor savior.
But as the blade itself.
Later, back at the flat, Carmen sank into a hot bath, steam rising in lazy spirals.
Julian sat outside the door, smoking, flipping pages in a novel so battered it barely held its own spine.
The city burned quietly beyond the windows, low and steady.
They didn't mourn Callum.
They didn't speak his name.
Because monsters do not mourn the teeth they sharpen and discard.
They only plan their next feast.
The city would remember Callum, in the way cities always remember the broken ones — too late, too shallow, too sanitized.
It would weep for his blood.
It would clutch its pearls and gasp for its lost children.
But Carmen would not.
Julian would not.
Because the Spiral doesn't weep for the ones it devours.
It simply turns tighter.
And tighter.
And tighter.
Until there is nothing left but silence.
And in that silence, Carmen Vale would still be standing.
Smiling.
Waiting.
Ready to begin again.