The whispering stopped the moment Coren opened the paper that she had left behind.
It was no larger than his palm, folded three times over and sealed with wax. The design pressed into it wasn't a crest or a guild seal—no, it was a maze. Perfectly symmetrical. As if someone had etched confusion into a symbol.
He unfolded it in the flickering light of a dying candle.
Inside, only three words, penned in ink the color of dried blood were written with clarity.
"Downstairs. After dark."
He didn't know how long he stared at it. Minutes. Maybe hours. But the longer he looked, the more it felt like the words moved. The longer he held it, the heavier it became.
---
The Archivum had a basement.
Everyone knew that.
A place where old texts were sealed and forgotten, where failed translations, banned rituals, and cursed artifacts were shelved behind reinforced gates. Only High Archivists had access. Only the brave—or foolish—ever asked to go down.
No one ever came back up changed.
But Coren already was.
He waited.
The rest of the day crawled by like a snail after a heavy rain. The quiet hum of the archives felt louder than usual. Pages turned like knives. Footsteps echoed with the weight of things unsaid.
He barely spoke to anyone.
He couldn't. Not with the sigil buzzing under his glove like a second heart.Not when he could feel all the lies they were speaking, be it silently.
By the time dusk arrived in the city like rusted wine, Coren had already made his choice.
---
The stairs to the basement weren't marked. They didn't need to be. Everyone avoided them. The door was tucked behind an unassuming shelf of blank tomes. Most assumed the books were just storage logs, abandoned after reforms.
But Coren knew better.
He pressed the maze-stamped paper against the iron door, and something shifted. Not visibly—but in the air. A subtle tremor, like recognition.
The lock clicked.
Then opened.
A breathless cold slid out of the doorway, licking against his neck like the fingers of something ancient and blind.
He stepped inside.
---
The descent was long.
Longer than it should've been.
Longer than how it was created.
Each stair creaked differently, like they remembered different versions of history. The walls were lined with books. Not shelved—embedded. Melted into the stone like fossils. Eyes painted on their spines blinked once when passed.
At the bottom, the air changed.
Thicker.
Like walking into candle wax.
Coren blinked. His eyes struggled to adjust. The darkness here wasn't just absence—it was presence. A thing that crawled and watched and waited.
The chamber opened like a wound.
At the center, a circular stone table. Around it, three figures in dark robes. Their faces were covered by cracked masks—each one carved from different material. Bone. Ashwood. Burnt clay.
None of them spoke.
Not at first.
The masked figure with the bone face finally turned toward him. Her voice was raspy, like leaves dragged across glass.
"You were not summoned."
"I was invited," Coren said, holding up the paper.
The figure with the clay mask laughed. Dry and short.
The ashwood-masked one tilted his head. "He bears the Spiral."
Coren felt a prickle crawl up his spine.
The bone-masked woman stepped forward, slow and careful, like someone testing the floor for traps.
"Who gave it to you?"
"I don't know."
Another pause.
Then the ashwood-masked one leaned in. "Then you don't yet understand what it wants."
Coren tried to stand tall, but his legs felt like reeds in a storm. "I didn't come here to beg. I came because someone said the Spiral remembers. I need to know what that means."
"You think memory is a gift," said the clay mask. "It's not. Not here. Not in this city."
The room fell into silence again. Not empty—tense. Like the air was holding its breath.
Finally, bone-mask raised a hand.
"Let him see," she said.
Ashwood hesitated. "He is not prepared."
"None of us were."
It felt like the air suddenly thickened.
The table opened.
Literally split in two, stone groaning as it pulled apart to reveal a well beneath. But there was no water inside. Just ash. Dry, gray, and endless. It swirled without wind.
Coren stepped closer.
And the Spiral burned.
Not pain. Not this time.
More like recognition. Like it saw a home inside that pit of ash.
He looked up at them.
"What is this?"
The clay mask answered.
"Memory. Before it has a shape. Every forgotten name. Every erased secret. Every whisper that dared to outlive its speaker."
"And this is where the Spiral feeds," said Ashwood. "From memory unclaimed."
Coren stared down.
The ash pulsed.
And he saw something.
Not with his eyes. Not even with his mind.
It was something else—deeper.
A city. Not Viremore. Older. Built of impossible angles and towers that leaned like teeth. Streets paved in bone dust. In the sky, seven moons, each a different face.
In that city, he saw himself.
Or someone wearing his face.
Standing at an altar made of eyes. Reciting a vow with no words.
Then the vision ended.
The ash stilled.
The Spiral quieted.
And Coren staggered back, breathless, chest heaving like he'd just run ten flights up.
Bone-mask studied him silently.
"You've tasted it now," she said. "You cannot untaste."
"What was that?"
"The city that was," said Clay.
"The city that will be," added Ashwood.
Coren's hands trembled. He looked at them—still his. Still whole.
"I don't understand."
"You will," Bone said softly. "You've been marked by the First Spiral. It is the wound that births doors. But doors do not only open. They lead."
Coren wiped sweat from his brow. "Where?"
They didn't answer.
Instead, the ashwood-masked figure pulled something from beneath his robe.
A mask.
Simple. Worn.
Made of blackened wood with a single spiral carved where the mouth should be.
He handed it to Coren.
"You'll need this."
"I'm not one of you."
"Not yet."
Coren took the mask.
The moment his fingers touched the wood, he remembered something he'd never known.
A voice. Not a whisper—his own. Saying words in a forgotten tongue.
Swearing an oath.
To what, he couldn't tell.
But the Spiral approved.
It buzzed in his palm like a cat purring on a grave.
---
When Coren left the underlevels, the city above felt… wrong.
Not just darker.
Hungrier.
Shadows moved too freely. Faces blurred at the edge of sight. The sky had no stars—just pinpricks of eyes watching through velvet.
And as he walked, mask tucked beneath his coat, the sigil whispered again.
But this time, it used his voice.