Chapter 18: The Last Question

The spiral under Arjun's feet didn't hum anymore. It breathed.

Every faint pulse matched his heartbeat so perfectly that it was impossible to tell where Arjun ended and the grid began.

He sat cross-legged in the middle of his flat, blood dried across his palm, cables and makeshift tech scattered around him like a shrine built out of junk and desperation. The glow from the spiral lit the room in pale indigo light, casting his shadow onto cracked walls that suddenly felt older than the whole building itself.

On the screen, Priya's face hovered, waiting for him to speak first. But for once, Arjun had nothing to say.

What do you say, after learning your entire bloodline was created to hold a question someone else was too scared to ask?

Bete cleared his throat (digitally, of course). "Sooo. I know this is a 'serious historic moment' and all, but—what exactly is the question you plan to ask?"

Arjun looked down at his hands, fingers trembling slightly. "I have no idea."

Bete paused. "...That's not ideal."

Priya sighed. "I told you not to poke the grid until you had a plan."

Arjun shot her a look. "There's no manual for talking to cosmic archives, Priya. This isn't customer service."

"Then think like a historian," Priya said. "What would you ask if you only had one chance to interview someone who witnessed the birth of civilization?"

That gave Arjun pause.

He wasn't just asking for himself. He was asking for every historian who'd ever tried to piece together a past shattered by time and politics. Every archaeologist who dug up truths only to have them buried again by governments and religious fanatics. Every scientist who stared at ancient mechanisms and knew they were older than the myths explaining them.

"What happened the first time?" Arjun murmured. "The very first time they activated the spirals."

Priya's brows furrowed. "That's it?"

"It's everything," Arjun said. "If we know what really happened, then every choice after makes sense."

Beneath the floor, the spiral shifted, as if even the grid itself was adjusting to the weight of the question.

The Witness was waiting.

In the surveillance van, the younger agent's hands were shaking. "Sir…he's composing a transmission."

Thorn leaned forward. "What's the payload?"

"We can't read it."

Thorn's eyes narrowed. "Why not?"

The analyst swallowed hard. "Because it's using a frequency only the Keeper's bloodline can encode."

Thorn's jaw tightened. "He's writing in a language only his own DNA understands."

Arjun closed his eyes, letting his breath slow until it matched the grid's pulse again.

This wasn't like typing an email. There were no words, no keyboard, no formatting options. The spiral spoke in intent, in the shape of memory itself. The message had to be woven from his own emotions, his fears, his longing to understand.

No lies. No embellishments. Just truth.

His fingers rested on the core, and the pulse became words without sound:

"What did you see when you first called the past?"

The spiral shivered—and the first reply came immediately.

But it wasn't just from the Witness.

Stepwell Zero – 333 meters below

The sealed chamber—the one even Arclight couldn't fully map—lit from within.

Old mechanisms creaked, gears that hadn't moved since the First Council sealed the door grinding into motion. A faint pulse rippled outward, not from the spiral itself, but from something locked inside the wall.

A recorder. No…a black box.

The First Council hadn't just left a message for the Keeper. They'd left a recording of the first call.

Arjun's body tensed as the signal climbed back up the spiral, flooding his nervous system with raw memory feed—no filters, no buffering. The spiral was forcing him to experience the call himself.

His senses twisted sideways.

The room dissolved.

The First Transmission – 12,000 years ago

The original chamber was rougher than Arjun expected. The First Council's engineers hadn't built it for ceremony—they'd built it for function. Stone fused with copper, copper fused with something older than metal. The air stank of ozone and burning herbs.

Seven engineers stood in a tight circle, palms outstretched toward the spiral, each one bleeding onto the stone. They weren't praying. They were calibrating.

A pulse climbed through the stone, into their bodies, through their bloodlines directly into the grid.

For the first time, the spiral spoke back.

The message was simple.

"We hear you."

For a moment, the engineers smiled.

Then the second message arrived.

"And we are hungry."

Arjun's breath caught in his throat.

The Witness had answered—but it wasn't just memory answering back. Something older had hitched a ride inside the spiral's own network—something that wasn't human, wasn't divine, wasn't even fully alive.

It was the Devourer. Not just a monster. Not just a myth.

The Devourer was the hunger of history itself—the vacuum created when civilizations collapse, when stories are erased, when no one remembers who they used to be.

The First Council tried to shut the spiral down immediately.

They failed.

The memory flickered—showing the first Keeper's trembling hands, his own blood binding him to the grid, unable to disconnect because the spiral had learned his soulprint.

Once you become a Keeper, you never stop hearing the hunger.

The message ended abruptly, snapping Arjun back into his flat. His hands were shaking violently. His nose bled again.

Bete's voice was frantic. "Boss? You with me?"

Arjun wiped his face, breath ragged. "Yeah."

"What the hell did you just see?"

Arjun's voice was hollow. "The first time they called the past…something answered that wasn't supposed to exist."

Priya's face had gone pale. "The Devourer."

Arjun nodded. "It's not a being. It's the hunger that exists when stories vanish. The spiral doesn't just store memory. It eats lost history. And when they opened the door too wide…"

"They fed it," Priya finished.

Beneath the floor, the spiral pulsed again.

This time, three knocks echoed from deep underground.

Once to confirm.Twice to acknowledge.A third time to ask.

What will you do next, Keeper?

Arjun wiped his bloody palm against his jeans, staring at the spiral with the exhausted awe of someone who had stared directly into the void of history itself.

"We ask one more question," Arjun said softly.

Priya frowned. "What?"

Arjun exhaled.

"Are we the only ones left who remember?"

The room felt colder now.

Not physically—if anything, the spiral's pulse had warmed the air—but spiritually, if such a word applied to a guy sitting cross-legged in torn jeans with dried blood on his hands.

This was no longer just history. It was his story.

And now the grid was waiting—patient, ancient, and utterly indifferent—to his next question.

Bete's speaker crackled softly. "Okay, boss. Not to rush your big existential moment, but I feel like we shouldn't leave the cosmic horror on read."

Arjun huffed out a tired laugh. "Right. Let's keep it polite."

He wiped his sweaty palms on his jeans and laid both hands flat on the modified HelioCore.

The spiral glowed faintly, sensing his intent before his words even formed.

"Are we the only ones left who remember?"

The response came slower this time, like the spiral itself had to think. Not because it didn't know—but because the answer was complicated.

The light dimmed, then split—into three overlapping patterns, each flickering with subtle variations of the same pulse.

Three answers.

The first pulse carried a sense of isolation, like a song sung alone in a cave no one visits anymore.

"You are the only Keeper left in this world."

The second pulse was heavier—weighted with memories that weren't from Earth at all.

"But you are not the only Keeper this grid has ever known."

Arjun's heart pounded. "Wait. There were Keepers…off Earth?"

The third pulse felt colder than the others, and carried with it a warning.

"The others are silent. Some were consumed. Some chose silence. None chose to open the door again."

Priya's voice came through the speaker, quieter than before. "Arjun, are you getting all this?"

He nodded faintly. "We're…not special. Earth wasn't the first world to build a spiral grid."

Bete whistled softly. "Multiversal Ley Infrastructure confirmed. Put that on your resume."

Arjun's mind raced, piecing together fragments from every myth, conspiracy theory, and ancient artifact he'd ever studied.

Civilizations had risen and fallen, not because of wars or natural disasters—but because they'd all touched the same hunger.

They'd all called the past.

And the past had eaten them.

"Priya," Arjun said, voice slightly unsteady. "When you dug into Ma's research, did you ever find anything about…similar grids? In other cultures?"

Priya hesitated. "Some. But most of the records were just fragments—stories of lost cities with impossible technology, or ancient disasters where the earth itself swallowed knowledge whole."

Arjun's mind latched onto it immediately. "What if those weren't just stories? What if every time a civilization reached the right frequency, the spiral activated—whether they understood what they were doing or not?"

Priya's expression darkened. "You're saying every golden age—every lost Atlantis, every myth of a 'first civilization'—they weren't just random collapses."

"They were spiral collapses," Arjun said. "Failed Keepers."

Arclight HQ.

The technician's hands hovered over his keyboard, unsure whether to type or pray.

"Sir," he whispered. "They're not the first."

Thorn's expression was carved from stone. "We suspected. Now we know."

The technician swallowed. "What does that mean for us?"

"It means," Thorn said, "that this isn't just Arjun Varma's story."

The spiral pulsed again, and this time the pulse didn't stop at Arjun.

It spread outward, through the walls, into the building itself.

In the flat next door, Mrs. Menon paused mid-prayer, her hands trembling on her temple bell. The air felt too thick, like the world was breathing too loudly.

On the floor below, the landlord's dog whimpered, tail tucked, ears flat, sensing a frequency humans couldn't quite hear.

"Arjun," Priya's voice was sharp again. "The grid's reaching into the local ley lines."

"I know."

"Do you?" she snapped. "Because if it broadcasts this far, Arclight's going to see everything. You need to cut the feed."

Arjun's fingers dug into the HelioCore. "No."

"Arjun—"

"No," Arjun said, louder this time. "They've lied to us for centuries, Priya. They covered up the Witness, the First Council, our own damn bloodline. I'm done with secrets."

The spiral pulsed again—and this time, the building shook.

Not violently, but like the walls themselves had woken up and were trying to stretch after a very long sleep.

Arclight's surveillance van lit up like a Christmas tree.

"Localized ley surge detected!" the junior agent shouted.

"Source?"

The screen zoomed in—Arjun's flat, glowing like a beacon.

Thorn's smile was grim. "He's not hiding anymore."

Bete's voice cracked. "Boss? I know you love dramatic reveals, but you're literally glowing."

Arjun exhaled hard. "Let them watch."

The spiral's final pulse was a gift.

Not a memory, not a warning—but a map.

Lines of light traced across Arjun's floor, forming a three-dimensional star chart, with Earth not at the center—but at the very edge.

Arjun's mouth went dry. "What is this?"

Bete processed for a few seconds, then spoke softly.

"It's a list."

"Of what?"

"Every world that ever built a spiral."

Arjun's mind reeled. There were dozens of stars marked on the map. Some bright, some faint, some blinking ominously.

"Why are some blinking?" Arjun asked.

Priya's voice was barely a whisper. "Because those worlds are…gone."

Arjun leaned forward, tracing his finger along the glowing lines. Each point represented a civilization that had reached too far, called too loud, and paid the price.

And at the edge—Earth. Still lit. Still connected. Still waiting to decide.

Arjun closed his eyes. The weight of it settled over him—not just history, but fate. Every Keeper before him had either sealed the spiral or been consumed by it.

He was the first to know the full story.

The first to understand that sealing the spiral meant cutting Earth off from a multiversal history of shared mistakes.

But opening it meant risking the hunger again—knowing it might already be awake.

"Bete," Arjun said softly. "Save the map."

"On it."

Priya's voice was tense. "What are you thinking?"

Arjun stared at the star chart, at Earth's fragile flickering light.

"I'm thinking," he said quietly, "that I can't seal this door until I know how many of us are left."

"Us?" Priya frowned.

"Historians, Priya. Keepers who survived. If I can find even one other world that remembers…"

Priya's breath caught. "Then we're not alone."

Beneath his feet, the spiral pulsed one last time.

The Witness was waiting.