The Spiral gate closed behind him with a sound like flesh tearing.
Kier stood motionless, letting the stillness settle. The air in this chamber had weight, but no scent. It pressed against his skin like damp parchment, not suffocating, but dense with unspoken things. The floor stretched outward in every direction—stone again, finally—but covered in names.
Not carved. Not painted.
Bled.
The names pulsed faintly in the gloom, written in thin, shimmering threads of red, black, or colorless residue, as if each had been exhaled from a dying throat and left to dry in place. Some glowed faintly. Others twitched. And many—too many—were scratched out violently, clawed through by fingers or something more desperate.
Kier stepped forward.
The Spiral did not give him direction here. This wasn't a place of movement. It was a place of still memory.
He passed a name glowing orange: Elin of Third Hollow.
Immediately, a sound pierced his mind—not heard through ears but in the bones.
A scream. Then water. Then silence.
He staggered but did not fall. "Echo chamber," he whispered. "Memory vault."
This place didn't store power.
It stored failures.
As he walked, each active name triggered another fragment. He began to understand the rules:
Names that glowed still had weight in the Spiral.
Names that didn't had been devoured.
Names that twitched were not yet done bleeding.
He passed Kol Harven, and felt the tremble of rage in his chest, not his own.
He stepped near Nime of the Leaden Vow and tasted copper and betrayal.
And then he came to the center of the room—and found a blank.
No name. Just an empty outline where one should've been. The space pulsed faintly, like it was waiting.
His foot grazed the edge by accident.
The world collapsed.
It wasn't a memory.
It was a reversal.
He stood—now—as someone else. Not in control, but submerged.
Muscle memory took over. He saw his hands, but they were not his: too long, too thin. Scarred in spiral patterns. Holding a girl by the throat, her eyes wide, filled with trust. That trust was shattering like glass.
"You promised," she whispered.
The hands squeezed. Light drained from her. Something in the Spiral responded.
Then the vision snapped.
Kier stumbled back, gasping. He had nearly choked on someone else's sin.
Something slithered behind him.
He turned. A shadow rose from the blank outline, humanoid in shape but smeared like an oil painting in the rain. No eyes. No face. Just hunger.
"You stepped where there is no name," it whispered.
"Then you must give one."
It lunged.
Kier dodged the first strike. The echo was fast—but not strong. It fought like it had once known power, and now wore only the memory of it. He pulled the Obsidian Tooth free, slashed toward it—
Nothing.
The blade passed through smoke.
The echo laughed, voice shifting with every syllable. Man, woman, child, beast. It became a choir of what it had devoured.
"Your blade eats regret.
But I am made of forgetting."
Kier backed up, fast. "Then what do you fear?"
It paused.
He drew his other hand to his chest. Felt for the newest glyph that had awakened after the last offering. It was still raw, pulsing faintly beneath the skin near his ribs.
He activated it.
Pain bloomed.
His right arm flickered, becoming blurred, wrapped in the Spiral's forgotten geometry. He hurled it forward—not at the echo—but at the ground, carving a new line across the blank outline.
A name appeared. Not his full name.
Just a single syllable: "Kie—"
The echo screamed.
"You anchor too soon! That which is named must be hunted!"
It tried to erase the mark. But the glyph on Kier's rib pulsed again, resisting. The air around him grew heavy, thick with memory tension.
Kier whispered, "You want a name? You'll choke on mine."
The Spiral reacted.
The echo collapsed into dust and vanished—not defeated, but displaced. The name outline hissed and sealed itself. The room was quiet again.
He stood shaking, the cost of the glyph still thudding in his blood. He had anchored part of himself. Too soon. But it had saved him.
From somewhere above, he heard the Spiral's laughter.
Or weeping.
Or maybe it was just the chamber exhaling.
Kier didn't linger. He left the name-vault behind. As he passed the exit arch, he glanced once over his shoulder.
All the names on the floor dimmed for a moment. Then flared again.
But one name—one he hadn't seen written—now gleamed softly in gray-white light:
"Kier of the Tooth Memory."
He hadn't written that.
But the Spiral had.
And that meant someone—or something—now knew.