There was no sound.
No time.
No self.
Just light that pulsed like breath — slow, eternal, without rhythm.
Then came the first spark.
Aarav didn't know if he was dreaming or remembering someone else's life.
He floated, weightless, thoughtless, until the spiral appeared before him — not drawn or carved, but alive.
It unfolded in midair.
Not two-dimensional, but endless.
A loop with no origin.
A pattern repeating not across space, but through consciousness.
He heard voices.
Not around him.
Inside.
"The spiral is not order.
The spiral is recursion.
Evolution by destruction."
He saw beings — not quite people, not quite gods — drawing the spiral into the dust of an ancient world.
They didn't worship it.
They feared it.
Because it changed those who touched it.
They built walls around it. Shrines. Then tombs.
Civilizations rose and fell around the same pattern — over and over.
Each time someone tried to control the spiral, they became a conduit.
Not a leader.
A fracture.
One figure stepped forward — hooded in black, eyes like splitting stars.
The spiral coiled in his chest.
"We are not chosen," he whispered.
"We are vessels.
And when the spiral finishes its loop…
It begins again."
Aarav saw thousands of versions of himself — different centuries, different names — all reaching for the same truth.
All bleeding in the same shape.
He screamed.
But no sound came.
Only a whisper in return:
"You are not the first Axis.
You are the last."
A blinding light engulfed everything.
A cracking sound like a scream that never ends—
And Aarav opened his eyes in the real world.
On the floor of the Spiral Below.
Breathing hard.
Blood at his nose.
Maya at his side, holding his face.
"Aarav.
What did you see?"
He stared at the floating sphere.
And whispered:
"The spiral isn't a prison.
It's a reset button."
"And I think we're the ones who've been pressed."