The soundless hymn didn't echo. It invaded.
It didn't need volume. It didn't ask permission. It slipped into his ears, his chest, the spaces between bones. The boy dropped to his knees without meaning to, like gravity had twisted sideways. The shape above the pillar pulsed once. Its form wasn't stable — a shifting architecture of mouths sealed shut and ears stitched open, circling one another like stars spiraling into a black sun.
The Choir encircled him. Still without speaking. Still without sound. They watched, not with hostility, but with hunger. Not the kind that wanted to eat flesh.
The kind that wanted to eat self.
He reached instinctively for the anchorbone.
But it wasn't there.
His hand gripped nothing but his own ribs, thin beneath the coat.
The memory of how he got here began to slip. Not all at once. Just the corners. What had Kesh said before she left? What was the name of the tunnel she led him through? Had she led him? Or was that part of this — a preloaded hallucination stitched into his thoughts by the Choir's will?
No one moved. But the air pressed.
A pressure that built behind the eyes, behind the teeth, behind the breath that no longer wanted to come.
He felt something pull at his throat. Not a hand. Not pain.
Absence.
As if his voice was being gently removed from him, piece by piece.
One of the robed figures stepped forward. A tall shape with silver wire wrapped around its skull like a crown. In place of eyes, it had glyphs etched into translucent skin — spirals, yes, but also something new. A second symbol layered over the spiral: an ear, cracked down the center.
It raised a hand.
And pointed.
Not at him.
At his mouth.
The boy shook his head.
The shape tilted its own in return, as if puzzled by the refusal. It stepped closer and extended its palm — now open, revealing a shard of broken glass still dripping with ink.
It offered the shard to him.
No words.
No command.
Just invitation.
He didn't take it.
But he didn't run either.
Instead, he looked past the glass and into the robed figure's face — or what was left of it.
There was no mouth there. Just folds. Scars. Like the skin had given up on being a person and had begun folding inward, becoming script.
He opened his own mouth slowly.
Nothing came out.
No sound. No breath. Not even a cough.
Just void.
The Choir didn't celebrate.
They didn't move.
But something changed.
He felt it behind his eyes.
A door, long closed, not yet opened — but touched.
The Truth wasn't his yet. Not fully. But it knew his name now.
The first step had been made.
He collapsed.
When he woke, the Choir was gone.
The pillar remained, but the floating shape had vanished. The air no longer pulsed. He could hear again — faint echoes from the upper layers of the city, the rhythmic drip of some unseen leak. But his voice still hadn't returned.
He stood.
No one stopped him.
No one guided him.
He climbed the steps back out in silence, gripping the stone railing tighter than he needed to, because the memory of the anchorbone still hadn't returned. Neither had the name of the person who gave it to him.
At the top of the steps, he paused. A single word echoed in his head. Not in his voice.
But in the Hole's.
"Soon."