"You feel that?" Rill's whisper scraped against the oppressive silence, a futile attempt to deny the truth that already clawed at her skin. She exhaled, the breath blooming into a ghostly puff that vanished too quickly. The air, thick and stagnant, felt wrong even for this deep beneath Eelgrave, clinging to her like a shroud. Her shoulders prickled, each hair a tiny, frantic sentinel. "Tell me you feel that."
Ivar remained motionless, the torch in his hand a surgically precise instrument dissecting the darkness. The flame, a fragile defiance, sputtered and danced, casting elongated, grotesque shadows that writhed across the damp stone. His gaze, unwavering and unsettlingly calm, traced the spiral carved into the floor beneath their boots – an endless coil of obsession made real, a glyph carved of bone and blood. The silence around it was heavier than any tomb.
"It's wrong," he stated, the words devoid of inflection, a clinical observation delivered with the chilling detachment of a pathologist. No fear. No emotion. Just the cold, hard truth.
Rill shifted her weight, the protest of her aching calves a welcome distraction. But the knot in her stomach tightened, a cold fist clenching around her fear. She forced a harsh sound from her throat. "Wrong how? Be specific, Ivar."
"The spiral should hum." A pause. "It doesn't. It's silent."
"So?" She forced a sardonic snort. "Maybe it's outta batteries." Her joke hung in the air, hollow and desperate, a pathetic shield against the encroaching dread.
"It's leaking."
The single word killed the joke, leaving only the raw, festering fear. "Leaking what?" Her voice cracked, betraying her careful composure.
"Memory."
Lysa, a wraith in the torchlight, knelt beside the spiral, cradling a bone fragment carved with the same endless loop. Her fingers, stained with grime and something darker, traced a hairline fracture, her touch unnervingly gentle, as if she were tending to a sick child or a dying memory. "Recursion binds, or it devours," she murmured, the words a fragmented prayer lost in the echoing silence. Not to them. Maybe to the spiral itself.
"Is this one devouring us?" Rill's hand twitched, the instinctive urge to reach for her blade a familiar, unwelcome guest. Overreaction. Always. The Cull had taught her that the hard way, but old habits died as hard as the city.
Lysa's eyes remained fixed on the bone spiral, lost in some internal landscape. "Or it empties us out."
"Great." Rill pressed her palm flat against the glyph beneath her feet. The cold seeped through her skin, a glacial tendril snaking up her wrist, settling like a block of ice beneath her ribs. A metallic tang flooded her mouth, the taste of old blood and fear. "Feels like it's sucking something out of me."
"Not sucking," Ivar corrected, his focus unwavering. He crouched, his long, pale fingers hovering just above the glyph's edge, the sharp planes of his face etched with concentration. "Recording."
"Recording what?" Her throat constricted. The air felt thinner, stale.
"Us. Our fear patterns. Our thought loops. The city wants a blueprint."
Lysa whispered something too soft to catch, a fragment lost to the gloom. Rill strained, catching only broken pieces: "Copying us…copying us…so we can't leave…"
Drip. Drip. Drip.
The sound of moisture, amplified by the oppressive silence, resonated through the chamber. Roots overhead, thick as pythons, wept into the cracks in the ceiling, the water a dark, viscous fluid that smelled faintly of decay. The rhythmic dripping gnawed at the edges of their sanity, each drop a tiny hammer blow against their resolve.
Rill flexed her fingers, trying to banish the unsettling tingling that had taken root in her palm. "Why trap us here?"
Ivar's gaze remained locked on the spiral. "Because people pick at wounds."
Lysa's eyes lifted, their glassy surface reflecting the torchlight like fractured mirrors. "And we're in the wound now."
"Feels like it," Rill muttered, but the attempted levity died in her throat, leaving a bitter residue.
Under her palm, the glyph pulsed. Not with light, but with a subtle shift in pressure, a faint, insistent throbbing that resonated deep within her bones. Like a second heartbeat, alien and unwelcome.
"Some rot stays hidden," Lysa whispered, her voice barely audible above the relentless dripping.
Rill swallowed, her tongue feeling thick and clumsy in her mouth. "This rot?"
"Memory rot." Lysa's thumb traced a spiral pattern on her own thigh, a subconscious mirroring of the glyph beneath their feet. "The kind that festers when it's buried."
Overhead, the roots shifted, a low groan that resonated through the stone. Rill flinched, a shiver tracing its way down her spine. Skin crawling.
"The city's listening." The words came out thin, strained, but they came.
"Always has," Ivar murmured, his focus absolute.
"Feels like it's chewing on me."
"No." Ivar's eyes, dark and unblinking, remained fixed on the glyph. "Recording."
"Same thing."
"Chewing is blind." He exhaled slowly, the breath controlled, deliberate. "Recording is deliberate."
Lysa hugged the bone spiral to her chest, her knuckles white with the force of her grip. "Why break now?"
Ivar said nothing.
Lysa whispered again, her voice a hushed litany, counting under her breath. "Eleven. Twelve. Thirteen." She paused, her eyes widening slightly. "Because it wants something."
"Like what?" Rill forced a grin, the sardonic gesture a reflex honed by years of survival in the Cull. Gallows humor. Always. It didn't work. Her pulse hammered against her ribs, a frantic drumbeat against the silence.
"To finish what it started," Lysa murmured, the words laced with a chilling resignation.
"Maybe I should smash it then." Rill spat the words out, letting them fall sharp and hard, hoping to shatter the oppressive tension. It didn't work. Her pulse refused to slow. "Bleed the city back."
Torchlight sculpted harsh angles across Ivar's face, highlighting the sharp planes of bone and the deep shadows that clung to his eyes. "That's desperation, not clarity."
"And you're an expert on both?" The challenge hung in the air, a gauntlet thrown down.
He didn't rise to it. "Clarity is knowing the cost and stepping forward anyway."
Lysa lowered the spiral, her eyes unfocused, lost in the swirling depths of her own mind. "We have to choose."
"Choose what?" Rill wiped sweat from her temple, the moisture cold against her skin. Her hands wouldn't stop shaking.
"Let it bind us…or let it break us."
"And if we do neither?"
Ivar didn't blink. "Then it decides."
The floor trembled beneath their feet, a low, guttural rumble that vibrated through their bones. Dust rained from the ceiling, a fine, gritty powder that settled on their skin like ash.
Rill squeezed the hilt of her blade so tight her palm ached. "What do we become?"
Ivar answered without inflection, his voice flat and devoid of emotion. "Something grotesque. Or something honest."
Lysa whispered, "Sometimes there's no difference."
Rill tried to laugh, but the sound caught in her throat, a strangled, desperate sound. "I'm not ready for either."
"None of us are," Ivar replied, his gaze still locked on the spiral. He moved forward, his movements fluid and unnervingly graceful.
The corridor narrowed, the walls closing in, pressing against them like the suffocating embrace of a tomb. Roots, thick and gnarled, brushed against their shoulders, each contact sending a jolt of primal fear through Rill's body. She hated that she flinched every time, hated the weakness it revealed.
"Do you regret it?" she blurted, the words too loud, a desperate attempt to break the suffocating silence.
Ivar didn't look back. "Regret what?"
"Touching the spiral."
His pause stretched too long, a pregnant silence that spoke volumes.
"No," he said, the word clipped and precise. But his hand tightened on the torch, the knuckles bone-white against the worn metal.
"Bullshit."
"I see the cost. That's not the same."
Lysa whispered behind them, her voice a mournful echo, like she was reciting a forgotten prayer. "The cost is ours to bear."
Rill shoved her hand against the wall as they walked, the cool stone a small comfort. But beneath the cold, unyielding surface, she felt a faint tremor, a subtle twitch. A pulse. Like the place had muscles, and they were flexing.
"Eelgrave breathes," she muttered, the words barely audible.
Ivar nodded, too calm. "It does."
They turned a corner.
A rasping sound stopped them dead in their tracks.
Rill's blade was halfway out of its sheath before she could think, the steel singing a brief, desperate song.
"Who's there?" she barked, her voice cracking, betraying her fear.
A figure materialized from the shadows. Small. Child-shaped. But the illusion shattered upon closer inspection. The bones bent at unnatural angles, the limbs elongated and grotesque. The skin was pale and translucent, like alabaster stretched too thin. Spiral glyphs, crudely carved, adorned the scalp and wrists, defiling the fragile flesh.
Black eyes. No whites. No blink. Just bottomless pits that seemed to swallow the light.
Its lips moved, the sound a dry, grating rasp, like stones grinding together. "Some spines break outward," it croaked, the voice a disturbing imitation of childhood innocence.
Pause.
"Some break in."
The echo bounced off the stone walls, distorting the words, turning them into something monstrous. One. Two. Three times.
Rill's stomach twisted into a knot of icy dread. Sweat streaked her spine, leaving a trail of cold fire.
Lysa clamped a hand over her mouth, muffling a gasp. But whispered anyway, her voice tight with horror: "It's an echo."
Ivar's torch dipped, the flame sputtering and threatening to extinguish. "Of us."
The urchin cocked its head, the movement unsettlingly birdlike.
Then vanished. Not with a sound, not with a rustle of fabric, not with anything. Just…gone. Leaving behind only the lingering taste of fear and the unsettling certainty that they were not alone.
"That wasn't a kid," Rill whispered, her throat scraped raw.
"No," Ivar agreed, his voice devoid of emotion.
"Loop?" she asked, her mind racing, trying to make sense of the impossible.
Lysa whispered, "Warning."
They kept moving, each step heavier than the last, the silence amplified by the recent intrusion.
"Is every corridor listening?" Rill muttered, half to herself, but knowing full well that she was speaking into a void that was listening with unnerving attentiveness.
Ivar swept the torch in a slow arc, the light revealing only more damp stone and the oppressive tangle of roots. "Every wall. Every drip."
Rill brushed her fingers against the stone again, the surface cool and slick. It shivered beneath her skin, a subtle vibration that resonated through her bones.
"It's mapping us."
Lysa whispered, "Mapping our fear."
Ivar added, "And memory. Rewriting it."
Rill spat on the floor, the act of defiance a small, pathetic gesture against the encroaching madness. "Into what?"
"Into something that won't leave."
The corridor dipped downward, the descent growing steeper with each step. Roots thickened, black veins crawling across the ceiling, the tendrils almost close enough to touch.
"We're getting close," Lysa whispered, counting again, her lips barely moving, the numbers a frantic mantra. "Spiral's heart."
Rill forced her jaw to unclench, the muscles tight with tension. "Feels like a trap."
Ivar crouched, his hand flat against the ground, feeling for something she couldn't perceive. His breathing slowed, becoming unnaturally measured, almost mechanical. Too slow.
"It breathes," he said, the words hanging in the air like a curse.
Rill flinched, the simple statement sending a jolt of fear through her. "Don't say that shit out loud."
Lysa whispered, "Breathing isn't memory."
Ivar's voice remained flat, devoid of inflection. "It's practicing."
Rill hugged herself, the cold steel of her blade a meager comfort against her ribs. "What happens when it remembers too much?"
Silence descended, thick and suffocating.
Ivar didn't answer. He just stared ahead, his eyes dark and unreadable.
Behind them, roots shifted again, a soft, rustling sound. Like lungs expanding and contracting.
Rill pressed, her voice cracking with barely suppressed fear. "Ivar?"
"Then it stops being a city," he whispered, the words barely audible, a terrifying revelation.
Her throat locked, squeezing off the air. "And becomes—"
No one finished the sentence. The unspoken horror hung in the air, a palpable presence.
They reached a ruined archway, the crumbling stone forming jagged teeth. Like a mouth half-chewed, waiting to devour them.
Beyond it—a theater.
Torchlight peeled back the shadows, revealing rows of crumbling stone seats. The air hung heavy, wet against their necks, thick with the stench of mildew and decay.
"What is this?" Rill asked, her voice barely a whisper.
Lysa's eyes flicked across the chamber, taking in every detail, her gaze unnervingly intense. "A theater."
Stone seats, arranged in tiered rows, faced a central stage. And on each seat, a figure frozen in mid-scream, their mouths open too wide, their eyes wide with terror. Statues, carved from the very stone of Eelgrave, immortalizing a moment of unspeakable horror.
"They watched something," Lysa whispered, her nails scraping spiral patterns into her palm, a frantic, unconscious gesture. "And it watched back."
Rill's stomach flipped, nausea rising in her throat. "What the fuck did they watch?"
Ivar's torch dipped, the shadows clawing back, threatening to consume them. "Maybe what we're about to."
Rill tightened her grip on the blade, her knuckles bone-white. "I don't want tickets to this show."
Ivar didn't look at her. "We already paid."
They stepped inside, the sound of their boots echoing in the vast, silent space.
Dust swirled at their ankles, a ghostly dance of decay.
At the theater's center—a spiral cut into the floor. Black stone, white bone. A wound re-opened, festering in the heart of Eelgrave.
Rill's knees buckled, threatening to betray her. She caught herself, fighting the urge to flee, to abandon her companions and run screaming into the night. "How far down does this go? Don't lie."
Ivar crouched, his hand hovering over the spiral, as if sensing its pulse. "As far as memory does."
"Memory doesn't have a bottom." Her voice came sharp, a desperate lash against the encroaching darkness.
Lysa whispered, tracing invisible spirals in the air. "Some memories do."
The floor trembled beneath them, a low, insistent vibration that resonated through their bones.
"This is where it starts again," Ivar said, his voice flat and devoid of emotion.
Rill tried to laugh, but the sound came out cracked and hollow. "We're not doing this loop shit again."
No one corrected her.
The spiral pulsed, a faint, rhythmic throbbing that echoed the beat of her own frantic heart.
Dust rose, swirling around them in a ghostly embrace.
Stone sighed, a long, mournful sound that seemed to emanate from the very bones of the city.
Rill's throat cinched shut, squeezing off her air. "So what now?"
Ivar stood slowly, his movements deliberate and unnervingly graceful. His eyes didn't leave the spiral.
"Now we watch back."
They stood at the edge of the spiral. Breathing.
The city held still.
Waiting.
As they walked deeper into the twisting corridors, the walls seemed to close in on them, the darkness pressing against them like a physical weight. Rill, her nerves stretched taut, nearly jumped out of her skin when a figure detached itself from the shadows.
The figure was hunched over, draped in layers of tattered cloth adorned with scavenged cogs and gears that clicked and whirred with every movement. One eye was replaced with a crudely fashioned clockwork mechanism, the gears spinning erratically. The air around it smelled of rust, oil, and something vaguely metallic.
"Cog-spirits dance in the Spine tonight," the figure rasped, the voice a reedy whisper. "The Unwinding approaches, children of the Wound! The gears grind, the clocks unwind, Eelgrave forgets!" The clockwork eye spun wildly, focusing on Rill with unsettling intensity. "The Spine's heart ticks backward tonight, child. Beware the Unwinding."
Before any of them could react, the figure melted back into the shadows, the only evidence of its existence the lingering scent of rust and the faint whirring of gears fading into the silence.
Rill's hand flew to her blade. "What the fuck was that?"
Lysa shuddered, her eyes wide with unease. "Another splinter of the city's madness."
Ivar, however, remained unnervingly calm, his gaze thoughtful. "A warning, perhaps."
Rill frowned. "A warning about what?"
"The Unwinding," Ivar replied, his voice low. "The forgetting."
The encounter left a lingering unease, a sense that they were being watched by something ancient and unknowable. Rill found herself unconsciously reaching out to touch Ivar's arm, a gesture of reassurance that felt out of character, but strangely necessary. The words of the eccentric echoed in her mind: "The Spine's heart ticks backward… Beware the Unwinding." She resolved to check on Ivar as soon as they were out of this accursed place, to make sure that the spiral hadn't burrowed too deep into his mind. The thought of Ivar losing himself to the city was more terrifying than any monster the Cull could conjure.