Coren didn't land.
He unfolded.
Across time, across self, across thought.
There was no floor beneath him, only layers of memory that tore open like rotted pages as he plummeted. He saw his own birth from the wrong angle. Watched his father forget his name on a rainy evening. Felt the moment the Spiral chose him—before he ever touched the mask. Before he...
got selected by the mark...
He hit the ground when there wasn't one.
And woke screaming.
---
The Hollow House was empty.
No candles. No masked man. No spiral on the floor.
Just rot and silence, and the sound of something scratching behind the walls—too rhythmic to be rats.
Coren stumbled out into the coastal dark.
The moon was gone.
Gone.
Not behind clouds. Not hidden.
Absent.
In its place: a hole. Deep and endless, filled with teeth that weren't made to eat—but to remember.
He turned away and threw up.
By the time he reached the edges of Viremore, the city had already begun to feel... wrong.
---
Shadows stretched where they shouldn't.
Signs bore names no one remembered painting.
A preacher stood at a corner, weeping openly while holding a mirror to the sky. The mirror showed nothing.
Coren passed a child drawing spirals on the street in ash.
"I didn't tell it," the boy whispered. "But it heard me anyway."
Coren kept walking.
---
His apartment was colder than usual. Something had been inside.
Not a person. Something else. Something mystical. Or cursed.
His books were open—not tossed or scattered, but carefully placed. Each one turned to a page he didn't remember marking.
In the margins, something had written in black ink:
"Memory bleeds forward."
He closed the books without looking further.
That night, he sat in his chair, mask on the table, Spiral uncovered.
He could feel it tugging.
Not just from the city now—but from under his skin. Like something inside him wanted out.
Faye hadn't come back.
Neither had the man from the Hollow House.
He was alone with it.
So, he did what he'd learned to do when the Spiral pressed hardest.
He wrote.
---
Journal Entry, Date Unknown:
> The Coil beneath Viremore is not just memory. It is hunger.
But it doesn't feed like a beast. It listens. And when the truths are heavy enough… it echoes.
What did I say in that room? What did it hear?
> The moon is gone.
The sky isn't black—it's blank.
> Something is walking up the Spiral. And it wears my shape in its dreams.
---
The next morning, he went back to the archives.
They weren't the same.
Brennon didn't speak. Just pointed to a wrapped package left on Coren's desk.
No seal. No note.
He opened it slowly.
Inside: a page torn from a codex. Old vellum. Edges burned.
The title read:
"Echoforms: Entities Born From Forgotten Truths."
He scanned the first paragraph.
> When a truth dies unspoken, it sinks.
When it sinks too deep, it grows limbs.
Further down:
> Echoforms are born when knowledge is denied reality.
They are not ghosts. They are not memories.
They are what happens when a lie becomes heavy enough to break the floor beneath it.
Coren felt his stomach drop.
His breath caught.
The scratching he'd heard in the Hollow House.
The shape he saw in the mirror last week—just for a flicker, wearing his face but not his eyes.
He finally understood.
Something was echoing him.
---
That night, it knocked on his door.
Three times. Polite. Rhythmic.
He didn't move.
It knocked again.
Then spoke.
"Coren Vale. Archivist. Spiral-bearer. Do not be afraid."
The voice was wrong.
Not distorted. Not monstrous.
Just... misplaced.
Like someone trying to imitate his own voice from memory.
He reached for the mask.
Slipped it on.
The Spiral ignited.
Through the eyeholes, the world lit up with veins of gold, shadow, and ruin.
And through the door—on the other side—he saw it.
Not a demon.
Not a monster.
Just... him.
No breath. No heartbeat. No expression.
Just Coren, unmoving.
And behind that face: a hole where memory should be.
He didn't open the door.
Didn't need to.
The Spiral spoke for him.
"You are not real."
And the echo replied:
"I am what you left behind."