The mirror fractured, and Ivar did not.
He sat in silence long after the others had moved. A breath. Then another. Eighteen. The number pulsed like a second heartbeat beneath his skin. Stillness followed the shatter—not peace, but a brittle calm stretched too thin. He remembered Lysa's voice, cool and distant: "Beasts are nerves. But you… you're made of glass."
Outside, dawn clawed through the grime, painting the rooftops with fool's gold. It spilled amber across broken rail and rusted beams, but it couldn't warm the Cull beneath.
"Ivar." Rill's voice, hoarse, pulled him from the fracture's pull. "You need to move."
He rose, stiff-limbed. The mirror no longer showed him. Just the crack. And something in him whispered: not broken, just shifted.
Festival Square yawned open ahead.
Children laughed. Painted masks grinned. Colors dripped from banners like wounds still wet. The music clawed at their ears, a joy too bright, too hollow. Like a corpse made to dance.
"They're funneling everyone here," Rill muttered, eyes scanning the flow of bodies. "Every road leads in. None lead out."
A man jangled into view, draped in streamers and bells, one eye patched with sequins. He brandished a dripping meat pie like a priest holding up a relic. Flies buzzed around it, undeterred by the jangle and gleam.
"Lost, are we?" he grinned. "Don't fret, the Great Unraveling's just begun! Perfect time for renewal, or a last meal."
Rill narrowed her eyes. "And you are?"
"Trudge. Just Trudge. Retired charmer, part-time prophet, full-time disappointment." He licked his fingers and sighed. "Bone-dust's gotten expensive, hasn't it?"
Fennel blinked. "Does it smell strange to anyone? Like memory on fire."
Rill grimaced. She rubbed her forehead. "Do you even hear yourself?"
Trudge sniffed the air thoughtfully. "Mmm. Charred nostalgia. You've got a sharp nose, boy. Marrow's memory always floats up in the heat."
Fennel smiled faintly. "Memory doesn't come with manners."
"The Great Unraveling," Trudge said, lowering his voice theatrically, "is all about letting the bones show through. Like a good soup."
"How long before the first snap?" Rill asked Lysa.
"They've arranged it down to the breath," Lysa murmured. "Any moment now."
She stopped suddenly. Her eyes locked on a rooftop antenna blinking soft pulses—Cull signals. Hidden to the crowd. Not to her.
"They've baited it," she said.
Ivar's voice came steady. "The riot?"
"No," she said. "You."
"You think I'll snap?"
"They think you already have."
"And you?"
She looked at him—then past him. "I think Eelgrave will get the version of you it deserves."
It began too clean to be chance.
A spill. A shove. A man shouting about purity. A teenager punched. Then—
A scream. A ripple of skin. Bone misaligned.
A girl cracked first. No older than Fennel. Her spine bowed in the wrong direction. Her cry spiraled inward, becoming something other than human. Horns burst from her scalp.
The Cull didn't descend. They watched.
"They're just letting it happen," Rill muttered. "Where's the stopgap? The override?"
"There isn't one," Lysa replied. "Not this time."
Fennel tilted his head, pupils narrow. "This isn't a purge," he said. "It's a stage."
"A stage for what?" Rill asked.
"To crown a myth," Lysa said softly.
"You mean him?" Rill nodded toward Ivar.
Lysa didn't look. "The city chooses its stories. Sometimes without asking."
Ivar stepped forward.
He didn't run. Didn't shout. Just walked.
Through fire-lit confusion. Through parting bodies. Past the girl—his fingers brushed hers.
Her snarl faltered. She blinked. Then vanished into the alleys, like a thread unspooled.
"Ivar!" Rill hissed. "What are you doing?"
"He's not resisting," Lysa murmured.
"He's surrendering?"
"No," Lysa said. "He's choosing."
Rill narrowed her eyes. "Choosing what?"
"The ending he wants to walk into."
High above, Vecht leaned into his lens.
"Don't look away," he muttered. "The city needs its ghost."
The Watch turned. The Cull shifted. Tension rose like smoke.
But Ivar stood still.
Then something inside him opened.
Not a roar. Not a scream.
A flood.
His skin rippled with knowing. Bones recast themselves not with fury—but precision. Nails blackened. Eyes dimmed to silver.
His thoughts swam: a blood-slick field, a girl's hand, Lysa's gaze filled with warnings. And beneath it all—himself. Buried. Waiting.
And then he rose.
More Ivar than before.
"He's not becoming a beast," Fennel breathed. "He's… remembering himself."
Rill stepped back. "Why isn't anyone stopping him?"
"Because they're waiting," Lysa said. "And they're afraid of what comes next."
"What comes next?"
"I don't know," Lysa admitted. "But it's not theirs to control anymore."
Fennel stared, wide-eyed. "He walks without chain."
Threadlings emerged, silent as breath. Ash and fungal pollen in hand. Spirals drawn not on walls—but on skin. On stone. On self.
"Stop them," Rill hissed. "Lysa. They're mimicking—"
"I know," Lysa whispered.
"They're worshiping him."
"No," Lysa said. Her voice tight. "They're remembering him."
"You knew this would happen?"
"I hoped it wouldn't."
"But you prepared for it," Rill pressed.
"I planted nothing. They remembered on their own."
"And what if memory turns violent?"
"Then the city will bleed. As it always has."
Onstage, a Cull agent stepped forward, baton raised.
Ivar looked up.
Not defiant. Not afraid.
Just present.
The agent paused. Blinked. Then stepped back.
Someone in the crowd dropped to their knees.
Then another.
A murmur rose—not fear. Not frenzy.
Something deeper.
"Is this real?" Fennel whispered.
"It's happening," Lysa replied. "That's all that matters now."
Rill's hand found Lysa's arm. "What happens if they believe in him?"
Lysa's face was pale. "Then the city changes. And not all of us survive that."
"And you? Where do you stand if it shifts?"
"I don't know," Lysa said. "But I'll stand."
Ivar stepped onto the stage. Stone groaned beneath him.
He turned to the crowd.
His body no longer burned or flexed. It simply was.
"I know what they call us," he said. "Monsters. Accidents. Threats."
He raised a hand—calm, deliberate.
"But we are not echoes of violence."
His eyes swept the square.
"We don't belong to instinct."
A pause.
"We belong to choice."
Stillness followed—not terror.
Hope. A fragile thing. Like a newborn's breath.
Vecht lowered his camera. His knuckles white.
"Don't you dare become real," he whispered.
In the forgotten arteries of the city, something answered.
Beneath rusted shrines.
In the bones of collapsed homes.
Fungal spirals pulsed.
Threadlings turned their heads, nostrils flaring to memory's scent.
Spores drifted up through cracks.
Eelgrave stirred—not as machine, not as god.
But as something waking up.
Something old enough to remember what came before order.
And brave enough to change it.