Kesh.
The name dug in like a splinter.
It didn't belong to him. That much he knew. But the Hole hadn't whispered it at him — it had through him, like the echo of someone else's scream dragged across time.
He didn't know what Kesh looked like. Or where they were. But he felt them now — a shape in the dark, another Proxy. Marked. Moving. Breathing the same fractured air.
The spiral on his wrist pulsed once. Then again.
A new itch settled behind his teeth.
The boy left the Undervault without realizing how long he'd been gone.
By the time he reached the tether-streets again, the sky had shifted to that dead, gray glow the Cliffside Realms called "midlight." It meant nothing — time bent near the Hole. There were days when the sun didn't rise at all. Others where it bled orange for sixteen hours straight. The people adjusted. Or stopped trying.
As he walked, voices around him dulled — not in volume, but clarity. Words lost their shape. Faces blurred. He blinked hard, trying to focus.
Then he realized it wasn't them.
It was him.
He couldn't feel the breeze. Couldn't taste the rust. Couldn't tell if he was hot or cold. His skin was still numb from the mirror. From the Truth.
Pain is the first to go.
So you can endure the rest.
He ducked into a thread-market on instinct — rows of crooked stalls set beneath the rust-arches between Blocks Sixty and Seventy-One. Smugglers here sold everything from storm-silk and fractured compass rings to teeth soaked in memory brine.
But today, the market was emptying. Quietly. Quickly.
He caught glimpses of robed figures slipping between alleys. Hooded heads turned toward him and then away just as fast. Someone hissed a warning he couldn't make out.
That's when he heard it: a low, thrumming chant. No words — just vowel sounds, stretched and twisted like rope. It vibrated in the air. In his chest.
The spiral throbbed.
He turned the corner — and stopped.
They were gathered in a half-circle at the edge of the platform, standing over an open grate that led deeper underground. Their robes were gray with ash. Faces covered in strips of inked cloth. Lips sewn closed, but still singing.
Blind Choir.
The low cult.
Worshippers of Silence. Seekers of Erasure. Some said they were born in the pit. Others claimed they were all ex-Proxies, devoured by their own truths.
One of them turned toward him.
And without making a sound, pointed.
The others turned too.
He ran.
He didn't wait to see what they wanted. He didn't need to. That chant — it wasn't music. It was extraction. A hymn designed to hollow. To erase.
His feet pounded the tether-street boards. He ducked left, then down a maintenance shaft, breath sharp, lungs aching. The spiral glowed through his sleeve now, casting a faint, flickering light.
Down two levels. Left past the moss-fused stairwell. Into the sewer-split, where noise never echoed right.
He slipped.
Fell.
He hit stone hard — but again, felt nothing.
He forced himself up, panting, staring into the dark. The only light now came from a flickering pipe overhead and the dim, twisting symbol on his wrist.
The chanting was closer.
And then—
A voice, smooth and sharp, cut through the dark like a scalpel.
"You're early."
The boy turned.
There, leaning against the wall, was a girl.
Older than him by maybe two years. Short hair, black coat, jagged scarf pinned with bone. One of her eyes had no pupil — just a spiral etched where color should be.
She was eating an apple.
"You're the new one, right?" she asked, chewing. "The Hole said your name. Woke me up. Thought I had more time."
He stared, unsure how to answer.
She tossed the apple core into the dark and stepped closer. The air around her bent — like the truth didn't quite settle where she stood.
"I'm Kesh," she said.
Then she smiled — and it was the first real smile he'd seen in days.
"Welcome to the Spiral."