The cavern was so vast that Cael could not see its end. The ceiling melted into shadow, and the walls pulsed with lines of light, faint as veins beneath skin. The patterns weren't random. They curved and branched like rivers, flowing into each other, splitting again, endless. A map of life, but not one the Spiral would ever carve.
The water beneath him was still, too still, as though it had been holding its breath for centuries. His own ripples spread outward, trembling across the surface, disturbing a silence that seemed more ancient than stone.
The figure on the pedestal did not move. Its stone mask caught the cavern's glow, a spiral carved into its face — but fractured, broken down the center. One half curved endlessly inward, the familiar mark of the Spiral. The other veered away, splintering into lines that never returned.
The two halves did not belong together, yet they were bound in one face.
Cael's chest still burned from the river. He sucked air greedily, but each breath only deepened the weight pressing on him. It wasn't fear alone. It was recognition — as if his bones had known this cavern long before his mind did.
The fossil pulsed in his grip, its glow answering the walls, echoing the broken spiral mask. He held it tighter, as though it might steady him.
Finally, the figure spoke.
"You followed the current," it said. The voice was neither man nor woman, neither young nor old. It carried no echo, no tremor. It simply was, like the sound of thought itself. "The others do not. They choose left or right. You chose down."
Cael swallowed, his throat raw. "I—I didn't know what I was doing. The fossil… it pulled me here."
The mask tilted slightly, considering. "The fossil remembers. More than you."
Cael's fingers dug into the stone. "What is it? Why does it glow when I hold it?"
The figure's head inclined, a fraction. "Because you are not yet bound. You are uncoiled."
Uncoiled. The word struck him, strange and heavy. "Uncoiled? I don't—"
The figure raised a hand. Long fingers, pale against the glow, but not skeletal, not frail. Strong, yet delicate. They traced the air in front of the mask, following the crack that split the spiral into branching lines.
"The Spiral teaches an endless circle," the figure said softly. "A coil without start or end. It comforts the fearful — they need not ask where it began, need not see where it fails. They believe because it is easy."
The cavern's glow dimmed for a moment, shadows deepening like breath drawn in.
"But rivers," the figure continued, "rivers are not easy. They cut. They split. They leave behind scars of stone and flood. They begin somewhere, and they end somewhere. They do not comfort. They demand witness."
Cael's lips parted, but no words came. His mind flinched from the meaning, yet something inside him stirred, something restless.
"Why me?" he whispered at last. "Why does the fossil answer me?"
The figure lowered its hand. "Because you are caught between sword and river. You do not cling to the Spiral. You do not yet sink into the current. You are in the place of choosing. That is why they hunt you. That is why you are here."
The words scraped at him, frightening in their calm. "But I don't want this," he blurted. "I don't want to be hunted, or chosen, or any of it. I just wanted answers."
"Then answers you shall have," the figure said, and for the first time, Cael thought he heard something beneath the calm — not mockery, not pity, but… sorrow.
From the far side of the cavern, water stirred. He turned sharply. Shapes moved there, faint, half-hidden by mist. Not hunters — not Weavers. Darker, taller, shifting like smoke. Their forms bent and unbent, as though they had too many joints.
Cael's skin prickled. "What are they?"
The figure did not look back. "The cost of forgetting."
The shapes edged closer, and though they made no sound, Cael felt their presence like cold fingers brushing his mind. They did not walk so much as unravel, folding and refolding into themselves.
"They come when the Spiral devours memory," the figure murmured. "They feed on what is lost. The priests call them curses, accidents, flaws. But they are no accident. They are the shadow of erasure."
Cael staggered back, his feet splashing in the water. "And they'll… they'll come for me?"
"They already have."
The fossil burned hot in his hands. He almost dropped it, but some part of him clung tighter. The glow surged, spilling across the cavern, pushing back the shadows of the approaching figures. They shrank, twisted, recoiled — not defeated, but held at bay.
The figure watched, silent.
Cael gasped for breath. His voice cracked. "Tell me—tell me what I'm supposed to do!"
At last, the figure lowered its head. The fractured mask gleamed in the half-light.
"You must decide whether you are a sword," it whispered, "or a river."
The words struck him like a blow, yet gave him nothing solid to hold. The cavern trembled faintly, as though echoing the choice.
Behind him, in the tunnels he had left, faint horn-calls sounded again. The hunters had not lost him. They were coming.
Cael turned back, but the pedestal was empty. The figure was gone.
Only the fossil remained, its light flickering like a heartbeat in his palm.
And the shadows in the mist were still advancing.
The cavern grew colder. The water, once still, now rippled with each step of the advancing shadows. They did not splash. They did not disturb the surface as living things did. They glided, as if they had never belonged to the world but had been carved out of its absence.
Cael's breath came ragged, clouds of it curling in the air. He clutched the fossil tighter, but its glow flickered like a candle battered by wind. The shadows seemed to drink its light, bending it, thinning it.
Behind him, from the tunnel he had come through, the horns called again. Louder. Closer. The hunters of the Spiral were forcing their way into the river's throat.
Trapped between two devourings.
His thoughts raced. If I run toward the hunters, I die. If I stay here, these things— He couldn't even name them. His mind refused. They were neither beast nor man, but fragments, unravelings of memory. Looking at them too long made his own thoughts slip. He could not remember what he had eaten last. He could not remember his mother's voice.
The shadows were feeding.
"Stop," he whispered hoarsely, clutching his skull. "Get out of my head—"
They did not stop.
One reached the edge of the pedestal's reflection and unfurled a limb, thin and many-jointed, like a rope uncoiling. It stretched toward him. Not fast. Patient. Certain.
Cael raised the fossil as though it were a shield. The light flared, forcing the limb back — but the act drained him, as if the fossil were drawing strength directly from his veins.
His knees buckled.
The figure's last words echoed through him. Sword or river.
The choice cut deep. To be the sword was to fight, to strike, to resist until death. To be the river was to flow, to bend, to endure by yielding. Both sounded like defeat. Both sounded like lies.
The shadow pressed closer, its head tilting, its absence-mouth yawning wide. In that hollow gape, Cael saw flashes of things lost — faces blurred, names faded, songs without sound. The weight of centuries of silence.
"No," he rasped. "I won't be eaten."
The fossil pulsed, as if waiting.
Cael forced himself upright. His arms trembled, but he raised the fossil high. "If I am a sword," he shouted at the advancing void, "then I'll cut you out of me!"
The light sharpened, lancing outward in a thin blade. It seared through the reaching limb. The shadow recoiled, writhing soundlessly as the limb dissolved into smoke. The cavern hissed with the scent of burned stone.
For a moment, exhilaration surged through Cael's veins. The fossil had answered him. He had struck.
But then three more shadows glided forward, circling. For each limb he cut, two more grew. The blade of light flickered, wavering.
He stumbled, breath ragged. I can't fight them all. I'll burn out.
The river whispered around his legs. Cold, insistent. Flowing.
He closed his eyes. Sword or river.
The shadows pressed closer, their mouths yawning wider, eager to drink what he could not hold.
And then, in his exhaustion, something inside him loosened. He let the fossil fall to his chest. He stopped forcing it into a blade.
The light changed.
It softened, spread outward, no longer a spear but a current, rippling through the cavern like water through stone. The glow wove around the shadows, not cutting them but pushing them gently back, as the river itself pushes silt. They twisted, bent, recoiled, unable to find purchase.
The fossil hummed. Not a blade. A flow.
The shadows screamed without sound and withdrew into the mist. Not destroyed. Not defeated. But denied.
Cael collapsed to his knees, shuddering, gasping for breath. The fossil dimmed again, its work done. The cavern was silent, save for the pounding of his heart.
He opened his eyes. The shadows were gone. The hunters' horns were still distant — but nearer with each echo.
He had survived. Not by choosing fully sword. Not by choosing fully river. But by slipping between.
And yet, the words of the masked figure rang in his mind: They already hunt you because you are uncoiled.
The truth was dawning on him, cold and relentless. The Spiral's priests did not fear swords. They did not fear rivers. They feared the uncoiled.
Because only the uncoiled could choose.
From the mist at the far end of the cavern, a faint glow flickered. Not torchlight. Not fossil-light. Something older, warmer, like dawn breaking beneath the earth.
Cael rose, trembling, and staggered toward it.
The horns behind him drew closer.
The shadows in the mist stirred again.
And the cavern seemed to whisper: Choose.