The stairwell beneath the Observatory Dome wound like a glass helix, each step casting glimmering echoes across Lynchie's boots. It was as if the path itself was alive, remembering her weight. Downward she followed the flickering glows along the steps, passing constellations carved into the walls — half-formed zodiacs and cryptic beasts shaped from light and stone. The Spiral Wards had shifted.
At the base waited a door without handle or hinge—a polished obsidian disc inset with a single keyhole-shaped void. Yet no key would ever turn it.
Lynchie stepped forward.
The sigil on her palm pulsed.
She raised her hand, and the void devoured the light from her Spiral mark. The door did not open so much as dissolve, melting like shadow washed away by starlight. A breeze of impossible age whispered past her.
She entered.
The chamber beyond was spherical and silent.
Twelve hooded figures sat cross-legged upon floating stone discs, spaced equidistantly in a perfect ring. Each wore a mask of pure void-glass, blank as sleep. Above them hung the observatory dome's underbelly, turned from crystal to obsidian. The stars could no longer be seen. Only silence reigned.
In the center of the ring floated a single quill suspended above an unbound book.
The Circle of Quiet Masks.
They did not speak.
They did not gesture.
But one figure slowly raised its masked face toward Lynchie. The mask showed no eyeholes, no motion—yet she felt herself being seen.
A second voice stirred in her mind. No words. Only intention: Observe. Record. Remain.
Her knees buckled slightly under the pressure. Not physical weight, but expectation. Gravity born of duty.
She walked into the center.
The quill floated down to meet her.
It hovered inches from her hand, waiting.
When she took it, she felt not ink but memory run through her fingers. It wrote in her mind before it ever touched parchment.
One of the masked figures shifted. Another followed.
Then, with the slow precision of celestial drift, six masks turned inward toward her. The others remained still.
A voice — hers, but not hers — whispered:
"Half the Circle recognizes the Sign. The other half has yet to dream."
A brief image flared in her thoughts: a dragon of woven glass and dreamstuff coiling around the constellations. A beast she had not yet met.
Then the chamber vanished.
She stood once more alone beneath the dome, quill still in hand, no sign of the Circle remaining.
Only a single page resting on the Observatory altar:
"One among the Circle may awaken. But the masks must remain. Until the dream is dreamt twice."
The Spiral Wards were humming now, deep and low, like something ancient trying to breathe.