The chamber where the Elders met had no doors.
It could only be entered when the Helix allowed it.
It was said the stone itself remembered every secret ever whispered within its walls — and would one day speak them all aloud, if the wrong blood spilled.
Tonight, the chamber trembled.
Twelve thrones.
Twelve figures.
None showing their faces.
Some wore masks of bone.
Others of glass, iron, silence.
Only one seat sat empty — the Founder's Throne.
It had remained vacant for generations.
Until now.
"He's gone," said a voice. Cold. Genderless.
"Worse," said another. Older. Fractured. "He's building."
A hum rippled through the council — not surprise, but alarm. Not fear of Aarav... but of what he might awaken.
"He has accessed the inner vault," said a third. "We sealed it."
"Clearly," came a slow, poisonous voice, "we didn't seal it well enough."
On the obsidian table between them: a project dossier.
Subject: Aarav Mishra
Classification: AXIS PRIMORDIAL
Status: Compromised
Suggested Protocol:
" Terminate "
" Cleanse Inner Ring "
" Deploy Sentinel: Designation: Maya "
"Maya has bonded with him," one voice warned.
"We trained her to lead. Not to love."
"And if she fails?"
A pause.
Then: "She will not."
But even the stone felt the lie.
Elsewhere, in a lower chamber rarely spoken of, the engineers of the Order — the ones who no longer dreamed in language — gathered around something long sealed.
A vessel. A mind. A contingency.
Project: Spiral Zero
Status: Dormant
Command Key: Awaiting Axis Rebellion
A figure entered the room.
Maskless.
Eyes hollow.
"We are at risk," they said. "He remembers."
"Then let us remind him," came the reply.
In the upper halls, the initiates continued their routines — memorizing doctrine, whispering chants, bleeding into stone.
But beneath it all, the Helix was fraying.
For centuries, it had twisted without resistance.
Now the spiral was slipping.
And what lay at its center — what the Elders had buried under prophecy and silence — had begun to turn.