A bottomless Hole sits at the center of the world — a vast wound in the shape of forgetting.
It does not end, and it does not echo. It is a void that consumes matter, yes, but also memory, identity, and history itself. Maps go blank the closer you draw to its rim. Clocks fail. Stories unravel. Entire regions deny it exists. Others kneel in reverence, faces bandaged, tongues severed. Most… try to forget.
But some are chosen.
They are called Proxies — vessels marked by the Hole itself, called by name on the day they turn twelve. Each one must seek out the Ten Forgotten Truths, scattered like shattered bones across people, places, and warped timelines. Each truth is a scar reality tried to bury. Each one grants power.
But every truth has a cost.
And the more you remember, the less you remain.
The boy turned twelve on a morning that didn't feel like one.
There was no sun above the Cliffside Realms that day, only a pale white sky that hung like a curtain stretched too tight. Rain had stopped falling hours ago, but the stone corridors still glistened — slick with old water and new silence.
He sat alone on the outer balcony of the Lower Halves, legs dangling over the ledge. Far below, the Hole waited. Not visible, not really — but he could feel it. Even from here, the gravity twisted. His spine always tingled when he sat this close, like something deep beneath the world was breathing.
No one called him by name. Not anymore.
Children of the Lower Halves weren't given names that lasted. They were called what they were — Boy, Rat, Runner, Ghost. He'd once been Noll or Lesh or something like that, but the name hadn't stuck. He never corrected anyone.
That was before the spiral.
He didn't notice it at first. It had appeared on his wrist overnight, faint and red, like a burn. A spiral — coiled and uneven, inked not on the skin but beneath it. It pulsed sometimes, like it was listening.
Then came the whisper.
It wasn't a voice, not exactly. It was more like a word that had always been there, just waiting for someone to breathe it aloud. It slipped into his mind just as he stood over the ledge, wind clawing at his shirt, the sky pulling sideways.
It said his name.
Not a nickname. Not a title. His true name. One no one had spoken in years — maybe ever. And when he heard it, he knew: the Hole had chosen him.
He gripped the stone rail tighter, breath caught in his throat.
Something inside him shifted. The world jolted — only for a second — but enough that the birds in the rust pipes scattered all at once. Far below, the mist over the pit rippled, like a heartbeat in reverse.
Then everything went still again.
He didn't go back inside.
Instead, he wandered the tether-streets — narrow walkways suspended between the hanging blocks of the Lower Halves. Down here, buildings weren't stacked neatly. They were grown, cemented together like scar tissue over a wound. People lived in crumbling alcoves, sold memory scraps and broken hymn glass.
The boy passed them without looking up. He didn't feel afraid. He felt… clearer. Sharper.
Until something in the air twitched.
He stopped walking. The tether-street ahead of him skipped — like a moment had just repeated itself. A man who'd been coughing once now coughed again, twice. A curtain in a window rippled backward, then forward again.
And then it stopped.
He stood very still. Beneath his shirt, the spiral burned hot.
First symptom, he thought. Temporal stutter.
He didn't know how he knew that. But he did know. The whisper hadn't spoken again, but it had left something behind. A mark. A script. A truth.
Somewhere nearby, a lantern shattered without cause. A blind man in a robe began singing — or maybe reciting something. But the words weren't in any language the boy understood. They weren't meant to be. They were meant to erase.
He turned toward the sound and ran.