The Weavers' hollow slept in fragments. Fires dimmed to embers, voices dwindled to whispers, and the slow hush of the river filled every space left empty. Yet for Cael, there was no sleep. He sat outside the shelter where Myrien had left him, the fossil cradled on his knees, its glow barely visible beneath the veil of his cloak.
Above him, the cavern roof shimmered with veins of crystal that caught the faintest firelight and refracted it into threads of color. Reds bled into gold, gold into violet, violet into deep midnight. It was as though the roof itself had been woven.
He lifted his eyes to the colors, searching for shapes the way Oris had arranged his stones. He thought he saw patterns — a branching here, a spiral there — but when he blinked, they dissolved into scatter.
"You'll blind yourself staring like that," Liora murmured, settling beside him. She carried no torch, only her dagger, the blade catching stray glints from the crystals.
"I keep wondering," Cael said, voice low, "how the Spiral began. Did someone just… decide one day that chance explained all things? Or was it built to keep something else hidden?"
Liora didn't answer right away. She ran her thumb along the edge of her dagger, testing its sharpness. Finally, she said, "I've heard whispers from old hunters — stories told in fear. They say the Spiral wasn't discovered. It was crafted. Forged by the first priests, after they burned the records of those who came before. They needed a truth that could not be challenged, so they bound it in the image of a coil: endless, closed, without beginning."
Cael's breath caught. "So… it wasn't truth. It was a weapon."
Liora's eyes flicked to him, unreadable. "And weapons don't rest once drawn. You of all people should know that." She tapped her dagger. "But the Spiral priests didn't forge theirs from steel. They forged it from silence."
Her words echoed Myrien's, yet colder, sharper. Silence as weapon. Silence as blade.
"Then why do the Weavers resist?" Cael asked. "Why not bow, like the rest of us?"
Liora tilted her head toward the river, its dark waters gleaming faintly. "Because rivers don't bow. They cut stone, they change their course, but they don't kneel. The Weavers call themselves silent, but they remember what the water remembers. That's why the priests fear them most. A river holds memory longer than any scroll."
Cael shivered. The metaphor of the river stirred something in him, something he couldn't yet name. A river cut stone, slowly, with patience. The Spiral claimed the world was random scatter — but if scatter reigned, why did rivers carve paths that endured for ages? Why did memory flow like water?
Before he could ask, a faint rustle broke the stillness. From the shadows beyond the fires, a figure approached. It was Dareth.
He carried no torch, no weapon. Only a staff, plain and scarred with old cuts. He seated himself opposite Cael and Liora, as if drawn to their quiet conversation.
"Still awake, boy?" he asked Cael. His voice was gravel, but not unkind.
"I can't sleep," Cael admitted. "Too many questions."
Dareth gave a rough chuckle. "Good. Sleep is the enemy of thought. And you need thought, if you're to survive what's coming."
Cael frowned. "What is coming?"
Dareth tapped his staff against the ground, each thud like a heartbeat. "The Spiral doesn't lose what it marks. You've carried that fossil too long for them not to notice. The hunters will come. Maybe tonight, maybe tomorrow. When they do, you'll have to choose."
"Choose what?"
"Whether to be rope, or to be river."
Cael blinked. "What does that mean?"
Dareth leaned closer, eyes gleaming in the dim light. "Rope binds, river breaks. Rope makes you strong with others, but can strangle. River carries memory, but drowns the weak. Both are paths of power. But the Spiral fears only one of them. Guess which."
Cael swallowed hard. He wanted to answer, but the fossil pulsed again in his lap, as though it held the response and dared him to find it.
Liora rose abruptly, scanning the darkness beyond the cavern edge. "Enough riddles," she said sharply. "The boy doesn't need more words tonight."
But Cael wasn't so sure. The words were needed, though he did not yet know why.
Dareth stood, his cloak rustling like dry leaves. "Then let the boy dream of rivers and ropes. Soon he will see which holds him, and which lets him go."
With that, the Cutter slipped back into the shadows, leaving only silence in his wake.
Cael stared at the fossil, its light spilling faintly across his hands. For the first time, he wondered if it was not just an object, but a mirror — reflecting choices he had yet to make.
And somewhere in the endless cavern, faint but certain, he thought he heard the drip of water on stone — a patient river, cutting.
The night in the hollow grew thicker, though no true sky lay above. The cavern ceiling had darkened, swallowing the veins of crystal until only faint sparks remained, like stars half-remembered in a cloudy sky. A hush pressed down, not the hush of sleep, but of listening.
Cael lay back against the cool stone, the fossil beside him, though his hand never left its edge. Liora stood watch, her dagger at her side, the faint blue veins of crystal glancing off its edge like lightning. Her presence comforted him, though he knew better than to expect gentleness from her.
The river whispered against stone, steady and ceaseless. Its sound filled the silence like a thread drawn tight. Yet beneath it, other noises teased his ears. A shuffle of feet. A whisper too far to make out. A pause where no pause should be.
He turned his head and caught sight of Oris, the boy with the stones, arranging another pattern near the fire's ashes. His small hands moved with careful intention, stacking, shifting, removing. This time the pattern he made looked nothing like trees or branches. It looked like a closed circle — no beginning, no end.
Cael shivered. "Why that shape?" he asked softly.
Oris glanced at him but did not smile. "Because they tell me not to. When I make the circle, the elders frown. They whisper. They look away. That makes me think the circle must mean something."
Liora leaned closer, her eyes narrowing. "Don't play with circles, boy. They've poisoned enough minds."
Oris tilted his head, unfazed. "Then why does everything try to make them? The sun, the moon, the rings in trees, the shells by the river. Even your blade has a round hilt." His voice lowered. "Maybe the Spiral stole it. Maybe they didn't make it."
The thought lodged like a thorn in Cael's mind. If the Spiral was forged by priests, as Liora had said, perhaps they had not invented the coil but appropriated it, twisting it into their weapon. A stolen circle, given false meaning.
Before Cael could ask, a shadow moved at the edge of the cavern. He stiffened, hand snapping back to the fossil. Liora was quicker — dagger raised, body taut.
But the figure that emerged was no hunter. It was a woman robed in pale cloth, her face lined and stern, her hair bound in a braid silver as the river's surface. She carried a spindle in her hands, its thread glimmering faintly like captured moonlight.
Myrien.
The Keeper of Silence glided into the fire's faint glow and seated herself opposite Cael. Her eyes found the fossil instantly, as though it drew her gaze against her will.
"You feel it now, don't you?" she asked.
Cael swallowed. "Feel what?"
"The weight of choosing."
He wanted to deny it, but the fossil throbbed warm against his palm, answering in his stead.
Myrien leaned forward. "The Spiral binds with certainty. Dareth cuts with doubt. Both are snares, if you do not see the river beneath them. Tell me, Cael: when the river meets a sword, which wins?"
Her question startled him. He looked from her to Liora, who scowled at the metaphor as if it were a blade drawn against her.
Cael hesitated. "The sword might cut the river… but rivers wear stone. They shape mountains. Maybe the river wins, given enough time."
Myrien's lips curved faintly, not quite a smile. "And time is what the Spiral fears most. Time unmasks its lies. That is why they erase memory, burn records, silence the dissenting. They fear the patience of rivers."
A cold tremor ran through him. The Spiral feared time itself?
But before he could ask more, Liora hissed sharply. "Listen."
All fell still. The river whispered, but beneath it — there. A distant clatter of stone. A faint metallic rasp. A sound too disciplined to be chance.
Hunters.
Myrien rose, her spindle vanishing into her cloak. "So soon," she murmured, voice steady, almost sad. "The pattern tightens."
Oris scrambled to his feet, scattering the stones he had so carefully arranged. Dareth reappeared from the shadows, his staff in hand, eyes hard. Even he did not mock now.
Liora tightened her grip on her dagger and glanced at Cael. "They're here for you. For the fossil. Stay close, or you won't see dawn."
The fire guttered, casting long, broken shadows across the cavern. The Weavers moved in silence, gathering weapons, scattering into the dark like threads pulled taut.
And Cael, clutching the fossil, realized his questions would not wait for morning. The answers, if they came, would be written in chase, in blood, in the clash of silence and steel.
Somewhere in the black beyond the fire, a hunter's horn gave a low, hollow call.
The Spiral had found them.