The Spiral Throne was not built, it was grown. Ivory roots of petrified memory twist skyward in the heart of the city-temple of Lirh-Kaza. And upon it, Kéon sits. Or rather, Elias does, within Kéon's borrowed flesh. The eyes that look up to him expect certainty. Divination. Judgement.
Ayélè, high warrior-priestess and Kéon's blood-bound sister, watches him with a gaze sharp enough to cleave fate. She has noticed his hesitation, how he winced at the scent of the anointing oil, how his left hand twitched before the blessings, how he flinched at the sacred name of the God-Sleeper. Kéon never flinched.
"What's wrong with you, brother?""You wear his skin but not his soul."
Elias attempts to play along, to echo the phrases the crowd expects, but the cipher haunts his thoughts. He saw it again, etched into the bones below the earth. A leaper before him. One who failed.
Later, alone, Ayélè confronts him beneath the obsidian arch of the whispering hall. She has drawn her blade, ceremonial and curved, and offers it to him, hilt first.
"If you are no longer him, die as an echo. If you are Kéon, remember your pact. The city is bleeding memory. The river forgets its name. You know what that means."
Elias doesn't. But the Spiral Throne pulses that night, and something beneath it awakens.
The vision takes him while bathing in the Ash Pool, a sacred rite meant to cleanse the mind of dreams. It does the opposite.
He sees Rae.
She stands amid a storm of falling sigils, cloaked in indigo and silver, regal, detached. She's older. Or younger. Or simply from here. Her voice is distant thunder, and her eyes burn with memory not meant for him.
"Break," she says."The Mirror lies. The pact was poison. You must break."
Then she vanishes, swallowed by fire and birds of obsidian glass.
Elias wakes choking on ash, Ayélè shaking him. The Spiral Throne cracked during the night. The roots have bled a thick, dark sap, memory oil, forbidden and alive. Something has shifted in the city's foundation. The people whisper of old gods stirring. The clergy demand another vision.
Worse, Kéon's old mentor, Master Hallivar, returns early from exile. A man who remembers everything. A man who taught Kéon how to walk between the truths. Elias has no idea who he is.
"You dream with stolen bones," Hallivar murmurs, tapping his walking stave thrice. "And the throne knows it."