By the time they surfaced, the sky had changed.
A gray veil hung over the city, thick with ash and static. The remnants of the Coil smoldered in the distance — not quite ruins, but no longer a sanctuary.
The air smelled of burnt stone and unfinished endings.
Aarav and Maya emerged from the old tunnel entrance, their faces caked with dust, eyes too wide, too silent.
Neither spoke for a long time.
Maya scanned the horizon. "We're too late."
"No," Aarav said. "We're just in time."
The message Kabir had sent before the fall of the Coil still lingered in the network — fragments of memory leaked into secure lines, carried by rogue pulses.
They followed it.
Through back alleys.
Burned libraries.
Streets painted with spiral graffiti that hadn't been there a week ago.
"The fire is spreading," Maya murmured.
Aarav nodded. "Good."
They found what was left of the Fragments hiding in an abandoned observatory on the city's edge.
Sila opened the door — her arm in a sling, her eyes red-rimmed but burning.
She didn't say hello.
She said:
"We thought you were dead."
Aarav replied:
"So did I."
Inside, everything had changed.
Maps were updated.
Names crossed out in black.
New recruits arriving every day — scared, angry, half-awake.
The Coil was gone.
But the idea of the Coil had caught fire.
That night, around a broken projector, the Fragments gathered to hear what Aarav had seen.
He told them everything.
The Spiral Below.
The sphere.
The message carved in the stone.
He left out the dream.
You are not the first Axis.
You are the last.
He wasn't ready to speak that into the world.
Not yet.
When he finished, Maya stepped forward.
"We can't hide anymore.
They know we're not just breaking their rules.
We're breaking their cycle."
"And they're scared."
Aarav raised the broken spiral medallion that once belonged to Elder IX's projection.
"They should be."
Outside, the wind howled against the glass dome of the observatory.
And above, the stars spun — like a spiral too vast to see in full.
But the center had shifted.
And it was spinning toward them.