The Spiral did not offer a path.
It breathed one into existence.
Stone unfolded ahead of Kier like paper being uncreased — steps descending into a chamber that should not have fit within the ruin's geometry. The ceiling was too high. The air too cold. The silence too thick. It was the kind of wrong that didn't shout; it hummed.
He followed.
Not out of courage.
But because the glyph beneath his ribs had begun to ache.
The pain wasn't damage. It was thirst.
At the bottom of the steps, the chamber opened — circular, vast, and impossibly clean. Walls of seamless black stone. No glyphs. No cracks. Not even dust. The air tasted of nothing.
Except memory.
But not his own.
In the center stood a monolith. Not towering, but sharp — four-sided, narrow, like a blade balanced point-down. Floating an inch off the floor. Upon its surface shimmered a half-glyph — incomplete, jittering like it couldn't decide what it wanted to be.
Kier stepped forward.
The glyph on his rib twitched. Then pulled.
Not physically. Spiritually. Like it wanted to leap out of his skin and consume the thing in front of him.
"What are you?" Kier whispered.
The monolith answered.
Not with sound, but with knowing.
You are incomplete. I am hunger.
We can fix each other.
Kier staggered back, resisting the urge to vomit. The monolith's awareness had slid into his mind like oil into cloth — staining places even he couldn't name.
The Glyph Compass spun wildly on his palm, then cracked. A jagged split across its face.
"Damn it," Kier muttered, clutching it. He was off-map now. Even the Spiral's own relics couldn't process this place.
The monolith pulsed once.
Feed me. And I will show you the Spiral's mouth.
Kier backed away, but the glyph on his rib burned hotter. His vision blurred — memories flickering at the edges. Not echoes. Fragments.
Elin of Third Hollow, drowned beneath his failure.
The child in the red robes, screaming his name as the glyph-seal collapsed.
The unnamed mentor who handed him the Spiral tablet before dissolving into light.
Each moment surged forward — not to haunt him, but to bait him.
The monolith fed on guilt.
It wasn't a relic.
It was a Spiral Consumption Engine — a Vault-Fanged one, if the legends were true. Older than glyphs. Used by the Nine to erase entire branches of memory-based resistance.
This wasn't a test.
It was a lure.
Kier turned to leave.
The door had vanished.
Of course it had.
One name will buy you passage. One true regret. Anchored. Sacrificed.
A low hum rose from the monolith. The room vibrated. Glyph-light began to creep down the walls — jagged, involuntary, like veins growing in glass.
He had two choices.
Feed it.
Or let it find its own meal.
Kier stepped forward and dropped to his knees.
He drew the Obsidian Tooth.
Pressed its flat edge to his chest.
The glyph beneath his ribs pulsed once.
Then opened.
Not like a wound — like a door.
A shimmer of red-black light spilled out, lashing toward the monolith. The incomplete glyph on the monolith completed itself instantly, devouring the offering with an audible hiss. The air shattered like frozen breath.
A scream filled the chamber.
It came from the walls.
And also from Kier.
He wasn't offering just memory this time.
He was offering a name.
Kalen.
He whispered it.
His brother's name.
The one who had never entered the Spiral — only drawn the map for Kier, then disappeared.
The one Kier had let vanish because he was afraid of being outshone.
The monolith exploded into light.
And from the wreckage rose not a monster.
But a memory-glyph, newly forged, spiraling with fresh lines of pain and recognition.
It hovered in the air.
Waited.
Then slowly embedded itself into Kier's left hand — the one untouched until now.
He gasped.
A line of Spiral script etched itself across his wrist, forming a title.
Kier of the Twice-Broken.
The walls stopped humming.
The door reappeared behind him — no longer stone.
This time, it was made of names.
Dozens, hundreds, arranged like scales.
One of them shone faintly in the center.
Kalen.
Kier didn't touch it.
He only looked once.
Then left.
But as he ascended into the next Spiral corridor, something shifted behind him.
A figure stepped from the remains of the monolith.
Not a reflection.
Not an echo.
But a brother.
Eyes hollow. Memory tethered. Name anchored.
The Spiral was no longer only testing Kier.
It was rebuilding what he destroyed.
And it was nearly done.