The stars over the academy shimmered unnaturally tonight. Not in their usual majestic silence, but as if they trembled—disturbed by something whispering through the veil of the Spiral Wards. Lynchie stood barefoot in the dreaming chamber, the iridescent dust on the floor glowing with every step she took. The breath of the sanctum pulsed faintly against her skin, like the heartbeat of a slumbering dragon.
She had come alone. Or so she thought.
The invocation circle at the chamber's center pulsed with shifting glyphs, alive and restless. Archivist Vyen had warned her: "This ritual will not show you what you wish to see. Only what remembers your name."
Lynchie inhaled slowly, steadying her nerves. Around her, the glyph-laced walls of the chamber faded from sight, replaced by a sea of spiraling starlight—a field of swirling names, syllables, languages without mouths to speak them. Her name was no longer a word. It was a vibration, echoed by the hidden lexicons of the world.
One syllable shimmered brighter than the others: Sha-Ur-Vael. The Spiral Glyph that had haunted her dreams now unfolded before her in its truest form—not flat, but layered, fractal, and infinite. The glyph pulsed with the presence of something not dead, not dreaming—but waiting.
From the shadows, echoes emerged. They wore her brother's face. Some smiled with warmth, others wept soundlessly, a few grinned with a broken, jagged malice. All of them whispered at once, and none in words she fully knew. Her spine tensed. Her eyes blurred. But she did not step back.
"This is the fracture," a voice finally said—clear, familiar. One of the echoes stood apart. Not hostile. Not kind. Simply... real. "This is where he forgot. Where he fragmented. Where even his name slipped through the lattice."
Lynchie stepped closer to it.
"The Spiral remembers," she whispered.
The echo raised its hand and revealed a page of the Spiral Codex. It burned with impossible letters that rearranged themselves in rhythm with her pulse. The Trial had begun.
To read was to remember.
To remember was to wake.
And as Lynchie reached for the page, the chamber rippled—walls, stars, echoes all bending inward.
Then, the room shattered.
She was falling, not through space, but through truths. Each shard around her held a life that could have been—one where she was a blade, one where she was a song, one where she was never born at all. Through each reflection, she saw the impossible weave of her brother's will—and something deeper still, older than even his sorrow: a desire.
Not for power. Not for dominion. But for companionship. For understanding.
She awoke on the chamber floor, hand outstretched. The page had vanished. But the glyph had etched itself into her palm.
Sha-Ur-Vael.
It pulsed gently, and in her mind, a new voice whispered:
"You are the name that will be remembered."
Lynchie opened her eyes.
And the stars had stopped trembling.