Chapter 3: The Spiral Beneath the Skin

Rain fell in soft, uneven patterns—too slow to be natural, as if the sky itself were reluctant to disturb the city's silence.

Silas Veyne stood beneath a rusted balcony, watching the droplets pool in cracks that formed unfamiliar runes. He hadn't slept since the Archive. Every time he closed his eyes, he heard it—the faint tolling of a bell no one else could hear.

> The Thirteenth Bell Hungers.

The phrase gnawed at the edge of his thoughts, twisting into dreams he didn't remember waking from. It wasn't just a warning. It was an invitation.

And something inside him had answered.

---

Fragmented Understanding

> Codex Path: Thirteenth Bell – Oathbound Initiate.

Spiritual Cohesion: 9%. Mental Integrity: 84%.

Current Blessing: None.

Current Curse: Lingering Echo.

Silas stared at the words etched across his vision. They floated like oil on water—shimmering, faint, realer than parchment.

He had no manual. No mentor. Just this Codex and the pain that came with it.

Yet somewhere deep in his marrow, he understood.

This was not a traditional path of cultivation. There were no pills. No martial forms. No beasts to tame.

The Codex Paths were bound to things older than essence or qi.

They fed on truth. On memory. On oaths never broken.

And in return—they gave you something far more terrible than power.

They gave you knowledge.

---

A Visit to the Menders

Vel Quen had healers, and it had Menders.

The former used herbs, poultices, and prayer. The latter used ink, iron, and silence. Menders didn't cure the body—they adjusted the soul.

Silas descended into a cellar off Dirge Street, where red lanterns flickered in liquid glass and the air tasted of moths and mercury.

A Mender greeted him—a bald man in a black apron, with the sigil of an unblinking eye sewn over his heart.

"You're humming," the man said.

Silas blinked. "What?"

The Mender sniffed. "Codex-bound. You echo." He motioned Silas into the chair. "Sit. You've been marked. I can seal the fractures—if you pay."

Silas hesitated. "What's the price?"

The man smiled. "A false memory. Or a vow you haven't made yet."

---

He gave up a memory.

Not his own—but one that had somehow appeared after the Archive. A woman standing at a cliff, wearing white, saying his name with devotion.

He watched the memory peel away like flesh from fruit.

> Mental Integrity stabilized. Lingering Echo suppressed.

Codex Fragment Progression: 12%.

The pain receded.

The man nodded in approval. "You'll last longer this way. Most don't make it past 10%. Especially not Bell-path initiates."

Silas looked up. "You know the Bell Path?"

The Mender's expression darkened.

"No one walks the Thirteenth unless they've been chosen—or cursed. You should burn that fragment before it tolls again."

He handed Silas a slip of metal, etched with nine spirals. "Take this to the Drowned Quarter. Ask for the one who speaks backwards."

---

The Drowned Quarter

The Drowned Quarter was submerged in more than water.

The buildings tilted like shipwrecks, their windows like drowning eyes. Fog here didn't just cling—it pulsed. The lamps along the canal flickered in rhythmic intervals, each one blinking a different pattern—as if the city were breathing through light.

Silas followed the path the token led him to: beneath a collapsed bridge, through an arch of prayer bells long silenced by rust, and into a room built beneath the waterline.

It was there he found the backwards speaker.

A woman wrapped in kelp-dyed cloth, her hair floating upward as if underwater despite the dry air.

She did not face him. She spoke only once, and the words came backwards:

".emosewa si drow ruoy ,llab latsyr eht no gnippatS"

A sphere rose from the center of the room—crystal, cracked, and humming with the same echo as the Codex.

> Codex Resonance Detected.

Synchronizing…

Visions struck again.

A city buried beneath bells.

A council of faceless beings carving names into stars.

The Spiral—not as a symbol, but as a map. As a cage.

Silas gasped.

When it ended, he stood alone.

The room was empty.

In his hand now rested a piece of vellum, soaked in memory. On it, written in his own handwriting, were seven words:

> "I remember what I was not."

---

Elsewhere, in Velvet Silence…

A meeting convened in a hall with no doors.

Seven figures sat in throne-like chairs made of confession and ink. Above them, a massive sealed bell hung upside-down, never struck.

One of them—a woman whose shadow burned brighter than fire—spoke first.

"Another has touched the Thirteenth Spiral."

A hooded figure leaned forward. "Too soon."

"Too late," murmured the eldest. "The bells have already begun to wake."

A silence deeper than death followed.

Then, in perfect unison, all seven said:

> "Mark him. Watch him. Let him climb."

---

[End of Chapter 3