The Spiral began to take him.
It was slow at first—like mist wrapping around Asto's ankles, whispering promises of sleep and silence. His legs gave out beneath him. His breath caught in his throat. The trees warped at the edges, spinning like a dream folding in on itself. Roots curled from the earth like hands reaching up to claim him.
And then—
"ASTO!"
A voice cut through the collapse. Sharp. Familiar. Alive.
The woman.
She ran faster than the forest could close. Her long black coat snapped behind her like wings of ink. Her boots smashed through curling threads and groaning bark. The Spiral tried to turn the path against her—warping trees, shifting the ground—but she didn't hesitate. She moved like she'd done this before.
She reached him just as his chest vanished into the spiral ether.
Without pause, she punched.
Once. Twice. Three. Four times.
Her knuckles slammed the air, shattering the Spiral's grip. With every strike, light bled from her fists—ghostly white fire laced with runes. The space around Asto cracked and peeled back like shattered glass. He dropped with a gasp, collapsing in a spiral of ash.
But before his body hit the ground—
The soilopened.
Like a mouth. Gaping. Hungry.
And yet, she was faster.
She leapt.
Arms out.
Caughthimmid-fall, cradling his limp form as the earth howled beneath them. Threads snapped at her boots like teeth, but she kicked off the collapsing rootline, flipping backward onto stable ground.
Asto sagged against her. Dead weight.
His skin was ice. His breath thin.
His body—brokenbyexhaustion.
He had nothing left to give.
Her voice trembled as she lowered him to her lap. "No… not yet. Don't you dare vanish now."
But he was slipping. Eyes half-lidded. Pale. Gone.
And just before the dark took him, he heard her whisper—not to him.
To somethingelse.
"Hold him with all your strength. No matter what comes… protect him."
Asto's body trembled—then pulsed.
From deep within his chest, threadssurgedoutward. Not like before. These weren't wild or cursed.
They responded. Obedient.
They curled around him protectively, forming a tight cocoon of flickering red light, as if something ancient inside him had heard her command.
He tried to open his mouth. Speak.
But his body was failing.
And then—
Theshadowsteppedforward.
Not from the trees.
Not from the dark.
It simply arrived, like it had always been standing behind the moment.
Tall. Cloaked in smoke. A face without features, yet somehow Asto knew it was watching him.
The woman turned to it. "You're late."
The shadow said nothing. Just stared at Asto's near-unconscious face.
Then frowned.
"…He's still awake?"
She nodded. "Barely. But enough."
The shadow knelt. Its fingers brushed Asto's forehead.
"Then he remembers more than we feared."
Asto, through blurred vision, watched them both. His lips trembled.
"…I know you," he murmured, not sure who he meant.
The shadow paused.
The woman's eyes darkened.
And then his threads—hisownthreads—slid upward and coveredhiseyes, wrapping like a blindfold.
A final heartbeat.
A final breath.
Darkness.
And in the distance, the Spiral stirred in fear. Not because it had taken him.
But because it hadn't succeeded.
Because he had heard somethingheshould not have.
Because Asto's memory… was beginning to wake.
The forest held its breath.
The trees did not sway. The wind did not move. The Spiral was watching.
It had failed.
Asto should have been gone by now—sunk so deep into illusion that no memory could pull him back. But something interfered. Someone.
And now... he remembered too much.
Beneath the canopy where Asto had collapsed, the ground whispered with veins of red light. The Spiral twisted on itself, desperate to course-correct. It sent voices through the soil, through the bark, through the veins of memory it had fed on for so long.
But Asto was gone.
Farther below—past roots that had never seen sunlight, beneath layers of time and memory—a boy stood at the edge of a hallway made of hospital walls and forest bark.
Echo.
His name. The real one. Not the name the Spiral called him.
He looked twelve. But he had stopped aging. The Spiral didn't let time move normally.
He pressed a hand against the wall. It pulsed under his skin, like it was breathing.
"You're changing," he whispered.
His voice sounded too old for his face.
The walls replied in soft laughter. Cruel and echoing.
He clenched his fists. His body trembled. But he didn't cry. Not anymore.
Above them both, in the fractured light of a clearing, the woman stood beside the shadow.
She had not moved since the threads covered Asto's eyes.
"He's not ready," the shadow said.
"He doesn't have time to be ready," she replied coldly.
They stared at Asto's still body, wrapped in his own threads like a sleeping god beneath tangled roots.
"He will break."
"Let him."
The shadow turned to her. "You're playing a dangerous game."
She finally looked up. Her eyes shimmered with red and green light.
"I've played it before. And I've lost worse."
Deep within the Spiral, something ancient moved.
It had many names. Most forgot them.
But it had one fear:
Astorememberingeverything.
Because if Asto remembered what really happened the night his son vanished—if he remembered the truth the Spiral had buried beneath blood and lies—he would stop being its victim.
And become its end.
The Spiral screamed.
Not with sound, but with a thousand bending trees, splitting sky, and cracking roots. The forest bled shadows. Time hiccuped—froze, rewound, skipped—and something underneath the soil panicked.
He remembered.
He wasn'tsupposedto.
Asto lay still, his body cocooned in red thread—tight like muscle, alive like nerve. A breath escaped him, shallow and wet. His lips moved, forming no words. His mind reached for images too old, too distant—shards of memory sealed beneath years of grief and magic.
Inside the cocoon, hedreamed.
No, heremembered.
The warmth of a hand—tiny, clinging to his finger.
The laugh of a child.
A promise whispered in a language no longer spoken.
Blood.
Flames.
A nursery that turned into a grave.
And thename he was forbidden to recall.
His eyes snapped open beneath the blindfold.
Red threads slithered back, loosening—not because they were forced, but because they obeyed something deeper. The woman jolted upright, sensing the shift. Her lips parted, a curse on the edge.
"No, not yet—"
But Asto was already sitting up, breath ragged, spine arching like something insidehim wanted out.
The Spiral reacted instantly.
The soil tore open again—this time not a mouth, but a maw. Roots laced with teeth erupted, reaching not for his body… but for his soul.
The woman grabbed his wrist.
So did the shadow.
Their hands met on his skin.
The forest shattered.
Astoscreamed.
But not in pain.
In recognition.
Because something inside him remembered the shadow's voice. The warmth of her hand. And the name that never made it past his lips before—
"Eli," he choked, breath breaking.
The name froze the forest.
Even the Spiral paused.
The woman stared at him, shaken to silence.
The shadow whispered, "…He shouldn't remember that."
And Asto—slipping again—saw it in flashes:
A boy with silver hair.
A brother with laughter in his veins.
A final moment behind a closed door, blood dripping down the handle.
"Where is he?" Asto rasped. "Where did you take him?"
The red threads writhed violently—notindefensenow, but in rage. The earth responded. Something deep beneath growled, old and starving.
"No more hiding," the woman muttered. She reached into her coat and pulled something black, humming, trembling—a blade woven from silence and sorrow. "If he remembers Eli… then the Spiral will start hunting the wrong one."
Asto looked up, confused. Weak.
"The wrong one?"
She didn't answer.
The shadow stood.
It looked at Asto—then at the growing storm of Spiral fury crashing toward them in waves.
"He's waking up."
"Too soon," she whispered. "But maybe… it has to be now."
Then she turned to Asto. Kneeling again.
Her voice softened.
"You're going to forget again," she said, "but only for a little while. Just until it's safe."
He opened his mouth, tried to protest—but the blade was already raised.
"Wait—"
And she sliced it down.
Across his chest.
Not cutting flesh. Cutting thread.
The red light screamed.
The Spiral shattered backward.
And Asto's eyes rolled up—notfrompain…
…but from release.
He collapsed into her arms again, a ragdoll, heart still beating but mind falling into a darkness thistimeplacedthereonpurpose.
The woman didn't cry.
But the way she held him was all sorrow.
The shadow stood beside her, arms folded.
"You should've told him."
She nodded. "He would've followed Eli into the fire."
The shadow turned, vanishing into the mist. "He still might."
And beneath them, the Spiral boiled.
Because the name was remembered.
Because Asto said Eli.
Because in the dark… Eli had heard it too.
The woman rose. Her arms trembled around Asto's weight, though her face remained still—tired, drawn, pale from the fight. Red ash clung to her coat. Her boots sunk slightly into the scorched spiral-blasted soil.
She stared at the surrounding woods.
The Spiral was silent again—but it was the kind of silence that listens.
Still watching.
Still waiting.
She exhaled and said softly, almost too quiet to hear, "Again… help me."
There was no wind, no rustling of trees, only the faint crackle of broken space behind her. And then—
avoice, low and ancient, replied from nowhere and everywhere at once.
"Carrythem… andbringthemtome."
The woman closed her eyes. Her lips twitched in something bitter—regret or surrender, maybe both.
Then the voice added, darker now, "Youshouldn'thavetakenpart, Lady."
A pause. Something unseen leaned closer—its breath like frost on her spine.
"You'renowontheirlist."
And then silence again—real this time. The Spiral held its breath.
From the red soil, Asto's threads responded not with fear, but obedience. They flared out, circling them both like serpents, before lifting them intotheair, gentle as sleep.
The woman clutched Asto tighter as their feet left the ground. Her coat fell open slightly, revealing more of the burningsigils across her ribs—marks of a promise made long ago, before the Spiral even woke.
Up they rose, high above the tree canopy—into the black sky where no stars had shone for hours.
Until now.
Asinglestarappeared.
No twinkle. Just a pulse, steady and waiting, like a signal long dormant.
It hovered at the horizon, motionless.
And then—
As soon as Asto's eyes fluttered faintly beneath closed lids—
Thestarmoved.
It began to drift slowly across the sky, and the threads followed. They pulled both the woman and Asto behind it, like loyal reins to an unseen god.
Below them, the forest writhed in silence.
The Spiral had been watching.
But it hadn't stopped them.
Not yet.
Because even it was afraid of where that star was leading.
The woman held Asto's limp body closer, her breath warm on his frozen skin. She whispered, "Just a little longer… just hold on…"
And far below, somewhere deeper in the forest than any human could walk—anothersetofeyesopened.
Old. Familiar.
And angry.
Because she had broken the terms.
And now, theywerebothhunted.
The star stopped.
High above a distant mountain—black against a deeper black—it hung like a final judgment. Cold. Still. Watching.
The threads obeyed. Their motion slowed until both Asto and the woman hovered above the jagged peak, surrounded by a silence toocompletetobenatural.
Then, without warning—
Theyletgo.
The threads unraveled from the woman's body like breath pulled from lungs. Her weight dropped.
She fell.
No scream. No flailing.
She didn't resist. She didn't plead.
She simply closed her eyes and let the fall take her.
Because she knew what this was.
Punishment.
For interfering.
For remembering.
For choosing his life over the rules.
The mountain rose to meet her. Sharp stone. Ancient scars. And yet, just before she struck—thewindcaughther. Or something like it. It wasn't mercy. It was ritual.
The forest didn't want her dead. Not yet.
Just… broken enough to obey again.
She landed hard on her side, shoulder cracking. Her cheek hit cold stone. Blood painted the corner of her mouth.
She didn't cry out.
She just exhaled—slow and steady—and whispered to the mountain, "I accept it."
Above her, the threads pulled upward again, lighter now.
Because they still carried Asto.
His body floated higher, kept separate. He didn't stir. His face twitched with the remnants of dreams. Of names. Of stars. Of a brother's voice calling to him from behind a veil.
And then—
His eyes opened.
But they weren't the same.
The boy who had been broken, slipping into death moments ago—he was somewhere else now.
His irises burned faint red, mirroring the threadlight around him. The Spiral's curse had been loosened, but something older had taken its place. Something that had once been buried beneath the trauma. A thread older than memory.
He looked down at the woman.
She looked back up at him.
Their eyes met.
And she saw it.
Hedidn'trememberher.
Not right now.
Not yet.
But something inside him knewher, and that was far more dangerous.
The threads jerked him away—faster this time.
They began to carry him toward another horizon, vanishing beyond the peak where no moonlight touched.
The woman lay on the stone, chest rising and falling with effort. Blood filled her mouth. Her hand trembled as she reached toward the sky.
"Forgive me," she whispered.
But the mountain said nothing.
And in the distance, far beyond the edge of reason, theSpiralbegantoturnagain.
Because Asto had awakened.
And hewasn'talone in his own skin anymore.
The woman didn't move.
She stayed on the stone, breath shallow, staring into the starless sky where Asto had vanished. The silence that followed wasn't peace. It was preparation.
Something had changed in him.
She felt it.
Not just memory returning. Not just power waking.
Somethingelsehadtakenroot.
Her fingertips curled into the dust. She forced her body to rise—barely, unsteadily—until she was kneeling.
And that's when she felt thesecondpulse.
Not from the Spiral.
Not from Asto.
But from deepbeneath the mountain.
A slow, rhythmic beat—like a hearttoolargefortheearth, echoing from below the stone.
Her eyes widened.
"No," she whispered.
But it was too late.
Behind her, the mountain cracked.
A thin red line split the rock—silent, glowing, bleedingupward.
And then a voice spoke—not the one she prayed to. Not the one that gave her strength.
This one was older.
Hungrier.
And it whispered in a voice that echoed like bone:
"He'snotyoursanymore."
Then—
themountainopeneditseye.