There was no corridor.
No falling, no rising. Just transition, like a word forgetting itself mid-syllable.
Lynchie stood in a vastness that defied direction. Space was present, but not shaped. The ground beneath her feet felt like parchment not yet inked, the sky above like memory not yet dreamed. The air shimmered, not with heat but with awareness, as if it watched her with every breath she took.
She whispered, "Where am I?"
And the world did not echo, but it did answer. A thought, not hers, unfurled behind her eyes:
You are between utterance and erasure.
Then the world blinked.
Not a metaphor. The sky pulsed once, a lidless eye closing and opening without light. A hundred silhouettes surrounded her now, robed figures without features, each bearing a spiral etched in fire where their faces should be. They did not speak. They simply hummed.
The sound burrowed into her chest, resonating with the spiral mark over her heart. Pain bloomed—no, not pain. Recognition. Her mark pulsed back, and the air seemed to part for her.
One of the robed figures stepped forward and lowered its hood. No face. Only shifting syllables, old Spiral Glyphs in motion. They formed words that existed only for her.
"You have passed through the Third Spiral. You are the fragment that still believes in union."
"Union of what?" Lynchie asked, feeling small in a place this old, this unfinished.
"Of self. Of echo. Of all names left behind."
Lynchie blinked. "Is this the source of the Spiral Wards?"
"No," said the figure. "This is their regret."
The robes parted again, revealing something further back: a tree made of bone and ink, branches holding scrolls instead of leaves, roots made from broken syllables that bled light. Beneath it sat a child.
Her.
No older than ten, dressed in the plain linen of the orphanage from her earliest memories. The child version of Lynchie was writing in the dirt with a bone stylus, looping spirals and circles in nonsense rhythm.
Lynchie stepped closer. The child did not look up.
"What is this? A memory?"
The robed figures did not answer. The child did.
"This is the name you threw away."
Lynchie froze. Her heart thundered. She remembered now—a moment before she first touched a Spiral Ward, a voice in her head had begged her to remember her first name. She had refused, terrified that keeping it would unravel who she needed to become.
The child stood.
"You gave up your name to wear a glyph. You gave up your voice to be a vessel. But the Spiral never forgets what you bury."
The robed figures began to hum again. The glyphs in their faces turned red.
Lynchie fell to her knees, gasping as the mark over her chest seared. The child stepped forward, holding out the bone stylus. A single Spiral Glyph burned on its surface: Sha-Ur-Vael.
The forgotten name.
Zev's voice tore through the air behind her. "Lynchie!"
She turned.
The doorway of syllables still hung open, and Zev was stepping through, face wild with desperation. Vyen stumbled behind him, coughing blood, trying to hold back something dark that writhed through the doorway.
"You can't be here!" Lynchie shouted. "It isn't a place, it's a decision!"
Zev reached her. "Then decide with me! I won't let you become another Spiral ghost!"
Behind them, the Spiral Tree moaned. The scrolls began to burn. The robed figures started to weep syllables that became weapons.
Lynchie looked at the child. The child smiled.
She took the stylus.
And she wrote her name across the void.
Not Lynchie. Not Echo. Not Vessel.
Her true name.
The glyphs exploded in white.
And the Spiral blinked.