The light inside the Spire wasn't blinding.
It was worse.
It understood them—skimming over their faces, pausing on the moments that defined them, lingering where the cracks were.
Ashling felt it catch on the anchor in her chest. The pulse stumbled, then synced to a rhythm she didn't recognize.
The gates closed behind them without sound.
The first chamber stretched wider than the Spire's exterior should allow. Black marble tiles ran in spirals, but their reflections in the floor were different.
Nyrelle's reflection showed her without ink stains, wearing the sigils of a Concordium archivist.
Lys's reflection had him in ceremonial armor, bearing a crest she'd never seen.
Ashling's reflection—
She didn't want to look too closely.
Words drifted in the air like dust motes, glowing faintly. Each one read the same backward and forward, but the meaning shifted depending on the direction.
Nyrelle's voice was hushed. "We're in the Reverse Script Hall. Every step you take rewrites something behind you."
Ashling frowned. "Behind us?"
"History," Nyrelle said. "Memories. The path we came from isn't the same anymore."
They walked carefully.
The further they went, the more the walls warped. Scenes played across them in slow motion—events none of them had lived, but all of them felt in their bones.
One wall showed Keiran as a child, carving twin circles into a tree trunk.
Another showed him walking away from a woman with fire in her hands, the air between them heavy with unspoken words.
Lys stopped suddenly. His reflection in the marble was gone.
"Keep moving," Nyrelle warned. "If the Spire forgets you, you don't just vanish—you were never here."
Ashling's anchor throbbed hard enough to hurt. The images on the walls began to stutter, like someone flipping the same page back and forth, trying to decide what belonged.
At the chamber's far end, a door waited—arched, but made of shifting text that constantly unraveled and rewove itself.
Standing before it was the Echo-Redactor wearing Keiran's face.
"You're rewriting with every step," he said softly. "I'm just letting you see the cost sooner."
Ashling's voice was tight. "What's behind that door?"
The mirrored eyes brightened. "The first vow he ever made. The one even the Concordium couldn't erase."
Nyrelle's breath caught. "A vow that old… if the anchor takes it in, it could lock the Convergence's path permanently."
"Or shatter it completely," the Redactor added.
He stepped aside. The text-door shivered.
Keiran's true voice whispered inside her head:
"Don't trust what it shows you."
Ashling reached for the door. The letters clung to her skin like ink in water, crawling up her arm. The anchor roared, pulling hard toward whatever lay beyond.
And then the Spire flipped.
The floor became the ceiling. The walls rolled inward.
Every reflection they'd left behind stood up from the marble and began walking toward them.
Ashling's own reflection looked her in the eyes—grey, like Keiran's.
It smiled.
And whispered:
"You're the one who gave me the anchor."