The horn-call echoed again, deeper this time, reverberating through the cavern walls until the crystals quivered with light. Cael's heart pounded against his ribs.
From the shadows, armored figures poured into the hollow — hunters of the Spiral. Their armor was blackened bronze, etched with coils that gleamed faintly in the firelight, as though the spiral itself was carved into their very skin. Masks hid their faces, but their eyes glimmered cold and pitiless through slits.
Liora moved first. With a cry like a hawk's strike, she darted forward, dagger flashing silver in the dim glow. Her style was swift, sharp, direct — the philosophy of the blade. She didn't weave, she cut. She didn't wait for patience. Her blows were the creed of immediacy, of striking before thought could root.
Beside her, Myrien remained still at first, the spindle in her hand humming softly. Then she cast her thread into the dark, and it caught the hunters' steps, tangling feet, pulling one to the ground as though the cavern itself had risen to resist. She did not fight to kill — she fought to entangle, to hold, to delay. It was the philosophy of weaving: defense through patience, survival through interconnection.
Dareth swung his staff, cracking against helmets with raw, brutal force. There was no grace in him, no elegance. His movements were jagged, almost chaotic — yet that chaos kept him alive. He struck like a man who believed in nothing but the survival of the moment.
Cael stumbled backward, clutching the fossil, his breath ragged. Around him, the Weavers rose in silence, their ropes snapping taut, their slings casting stones like tiny meteors. Hunters faltered, surprised at resistance from those they had expected to cower.
The cavern became a whirl of shadow, flame, and steel.
One hunter broke through the lines, charging directly at Cael. His spear was long, its tip etched with the same spiral markings. Cael froze — until Liora shoved him aside and met the strike with her dagger. Metal rang on metal. Sparks burst like fleeting stars.
"Run!" she barked. "Don't let them take it!"
But his legs refused. He was rooted, transfixed by the fossil's glow in his hands. The Spiral's mark gleamed on the hunter's weapon — and for the first time, Cael realized it wasn't just decoration. The etching shifted. The spiral moved, subtly, endlessly, as though alive.
His stomach turned. The weapon itself seemed to breathe the Spiral's creed. Endless, unyielding, without origin.
The hunter pressed harder, forcing Liora back. "Give it to us, boy!" The voice behind the mask was muffled, but fierce. "The fossil belongs to the Order! You cannot wield what you don't understand!"
Cael's voice broke from him, unbidden: "Then why does it answer me, not you?"
And at that, the fossil flared.
A light spilled forth, not blinding but deep, like the glow of the river's veins magnified a thousandfold. It pushed back the hunter, forced him to stagger as if struck. For a heartbeat, all motion froze — Weavers, hunters, even Dareth's staff mid-swing.
In the glow, Cael saw something that made his breath catch. The spiral within the fossil wasn't endless. It broke, halfway down, into branching threads — not a circle, but a river splitting into streams.
The Spiral was a lie.
The hunter hissed, recoiling. "Blasphemy…"
The word sparked something fierce in Cael's chest, fiercer than fear. For the first time since fleeing the ruins, he didn't feel like prey. He felt… chosen.
Myrien's voice cut through the chaos, calm even in battle: "Cael! Remember the river! Do not cling — flow!"
He staggered back, the fossil warm against his chest. Hunters surged forward again, but now the Weavers closed around him, ropes tangling, stones flying, blades clashing. They did not protect him out of loyalty, but because the fossil's light had become their thread.
Yet deep down, Cael knew this was only the beginning. The Spiral would not stop.
The river had broken stone tonight — but stone always returns with the flood.
The horn sounded again — closer, louder, rattling the crystals in the walls. More hunters poured in through the side passages, their spiraled armor catching every glint of firelight. The hollow could not hold against them for long.
"Fall back!" Myrien's voice cut through the clash like a bell. "To the river!"
The Weavers obeyed at once, moving not in panic but in practiced silence. They knew the tunnels, the bends, the hidden paths where water carved its slow dominion. Ropes were snapped free, bundles of supplies lifted, stones scattered to cover their trail.
Cael stumbled after them, clutching the fossil. His breath tore at his chest, each step too slow. The glow of the fossil seemed both a burden and a beacon — too bright to hide, too heavy to drop.
Liora ran beside him, her dagger dripping dark. She did not speak, but her eyes flicked constantly from shadow to shadow, watching for the next strike. Her every movement was sharp, economical — no wasted energy, no second guessing. She fought and fled with the same creed: act now, think later.
Behind them, Dareth's staff cracked against stone, toppling a stalactite to block a passage. He barked out a laugh, grim and jagged. "Let the priests chew stone! See if their Spiral saves them now!" His defiance was wild, but it bought them moments.
They reached the cavern's edge, where the river churned black and restless. Its sound drowned the shouts of the hunters, as though it had been waiting for this moment.
Cael froze at its edge. "We can't go in there—"
"We can," Myrien interrupted, already stepping into the shallows. Her pale robes darkened instantly, but her face was calm. "The river remembers paths the hunters have never walked."
"But it'll drown us!"
She turned her eyes on him, piercing. "Then learn not to cling. Only those who cling are lost."
Liora grabbed his arm. "Move, boy! You'll die standing!"
A spear clattered against the rocks where he had been a heartbeat before. Hunters had breached the hollow, their masks glinting with merciless light.
There was no time. Cael plunged into the river. Cold slammed against him, stealing his breath. The current seized him, dragging him downward. Panic flared — his body screamed to fight, to claw, to resist — but Myrien's voice echoed in his mind: Do not cling.
He forced his limbs loose, letting the water carry him. And suddenly, he was not drowning. He was moving. The current swept him forward, through a tunnel of stone where crystals flickered like stars beneath the surface.
Shapes blurred past: Weavers, slipping like shadows through the water; Liora, teeth bared, dagger still in hand as if the river itself were an enemy; Dareth, thrashing, cursing, yet refusing to let go of his staff.
Above, hunters hurled torches into the current. Their flames hissed and died, swallowed by the water. Yet still the horns sounded, echoing down the stone corridors. They would not give up.
The river split ahead — two branching tunnels. Myrien lifted her spindle, its thread glowing faintly even beneath the water, guiding the Weavers toward the left-hand path. Most followed without hesitation.
But Cael saw something strange. The fossil's light pulsed in his hands, and through the water, he glimpsed another path — narrower, darker, almost invisible. Not left. Not right. Down.
A third way.
His chest ached for air. His lungs burned. But he could not look away. The spiral in the fossil bent, shattered again into branching threads, all pointing downward, deeper.
He wanted to scream, but water filled his throat. He wanted to ask Myrien, or Liora, or even Dareth what it meant — but no sound could pass.
So he let go.
The current seized him, dragged him from the others, pulled him into the narrow throat of stone. Darkness closed over him, crushing, endless.
For a heartbeat, he thought he had chosen death.
But then the darkness opened.
He shot into a cavern vaster than any he had seen, its ceiling lost in shadows, its floor a mirror of still water broken only by slow ripples. Light shimmered from the walls — not fire, not crystal, but something older. Patterns carved into stone, glowing faintly, like rivers frozen mid-flow.
And there, on a pedestal of rock rising from the water's center, stood a figure.
Not hunter. Not Weaver. Something else.
The figure lifted its head. Its face was obscured by a mask of smooth stone, carved in the shape of a spiral — but broken down the middle, split into branching lines.
Cael's lungs screamed. He broke the surface with a gasp, water spilling from his lips, fossil clutched against his chest. The figure did not move, did not speak. But the cavern itself seemed to wait, holding its breath.
The Spiral had sent hunters. The river had given escape. But this… this was something else.
Something older.
Something that had been waiting.