Two days passed.
Coren Vale barely moved from his bed. He watched the ceiling like it might blink back at him, the spiral on his palm wrapped tight in bandages. Even beneath layers of linen and leather, he could still feel it. Not pain, exactly—something more invasive. Like heat from a fire just out of sight.
He hadn't left his apartment. Hadn't gone to work. Hadn't answered the knock on his door yesterday morning when Archivist Belroth's assistant came asking where he'd been.
He just sat.
And listened.
To the ink drying. To the wood creaking. To thoughts that weren't his.
Because the whispering had started.
Not all the time. Not clearly. But in the quietest moments—in the pause between breaths or the tick of his brass clock—he could almost make out words.
They weren't in his voice.
They weren't even in his head.
They came from the corners of the room.
---
He ate when he remembered. Bread that had gone stiff. Dried and salted meat he barely chewed. The spiral pulsed each time he tried to distract himself. It was as if it was growing… impatient.
And then it started feeding him something else.
Not food.
Lies.
Coren realized it the first time his neighbor stopped by. An older man, Brune, who'd once been a field scholar before the war left him limping.
"Just checking in," Brune had said with a weak smile. "Thought I heard something… odd."
"I'm fine," Coren replied, half-hidden behind the door.
The mark on his palm flared.
He flinched. Bit his tongue. Waved the man away.
That was when it hit him: the pain came when someone lied. Even small ones. Even if it was himself who did so.
A bargirl said she wasn't tired.
A child told his mother he'd finished his chores and studies.
A merchant insisted his wine was imported, brought from a huge empire.
Each time, the sigil in his palm bit. Not hard. But enough for him to lightly wince over it.
He could feel the falsehood crack through the air like a splinter in glass. It wasn't a voice or a message. It was instinct. A gut certainty that the truth had just been bent.
And then, slowly, he began to see more.
Not with his eyes— with the mark.
Late the same night, while standing at the window, he watched a man walk past a corner lamppost and vanish into the wall like smoke.
No sound. No trace.
The sigil pulsed once.
Coren didn't sleep again after that. Rather, he couldn't.
---
The third morning, he caved. Washed, dressed in half-wrinkled robes, shoved the notebook deep into his coat, and stepped outside. The sunlight hit him like a slap. The streets were still slick from night rain, the smell of wet stone clinging to everything.
The city of Viremore didn't care that something had changed in him.
That was the thing about cities. They didn't stop. Didn't wait for anyone. Just like Time.
Carriages rolled down crooked cobbles. Church bells rang in a lazy rhythm. Children darted between alley shadows, pretending to duel with sticks. Everything looked normal.
But it wasn't.
He could feel the city's lies. Not from people now—from buildings. From streets. From signs that said "Inn" when there was nothing behind the doors.
It was like the whole place was a mask stretched over something deeper.
He went back to the Archivum.
The gates were still open. The guards at the front didn't even glance at him. Either they hadn't noticed his absence—or had been ordered not to ask.
Coren walked quickly, head down, gloves tight over the mark.
The sigil stirred the moment he crossed the threshold of the Archivum.
The books watched. He could feel it in his bones. The archives were a hive of quiet thought, and something old had started humming underneath.
He made his way to the far left wing—unused, disorganized. A place they stored half-translated texts and broken catalogs. He took a seat behind a half-collapsed shelf, opened a dusty ledger, and pretended to read.
The air in the back stacks always felt cooler. Not cold—just still.
He stayed there for an hour.
And then he heard her.
"You're bad at hiding."
He looked up fast.
A woman stood in the row across from him. Mid-thirties, maybe. Weatherworn cloak, travel-scuffed boots. She leaned against a shelf like she belonged there, but he'd never seen her before. Her face was ordinary—plain brown hair, a light scar under one eye—but her eyes were wrong.
Gold. Not yellow. Gold like molten coin.
Coren's throat went dry.
"I don't know you," he said.
"Not yet."
She stepped closer.
The sigil burned under his glove.
Lie, it said.
But who lied? Him? Her?
He stood. "Who sent you?"
"No one who likes being named."
"Then what do you want?"
"To warn you." She slid a small square of parchment across the table. "That thing on your hand? It's not passive. It listens. And if it listens long enough, it starts to remember."
He stared at the paper. Another sigil—not like his. More angular. Sharp, geometric.
"What is this?"
"A way out," she said. "Or in. Depends how deep you've already gone."
Coren didn't move.
The woman glanced over her shoulder. Her voice lowered.
"You're not the first, you know. The First Sigil always finds someone. Always needs someone."
He blinked. "What do you mean, 'first'?"
But she was already walking away.
"Wait—"
"If the dreams get worse," she said, not turning around, "don't listen to the teeth. They lie. They trap."
Then she vanished between the rows.
Gone.
No sound.
No footsteps.
---
That night, the dream came.
He was standing in a vast hall—an endless library where the books breathed. The walls pulsed like lungs. Candles dripped ink instead of wax.
And in front of him stood… himself.
Older.
Thinner. Pale. Hollow-eyed. His mouth was sewn shut with iron thread, but still, he was speaking.
The spiral covered half his face.
His arms. His throat.
And when the older Coren reached out, the thread snapped.
He whispered truths. Cold, terrible truths:
"The Church worships a corpse."
"The Masked eat memory like bread."
"Truth unspoken is just a wound."
Coren tried to cover his ears.
But the sound came from inside him.
---
He woke gasping.
Drenched in sweat. Heart pounding like a war drum. The mark throbbed.
On the wall, with chalk again.
Fresh. New.
"Truth is a poison. But lies will starve it."
He stared at it until the sun rose.