Echoes Through the Fracture

The wind died the moment the Mirror-Spoken emissary vanished. Not fled—vanished, as if the very Spiral had erased his presence. One second he stood there, gleaming like a shard of a forgotten god, and the next, only a faint glimmer of distortion hovered where he'd been.

Lynchie stared into the silence left behind. The ravine across from her felt deeper now, as if the land had inhaled sharply and held its breath.

"They're testing your reaction," Zev muttered beside her, still clutching the hilt of his blade. "Seeing if you'd tremble."

"I didn't," she replied, though her voice had taken on a new edge—softer, but denser. Her senses still rang with the aftershock of the Mirror-Spoken's presence. Not fear… but resonance.

Something in his words had unlocked a door in her memory—not of something she'd experienced, but of something buried in her blood.

A Spiral unbound.

What would that look like? What would she become?

As they turned from the cliff edge, a scout sprinted up the incline toward them. Dirt streaked his legs and blood darkened one sleeve. "The enemy moved," he gasped. "Two legions. Spiral-born constructs among them. They've breached the outer canyons east of the Watchfire Line."

Zev cursed under his breath. "That's too close. They're forcing our hand."

Lynchie felt it, too—a pressure not just in the air, but beneath it, as if the very bones of the Spiral were groaning. Her own body responded with a flicker of searing heat along her spine. Her inner Spiral—the conduit—was reaching out.

"We need to pull back to the cliffs and start fortifying," Zev said. "Get the Tetherweavers out of the citadel. They'll stall us with illusions if we're not grounded."

But Lynchie didn't move.

Her gaze had fixed on the ridgelines ahead—where something flickered. A shape, cloaked not in magic, but in memory.

"I need to go," she said.

Zev turned to her slowly. "Where?"

"To the ruins," she answered. "The place where the Spiral first called me. The fracture beneath the obsidian pools. It's been waking up—I can feel it. There's something I need to see. Or remember."

Zev frowned. "You're suggesting we split up now? With an army breathing down our necks?"

Lynchie met his eyes. "I'm not asking. I'm telling you I have to."

He stared at her for a long beat, then exhaled sharply. "Take Vyen with you. And two of the Crescent Blades."

"No. Just me."

"That's suicide."

Her lips twitched. "I've survived worse. You know I have."

Zev's expression darkened. She could see the war behind his eyes—the old fear of losing someone he couldn't protect, clashing with the newer fear of what she might become if left untethered.

"Lynchie," he said quietly, stepping closer. "If you go alone, and that Spiral fracture pulls you in—if you lose yourself to it—I won't be able to bring you back."

She looked up at him, the wind catching a lock of her hair and sending it fluttering across her cheek. "Then don't follow. Just hold the cliffs."

Zev didn't answer.

But as she turned and began walking—down the spine of the ridge, toward the southeast ruins—she felt him watching. Not out of mistrust. But out of something deeper. Something more dangerous.

She was becoming something not even Zev could understand.

And he wasn't the only one watching.

The descent into the ancient fracture felt like sliding into the breath of the Spiral itself. The closer she drew, the more the land warped. Colors twisted. Shadows lingered. The sigils carved into the stone walls flickered in languages no living soul had spoken for centuries.

She reached the mouth of the ruin at dusk.

And there, half-buried beneath obsidian moss, lay the remnant of a Spiral relic—an orb of pale crystal, still pulsing faintly.

As her fingers brushed its surface, the world around her dissolved.

The ground dropped away. The stars above reversed their spin.

And suddenly, Lynchie was not standing in the ruins—but within a vast spiraling chamber of light, her reflection multiplied in glass facets all around.

A voice spoke—not with sound, but through bone.

"You have awakened the Third Thread."

She gasped. Pain rippled through her body, hot and slicing.

The voice continued: "This path is no longer one of choice. You are the Fractureborn. The Spiral will end in you—or begin again."

She opened her mouth to scream, to deny, to demand—

But the light split.

And she saw herself.

Not just as she was—but as she could be. A creature of impossible grace, wings formed of Spiral runes, eyes filled with the knowledge of dying stars.

And beside her… was Zev.

Holding a blade pointed not at the enemy.

But at her.

Then the vision shattered.

Lynchie collapsed, gasping, the orb slipping from her hands and vanishing into dust.

Outside, distant thunder rolled—not from a storm.

But from the beginning of the Spiral War.

And Lynchie now carried its first prophecy within her skin.