CHAPTER 10: The Performance Directive
The stars above me had shifted. Or maybe I had.
I trudged back toward the city with gravel in my boots, blood on my palms, and the stench of dead river water in my clothes. Every step up from the Wyrm's Mouth felt heavier, like gravity was rewriting itself out of spite.
[You okay?] Glyph asked, flickering dimly in my skull.
"No," I croaked. "I just saw myself. Floating. Dead."
[That was either your body… or your understudy.]
"Don't."
[Too soon?]
I wanted to laugh. Or scream. Or lie down in a ditch and let whatever timeline I'd corrupted finally catch up and eat me.
Instead, I limped forward.
Every time I blinked, I saw that face. My face. But wrong. Frozen in time, as if death had kept it in a jar.
.
.
.
.
.
By the time the city lights glimmered ahead, my hands were shaking so hard I had to sit.
I collapsed on a half-buried statue's shoulder—some forgotten saint with a chipped jaw and empty eye sockets. Fitting.
My reflection stared back at me in a puddle by my boots.
Except it wasn't me.
Not entirely.
First came the shift: Audric's cheekbones. Elias Gray's scowl. My old, Earth-born eyes. All stacked like masks in a theater drawer, flickering one after the other like a reel skipping frames.
"Glyph," I rasped, "am I still me?"
Static.
Then:
[…G…ly...ph….]
"Not funny."
[Rebooting sarcasm. Hold your trauma.]
Then silence.
Then Glyph again. Calmer. Slower.
[Diagnostic complete. Cognitive anchors destabilized. You're fragmenting, J.]
"Jeremy."
[Right. Jeremy.]
I pressed my hands to my face and nearly screamed when the shape felt unfamiliar. My nose was wrong. My teeth were too straight.
"You said this would happen if I used too many personas," I muttered.
[Correction. I said this might happen. Statistically unlikely.]
"Define 'statistically.'"
[One in sixty-seven. Also, welcome to the sixty-seventh timeline.]
My stomach dropped.
"Glyph—how do I stop it?"
[Anchor to a fixed identity. One name. One truth. One self.]
"I'm not even sure which of me is real anymore."
[Then choose the one who's not dead.]
I looked down at my hands again.
The nails were bitten. Left pinky still crooked from a childhood fall. One callus from learning to juggle knives in community theatre.
Jeremy Blake. That was me.
Was.
Maybe.
.
.
.
.
.
The moment I crept into the manor—more hallucinating than walking—I saw it.
A white envelope nailed to the front door with a dagger.
Elegant. Sharp.
"Oh great," I said, pulling it free. "Fan mail."
I cracked the wax seal—blood red, embossed with the royal sigil. Inside, the Queen's unmistakable script:
"One miracle earns you an audience.
Two earn you a stage.
Three… and you might survive."
—Ilyra
A single sentence followed, scrawled beneath the flourish:
Tonight. Dress like someone worth watching.
[Translation: she's giving you the main act.]
"She wants a show."
[You already gave her one. Now she wants another.]
My stomach twisted.
"What if I can't fake it this time?"
[Then make it real enough they can't tell.]
.
.
.
.
.
Castle Vesche had too many hallways and not enough exits.
I was led through them in silence by two guards who looked like they'd been carved out of disappointment and steel. Every torch flicker cast shadows in the shape of accusations.
We stopped before a narrow door.
The guards didn't knock.
They didn't announce me.
They just opened it, shoved me inside, and closed it behind me with the subtlety of an execution.
The Queen was already seated. Alone.
Bathed in moonlight. Draped in black. Her crown rested on the table beside her, discarded like a mask after curtain.
"Prophet," she said without turning. "Come sit."
I did.
Because I knew a cue when I heard one.
Glyph murmured in my skull like a stage whisper:
[Set dressing: one monarch. Two glasses. Three veiled threats incoming.]
"Wine?" she asked, pouring without waiting for an answer.
I took the glass. Didn't sip.
She did.
"Tell me, Jeremy," she said, finally using my Earth name. "Do you know why you're still alive?"
"Because I'm either useful or amusing."
She smiled.
"I adore honesty in liars."
Then she leaned forward, and the Queen dropped her royal tone for something quieter. Sharper.
"You've lied to the clergy. You've terrified the council. You've walked into my city with false miracles and real consequences."
"You're welcome."
"And now," she said, tilting her head, "you're going to perform again."
I stiffened.
"What kind of performance?"
"Tomorrow," she said, "is the High Procession of Hollow Saints. The people expect a sign. Something divine. And you—"
She tapped my chest with one black-gloved finger.
"—are going to give it to them."
I exhaled slowly.
"And if I fail?"
"Then I feed your bones to the cathedral lions and sell the rights to your death as a cautionary opera."
[Wow. She's good.]
"Okay," I said, meeting her gaze. "So what's the show?"
She slid something across the table.
A scroll.
I opened it.
Inside: a blueprint. A complex, spiraled construct shaped like a shrine—but hollow in the center.
"Construct that. Fill it with your relics. Summon your gods. Convince them you're real."
"And if I do?"
She smiled.
"Then we'll talk about your past. And why you remember the phrase Call sheet, Take 12."
My blood ran cold.
"You planted that."
"No," she said. "But I watched it happen."
She stood.
I did too—too quickly.
She was taller than I expected. Or maybe I was just shrinking.
"You don't trust me," I said.
"I don't trust anyone who can lie with their eyes."
"Then why help me?"
"Because I don't need a prophet," she said, turning toward the window. "I need a villain. One the people will adore. One they'll follow into fire."
"Or off a cliff."
"That too."
She picked up her crown and placed it on her head like a final cue.
"Be ready, Jeremy. The curtain rises at dusk."
And then she was gone.
.
.
.
.
.
Back at Solvane Manor, I unrolled the blueprint again.
The spiral shrine was intricate. Wrong.
Too clean. Too perfect.
"Glyph," I murmured, "this looks like stage dressing for a funeral."
[It is.]
I rubbed my eyes.
"Whose?"
[Best guess? Yours.]
I studied the blueprint more carefully. Every loop, every mark—it wasn't religious.
It was recursive. Like code. Like a memory trap.
"Glyph, what's the central sigil mean?"
[Parsing… Error.]
"Glyph?"
[Unknown symbol. It's not Celestine. Not Earth Standard. Not even Spiralite. It's—]
He paused.
Then said something I've never heard from him before:
[Jeremy. I'm scared.]
That did it.
I got to work.
I used Prop Master on pieces I barely remembered touching. A cracked relic from the cult. The broken compass. The teardrop hourglass.
Each item recreated itself with flickers of instability.
"Why are they vibrating?" I asked.
[Too many conflicting narratives. Too much overlap.]
"Can I stabilize them?"
[If you mix fiction with fiction, maybe.]
I paused.
Then pulled out an old theater prop from my bag—a fake divine feather from a show called Fallen Grace.
"Seriously?" Glyph said.
"It fooled six hundred people a night for twelve weeks."
[Okay. Worth a shot.]
I wove it into the shrine.
It fit.
Too well.
And for a moment—the whole construct glowed.
A low, slow hum filled the room. Not holy. Not magical.
Narrative resonance.
Glyph's tone dropped.
[It's syncing.]
"To what?"
[Not to you.]
Then the construct burst into flames.
I dove back, coughing, choking on smoke. But the flames weren't heat—they were memory. Flickering images. Me. Not me. A boy in LA. A man on stage. A corpse underwater.
Then silence.
The shrine stood unburned.
And in the center?
A new relic.
One I'd never made.
One I remembered holding in a life I hadn't lived.
A crown of broken mirrors.
Glyph was silent.
Then:
[You didn't make that.]
"No."
[Then who did?]
We stared at it in silence.
Outside, bells tolled.
[Memory access denied. User clearance insufficient.]
Time to perform.
.
.
.
.
.
The plaza pulsed with bodies.
Thousands.
Some kneeling. Some chanting. All waiting.
A spiral of candles surrounded the central shrine—the same construct Glyph and I finished hours ago. The fake relics shimmered in the fading light. The crown of broken mirrors sat atop it like a taunt to heaven.
I stood behind the curtain of veiled silk the priests had set up for my "reveal."
My palms were sweating. My face itched like it belonged to someone else.
[Last chance to bail, Jeremy.]
"No."
[Even if this kills you?]
"If it kills me," I whispered, "then maybe I get answers."
[Or maybe you get an encore.]
The curtain parted.
A trumpet cried out.
The crowd hushed.
And I stepped forward.
The Spiral Procession was not a procession anymore.
It was a trial.
A spotlight sun broke through the clouds—gold against blood-orange sky—and for a second I was lit like a god.
Or a ghost.
The Queen watched from her obsidian balcony, expression unreadable.
At her side: the inquisitor. Their mask tilted, and for a second, I thought I saw my own exhaustion in the curve of their cheek.
Still masked.
Still watching me like I was a script they'd already read to the end.
I stepped onto the dais.
Placed a hand on the shrine.
And let the performance begin.
"I am no saint," I said, voice slow, measured, shaking in the best possible way. "I was not chosen."
A ripple of murmurs.
"But something chose me anyway."
The shrine hummed.
[Jeremy, it's responding.]
"To speak."
The mirror crown rattled.
"To warn."
A teardrop cracked.
"To remember."
The crowd leaned in.
[Jeremy, the shrine's pulling ambient belief. It's becoming real.]
"Then remember this," I said. "The gods do not care for power. They care for story. For sacrifice. For truth painted as myth."
Silence.
Then the mirror crown rose into the air.
Unaided.
Glowing.
The crowd gasped.
The priests collapsed to their knees.
Glyph screamed inside my head:
[THAT'S NOT ME. JEREMY, SOMETHING'S HIJACKED THE SHRINE.]
The Queen didn't move.
She just watched.
The inquisitor leaned forward—interested now. Hungry.
Above me, the crown fractured in midair.
Spiraled.
And split.
The pieces flew outward, embedding in the walls, the stones, the crowd—none injured, but every person touched by a reflection.
And in that moment—they saw.
Not me.
Not Audric.
But something behind me.
Something vast.
A flicker of light.
A stage set not of this world.
The illusion broke.
And became memory.
People began screaming.
Some in ecstasy.
Some in terror.
Others… in recognition.
And I felt it too.
A surge of names, faces, lines—every lie I'd ever told, reborn in the mouths of strangers.
The shrine pulsed.
Collapsed.
The broken mirror crown crashed back down—onto my head.
It didn't cut. It clicked into place, like it had been measured for me centuries ago.
And the crowd bowed.
Every last one.
Even the clergy.
Even the guards.
Even the Queen.
Only the inquisitor remained standing.
And they applauded.
Once.
Slow.
"Long live the Spiral Prophet," someone screamed.
Then a hundred voices echoed it.
A thousand.
Long live the Spiral Prophet.
I stood in the eye of a hurricane of belief, fake crown on my head, heart screaming.
A child in the front row reached for me-their fingers sank into my wrist like smoke before pulling back, unharmed.
And Glyph—dear, glitched Glyph—whispered:
[You just won. Or lost everything.]
.
.
.
.
.
Castle Vesche's lower balconies were cold and mostly deserted.
I sat there in silence, the crown of mirrors now lifeless in my lap.
"They believed me," I whispered.
[They did.]
"But it wasn't me doing it."
[Correct.]
"What was it?"
[Still scanning. Whatever it was—it wasn't divine. It was narrative. Belief weaponized. Reality edited.]
"Like a rewrite."
[Exactly.]
Footsteps behind me.
The Queen.
Wearing no crown this time. Just a silver veil. And a knife at her hip.
"Prophet," she said.
"Queen."
We didn't bow.
"You played your part," she said. "So did I."
She looked down at the city—still echoing with songs and prayers written hours ago.
"Now they believe in something again."
"Even if it's a lie?"
She met my eyes.
"What isn't?"
I stood.
And asked the question I'd been dreading.
"Why me?"
Her gaze was endless.
"Because they needed a story. And you already had one."
Glyph stirred.
[Jeremy—now.]
"What does the phrase mean?" I asked.
"Call sheet. Take 12."
She paused.
Then said:
"She never forgave you."
And vanished into the shadows.
Glyph froze.
[Memory echo triggered.]
"What?"
[That phrase—she never forgave you—it matches a closed trauma log. I think she meant—]
But I wasn't listening.
Because the balcony door had just creaked.
And the inquisitor stood there, mask removed.
Their face?
Familiar.
Mine.
Not quite.
But close.
[Jeremy…]
They stepped forward, holding something out.
A final mirror shard.
Inside it:
A brief flicker.
Earth.
A stage.
A woman crying.
A voice shouting "Cut!"
And then—
Darkness.
END OF CHAPTER 10