Kesh drew the ritual pattern slowly, her fingers coated in ash and old pigment. The spiral she etched wasn't a true sigil — not yet — but a placeholder, a tether. It looped inward across the floor of the old Proxy chamber, then branched sharply at the center into three cuts.
"Truths form scars," she said without looking up. "This shape mimics a wound that never closes."
The boy watched without blinking. Something about the movement of her hands held him in place — not like hypnosis, but like recognition. Like remembering the sound of breathing after forgetting what lungs were for.
Kesh finished the spiral and sat back on her heels, exhaling.
"This isn't going to stop it," she admitted. "But it might slow the pull. Might hold you at the edge long enough to choose."
He didn't answer. Not because he couldn't — though speaking still felt like reaching through wet glass — but because the urge to answer had become foreign. Language felt like an old habit, worn away.
Kesh glanced over, her face unreadable in the firelight.
"I hope you remember how to say no."
The ritual began at dusk.
Kesh placed one broken sigil-stone in each of the spiral's arms. Each stone had a history — one taken from the Archive, another stolen from a dead Warden's glove, the last found at the base of the ruined glass stair. She said nothing of where the fourth had gone.
When she struck the stones together, they gave off no light. No heat. No spark. But the chamber tightened — the air curling like paper held too close to flame.
She stepped back.
"Stand there," she told him, pointing to the center. "Don't move unless it pulls you. If it does, fight it. Think of anything. Pain. Breath. A memory. Something loud."
He stepped forward, each footfall pressing faint ripples through the etched dust.
The chamber trembled.
No — not trembled.
Shifted.
As though reality itself had inhaled.
Then—
Stillness.
No wind.
No heartbeat.
Even the fire fell quiet — flickering without sound, like a painting losing color.
Kesh stood just outside the spiral, watching him, her eyes darting for signs of collapse. "Focus," she mouthed. "Now."
He tried.
He did.
But the silence wasn't just around him anymore.
It was inside.
First, his name vanished again.
Not with violence.
Just... softly.
Like it had never mattered.
Then the memories that surrounded that name — fragments of days, the voice of a mother he wasn't sure had existed, the taste of rain from the tower rooftops — thinned into fog. They didn't hurt. They didn't protest. They simply let go.
He staggered once.
Kesh tensed — but didn't enter the spiral.
The ground around his feet darkened. Not with shadow. With absence. Letters seemed to peel off reality's skin — glyphs detaching from the stone walls and hanging midair, weightless and mute.
"Truth is not granted," a voice did not say.
"It is released."
He fell to one knee.
The spiral pulsed.
Kesh stepped forward but stopped short of crossing the etched line. "Stay with me," she whispered. "You don't have to—"
Her voice cut off.
Mid-sentence.
Not stopped.
Stolen.
She clutched her throat, panic blooming in her eyes. He saw her mouth move — saw the desperation — but heard nothing.
No, not nothing.
Something worse.
The shape of what she was saying.
The echo of intention without the sound itself.
Then—
His own voice returned.
Not in his mouth.
In the space around him.
A whisper that filled the chamber like smoke:
"I remember."
It wasn't clear what he remembered.
Only that he did.
And that the remembering hurt.
A thread of pain cut across his ribs — cold, distant, like lightning cracking stone in winter. The first Truth surged again: Pain — not just felt, but wielded.
He gritted his teeth.
The spiral flared.
The second Truth tried to bloom — Silence coiling into shape, ready to settle behind his eyes like a second soul.
He refused.
Not with will.
With noise.
He screamed.
A raw, cracking thing — half-voice, half-memory — as if dragging language back from the dead.
And for a moment, the chamber shattered.
The ritual spiral exploded outward, dust and light scattering like crows.
Sound returned.
The fire roared.
Kesh collapsed to one knee beside him, coughing, eyes wide.
He gasped — not from exhaustion, but from realizing he could still gasp.
Could still speak.
The Second Truth hadn't fully taken root.
But it had left something behind.
A mark deeper than the spiral.
A pressure in his throat.
An awareness.
The silence would come again.
And next time, it might not ask.