The silence wasn't new. It had lived in the cracks of his thoughts for weeks now, slipping between his footsteps, coiling beneath his tongue like something waiting to be spoken, or swallowed. But this silence was different.
It breathed.
Not like a whisper, or wind, or even lungs. It had rhythm, but no beat. Depth, but no sound. As though something vast had inhaled and forgotten to let go. The boy sat at the edge of a dry basin floor, back pressed against the stone where old chants used to echo. Ashur had left him there with no guidance, no task, no prayer to follow. Only the spiral mark beneath his collarbone, still raw from the ritual, pulsed like a second heartbeat.
Above him, the old cathedral hummed with distant murmurs, the cult's nightly rites. They sounded softer now. Or perhaps he was hearing less. That thought unsettled him more than it should have. He pressed his palms to the side of his head, testing for blockage, but heard only the faint scrape of skin on skin. His own breath, too, came quiet. Thinner. Filtered.
He wasn't alone.
He knew it before he saw anything, before the child stepped from the upper alcove again, barefoot and quiet. The same boy in gray from before. A shimmer to the fabric like oil spread across still water. Something that refused to resolve into memory, as though remembering too hard might make it vanish. The boy tilted his head again, that too-slow movement, like catching up with something already passed.
"What do you want from me?" the boy asked.
But the voice came from the wrong mouth.
The gray child hadn't spoken.
The boy stood, chest tightening. The voice that asked the question had been his own, unmistakably so. But not just in tone. In structure. In weight. It had sounded exactly like him… from a week ago.
He turned slowly, searching for echoes. The chamber remained still. The child still watched. But he could feel it, the air behind his eyes warping slightly, like a glass lens warming in the sun.
"Why are you here?" he asked aloud.
No answer.
But a few seconds later, ten, maybe fifteen, the same words repeated back from the other end of the basin.
"Why are you here?"
Spoken again in his voice.
Spoken without him.
It wasn't just echoes anymore.
Something was listening.
And now it was speaking back.
He didn't run. Not yet. Part of him wanted to, the part that remembered dreams of drowning in voice-choked air, of words catching in his throat like feathers. But another part, deeper, more ancient, more Spiral, stayed still. He focused on the child.
"What are you?"
The figure opened its mouth slightly.
No sound came out.
Only a flicker of warmth passed over the room, like standing beside a candle without seeing the flame. Then the child turned, slowly, and began walking toward the staircase that led deeper.
Not up.
Down.
The boy hesitated.
Ashur had told him to wait. That deeper rooms weren't meant for him yet. But that had been before the echo had spoken. Before his voice had returned like a stranger wearing his face.
He followed.
The stairs creaked, not in protest, but in rhythm. They pulsed beneath his feet, as if keeping time with something unseen. Each step deeper turned the air colder. Not temperature, but density. Sound itself grew heavier. Fewer echoes. Less resistance. It was like sinking into layers of thought.
He emerged into a small atrium lined with alcoves. In the center stood a brazier, long extinguished, and behind it, a door carved from petrified bone. Its handle was a twist of copper, shaped like a mouth mid-scream. The child stood before it.
Waiting.
The boy approached, and the moment he crossed the brazier's edge, the flame sparked back to life, blue, like memory brine.
The door swung open.
Not by touch. Not by sound.
By acknowledgment.
He stepped inside.
The room beyond was simple, a circular vault with shelves along the walls. Each shelf held small jars, hundreds of them. And inside each one, faint motes swirled like dust trapped in liquid. He stepped closer.
Names.
He didn't know how he knew, but he did. Each jar contained the weight of a name. Not written. Not spoken. But remembered. Distilled. Preserved.
His spiral mark throbbed.
The child was gone.
In its place stood Ashur.
No sound of arrival. No footfalls.
Just presence.
"You followed it," Ashur said.
"I didn't mean to," the boy answered.
"You never mean to. That's why the Hole likes you."
He stepped forward and placed a hand on one of the jars. "These are fragments. What remains when speech fails but memory holds. The Choir keeps them here, voices unspoken, names unsaid. They think it makes them powerful."
"And does it?" the boy asked.
Ashur didn't respond.
Instead, he handed the boy a jar.
"Yours."
The boy stared at it.
Empty.
Still sealed.
Ashur turned and left.
The boy was alone again, surrounded by a vault of preserved names, carrying his own absence in glass. And the flame outside the door burned lower, waiting to gutter.
His voice would echo again soon.
But next time, it might not wait for permission.