He gripped the anchorbone hard.
The smooth disc pressed into his chest like a fragment of something older than language, a tiny truth burned down to shape. His hand trembled, but the sensation didn't reach him. There was no sting, no pulse, not even a sense of pressure. The numbness had settled deeper than the skin now. What he registered instead was the memory of feeling — an echo of what the body should have done.
The eyes kept watching.
They weren't visible. There were no pupils on the wall, no blinking sockets. But their presence was unmistakable. Like a weight pressed onto his shoulders, forcing him to remember all the times he'd been looked at by people who didn't care if he vanished. All the moments he'd passed unnoticed until someone needed something he couldn't give.
That voice, or whatever it had been, hadn't spoken again. It didn't need to. The silence that followed was loud enough to rip through thought. This wasn't just lack of noise — it was the intentional stripping of sound, the theft of even imagined voices. He could barely remember what Kesh's voice had sounded like a minute ago. The world felt drained. Scraped clean.
The anchorbone warmed under his hand. It didn't pulse like the spiral. It remembered. That was the difference. It wasn't power. It was grounding. It held onto something he couldn't see — something he'd already started to lose.
He closed his eyes.
Then the memories began.
They weren't real. Not exactly. Not like the fragmented visions that had haunted his dreams since the whisper. These were clearer — sharper — but bent. It was like watching his past through a cracked lens, with pieces out of place and timelines stitched wrong.
He was a child again, maybe seven. Standing in an alley lit by steam and flickering copper lanterns. Someone was holding his hand — warm, calloused fingers. A voice above him, reading a list. Not a story. Rules.
"Never run near the lift. Never take the top portion of a ration bar. Never speak to someone wearing white thread. If you ever see the spiral on the floor, don't step inside it..."
The voice trailed off. He looked up.
But the person holding his hand had no face.
The memory snapped.
He was somewhere else. Sitting at a table. A birthday cake — seven candles — one already melted flat. A name was written in icing. He leaned closer to see it.
But the letters kept moving.
Like they didn't want to be read.
He reached out—
The scene shattered.
Back to the present.
He dropped to his knees, gasping. Or trying to. The air wasn't going into his lungs right. It was too thick. Or too thin. Or not there.
The anchorbone fell from his hand and rolled once across the rusted tile before stopping near the edge of the platform. He crawled after it, fingers shaking, shoulder stiff. Every motion felt like it happened one second too late — as if his body were playing catch-up with itself.
He touched the bone again.
It didn't just warm this time.
It burned.
Not enough to hurt — not yet. But enough to feel. Just barely.
The spiral on his wrist pulsed in time with it. Once. Then again. The lines began to shift — not grow, not darken — but settle. Like the mark was sinking deeper into him, becoming part of the structure beneath the skin.
He heard Kesh's voice.
Not outside. Inside. A memory, maybe. Or an echo the anchor pulled free.
"You don't get to choose what the Truth takes. Only how long it takes to notice."
He pulled himself up.
The silence still stretched around him like fabric, thick and heavy, but something inside it had changed. The eyes were still there, but the pressure wasn't crushing anymore. It felt… cautious now. Watching differently.
Maybe it wasn't a test. Maybe it had never been about passing or failing.
Maybe it just wanted to see what he would do when pain was no longer pain — when the natural response to suffering was stripped away, and only the choice of meaning remained.
He took a step forward.
Then another.
No cracking noise. No resistance.
Only weight.
The platform floor hummed slightly beneath his foot. The tiles vibrated with the memory of footsteps — not his, but someone else's. Someone who'd walked this place before. Another Proxy? A priest? A warden? He couldn't tell.
But the spiral on his wrist flared.
The first time it had truly reacted since arriving in this place.
A faint heat rippled through his bones. Not the burning kind. Not the echo of memory. Just pressure. Forward. Outward. Into his veins. And for the briefest moment, his senses sharpened.
He could hear again. Not fully — just faintly. A pipe hissed. Metal groaned. A rat skittered in the corner of the dark.
And deep inside his chest, something clicked.
Not physically.
Existentially.
The first Truth wasn't finished yet. But it had moved. Shifted. Taken root.
He was no longer just hearing echoes.
He was beginning to forget what pain even was.
Then Kesh was beside him.
He hadn't heard her approach. She crouched by his side, eyes scanning his posture, his hands, the flicker of his spiral.
"You didn't hollow," she said. Not surprised. Not proud. Just taking note.
He didn't answer.
She nodded anyway. "It's almost done. You're not fully through it, but the foundation's set. You're starting to shed."
He looked down at his wrist. The spiral didn't move anymore. It pulsed — steady, rhythmic, like a second heartbeat he'd always had and never noticed.
Kesh stood up, brushing rust from her coat. "Rest. When you can. This part gets messy."
She didn't say why.
He didn't ask.
But as he sat back against the platform, holding the anchorbone tightly in both hands, he understood one thing:
The next time he got hurt… it might not matter.
Because he wouldn't feel it.
And if that was the price of Truth, he hadn't yet decided if he could afford the next one.