The raft drifted into a narrowing passage, the stillness of the Sky Below giving way once more to the murmur of running water. Cael sat hunched, the fossil pressed tight against his chest, its warmth both a comfort and a burden. His mind still spun with the carvings he had seen — broken spirals and defiant figures, Old Marks etched in forgotten stone.
"Why did the priests never tell us this?" he asked aloud, though his voice was scarcely more than a whisper to himself.
Liora, crouched at the raft's edge with dagger ready, answered without looking back. "Because silence is easier to weave than truth. Words can tangle; silence can bind."
Her answer struck him strangely, though he did not understand why.
Hours passed in the half-light until the river split into thinner channels. Liora guided their raft to a low dock of carved stone, half-submerged, as if waiting for them. She leapt ashore and held the raft steady. "We walk from here."
Cael obeyed, though his legs shook as he stepped onto solid ground. The air was different here — warmer, scented faintly of herbs and fire-smoke. The tunnel widened into a hidden hollow where a cluster of shelters stood, not of stone but of woven reeds, roots, and hides. Small fires burned in pits, releasing thin spirals of smoke into the cavern's high roof.
People moved between the shelters. Some carried bundles of cloth, others baskets of roots or jars of glowing moss. Children darted between them, laughing in voices that carried lightly over the hum of the river.
Cael froze. He had never imagined such a place could exist beneath the Spiral's domain.
"They're not hunters?" he asked.
"No." Liora's tone softened, almost reverent. "They are the Weavers."
As if summoned, a tall figure approached them, her steps slow but assured. Her hair was silver though her face showed little age, her robe woven of dark reeds shot with faintly glimmering threads. Around her neck hung a disc of bone, carved not with spirals but with branching lines, like veins on a leaf.
"Welcome," she said, her voice calm, like water slipping over stone. Her eyes rested on Cael. "We wondered how long before you would come."
Cael's throat tightened. "You… know me?"
"Not you," the woman said gently. "But the mark you carry." Her gaze flicked to the fossil clutched in his hands. "The river whispers when the marked draw near."
Cael's heart pounded. He wanted to ask what the mark meant, what the fossil truly was — but the woman's presence quieted his urgency. Questions could not be hurled at her; they would only scatter.
"I am Myrien," she said. "Keeper of Silence. Come. The fire is waiting."
---
They followed her to a wide shelter where a circle of stones enclosed a low fire. Its flames were faint, almost hesitant, yet the smoke rose in clear, perfect spirals before dissolving into the cavern air. Others gathered around — men and women of varying ages, each wearing simple woven garb marked with branching patterns rather than spirals. Their faces bore neither suspicion nor fear, only the calm intensity of those who live always in listening.
Cael sat uneasily by the fire, the fossil glowing faintly at his side.
Myrien's eyes settled on him. "You were raised in the Spiral's doctrine."
"Yes," Cael admitted. "They taught us we are chance, accidents climbing rungs of a ladder, nothing more. They showed us the fossil coils as proof."
"And you believed them?"
Cael hesitated, ashamed. "I thought… I thought they must know more than I could. That doubt was weakness."
Myrien's lips curved in something that was not quite a smile. "The Spiral survives because it makes doubt a sin. But doubt is the beginning of every woven thread." She lifted a length of reed cord from beside her and held it up. "Alone, it frays, breaks, scatters. But when doubt joins with doubt, when thread joins with thread—" she twisted the reeds slowly, letting them bind into rope—"strength emerges. Not by chance. By design."
Cael's eyes followed the rope, mesmerized. The metaphor spoke louder than any sermon he had heard in the Spiral's temples.
Still, a part of him resisted. "But… is that not just another shape? Another story? The priests say life is a ladder; you say it's a weaving. How do I know which is true?"
A murmur rippled among the Weavers. But Myrien did not answer with words. Instead, she gestured, and a boy no older than twelve stepped forward. His name, they told Cael, was Oris.
Oris held a basket and gently tipped it over, scattering dozens of small stones into the firelight. Cael leaned closer. At first they seemed random. But as Oris arranged them with careful fingers, patterns emerged — spirals, branches, shapes of stars.
"Stones fall by chance," Myrien said softly. "But to see a pattern, a hand must place them. The Spiral priests want you to see only the scatter. We show you the hand."
Cael's throat tightened. He stared at the fossil in his hands, its spiral glowing faintly, shifting like a living thing. A fossil should be dead, he thought. But this is not dead.
And deep inside, he asked the question he feared most: What hand is placing me?
---
The fire crackled softly. Liora sat tense beside him, though her eyes were fixed not on the Weavers but on the shadows outside the shelter. She trusted few, and perhaps for good reason.
Myrien turned her gaze on Cael again. "The Ashen Blade cut lies to protect you. The River carried you here, for memory cannot be buried forever. But both are only guides. You must decide whether to walk with them, or turn back."
Cael whispered, "But what if I am too weak?"
"Then the Spiral wins," Myrien said simply. "Not because you were wrong. But because you were silent."
The words fell like a stone into him, sending ripples through everything he thought he knew.
He clenched the fossil tighter. Silence. Rope. Stones placed into pattern. Spirals that broke and spirals that grew. The Weavers spoke in riddles, yet each riddle cracked the walls of the doctrine he had lived in all his life.
And the fire's smoke, spiraling upward then breaking into air, seemed to whisper of truths still hidden — truths waiting to be woven.
The fire had burned lower, its flames reduced to a steady glow. Shadows lengthened on the walls of the shelter, curling like silent watchers. The Weavers had not dispersed; they lingered in a stillness that felt intentional, as if listening not to the fire, not even to Myrien, but to something behind both.
Then, a new voice broke the silence.
"You weave well, Myrien. But rope can also bind a prisoner."
Cael turned. A man had stepped into the circle, his figure spare and angular, his face weathered by lines of age. Unlike the others, his garb bore no branch-patterns. Instead, he wore a simple cloak of uncolored cloth, frayed at the edges. His eyes were sharp, restless, and his hands bore calluses not of weaving but of cutting.
"Myrien, Keeper of Silence," he said with a slight bow, mocking yet respectful. "You speak of threads and patterns, of hands that guide. Yet every rope you weave, no matter how strong, is also a snare. Perhaps chance is the only freedom left to us."
The Weavers stirred, some averting their eyes, others glancing at Cael with curiosity.
Myrien inclined her head slightly, as though expecting him. "And so Dareth the Cutter arrives, as he always does, to fray my threads. Speak, then. What will you cut tonight?"
Dareth's gaze settled on Cael. "This boy clutches a fossil as though it were a lantern. He has fled hunters, seen blood spilled, watched his guardian fall. And now you would place him in your loom, weave him into your grand design, tell him he is chosen. But is this not what the priests of the Spiral do? Bind him in their ladder, their endless coil? What is the difference between their prison and yours?"
The question struck Cael like a blow. He turned sharply to Myrien, desperate for her answer.
But she only gazed into the fire. "The difference," she said softly, "is that I ask him to see the pattern himself. The priests forbid his eyes."
Dareth snorted. "And what if he sees nothing? What if the world is scatter, and no hand arranges it? If he pretends to see a pattern, is that not another lie?"
The fire popped loudly, startling Cael. He felt the fossil pulse in his hand, hot, insistent. He wanted to throw it into the flames and be free of its weight.
"You doubt," Myrien said, turning her calm gaze to Dareth. "And doubt is a thread, too. But when you cut every thread, when nothing remains but loose fibers, what do you stand upon?"
Dareth spread his hands. "I stand upon freedom. A freedom no design can dictate. If the river flows, let it flow by accident. If the stone endures, let it endure by chance. What greater dignity is there than to be unbound, even from meaning itself?"
The Weavers murmured uneasily. Cael's heart thundered. The Spiral had promised meaninglessness as truth, and Dareth echoed it now—but not with the priests' rigid arrogance. He said it like a man who had lived with silence too long, who found comfort only in emptiness.
"Meaninglessness is not dignity," Myrien said quietly. "It is despair disguised as pride."
Their eyes locked across the fire. For a long moment, the cavern itself seemed to hold its breath.
Then, to Cael's shock, Oris — the boy who had arranged the stones — spoke. His voice was hesitant, but it cut the silence like a spark.
"What if both are true?" he asked. "What if the stones scatter by chance, but the hand still chooses where to place them? What if the river flows on its own, but remembers only when we listen? What if… the world is both freedom and weaving?"
The fire crackled. Even Dareth's sharp eyes softened, if only for a heartbeat.
Cael felt the fossil burn against his palm. In its glow, he thought he saw not one spiral, but many — some broken, some blooming, some winding endlessly. Not ladder. Not rope. Not scatter. Something else entirely, beyond words.
And in that moment, he realized the truth: both Myrien and Dareth were pulling at threads of the same hidden cloth. Neither saw it whole. Neither could.
The realization terrified him—and yet, it drew him deeper into hunger.
The debate faded into silence. The Weavers bowed their heads, some in thought, some in prayer. Dareth vanished into the shadows beyond the fire, Myrien folded her hands, and Oris stared at his stones as if waiting for them to speak again.
Cael leaned forward, his voice a whisper that shook with fear and wonder.
"What… is the Spiral afraid of?"
No one answered. But the silence itself seemed alive, as if holding back a secret too vast for words.
And in that silence, Cael knew: his journey was no longer about survival. It was about tearing open a truth buried so deep the priests had built an empire of silence to guard it.