The spiral was not a staircase.
Not really.
It was a feeling.
A slow swirl of everything you didn't want to remember—spinning closer and closer until you had to face it.
They stepped carefully.
Each turn of the spiral made the air colder.
The light dimmer.
The memories louder.
Solin gripped the railing, his knuckles pale.
"I hear my brother's voice," he said. "He died before I came to the academy."
Sera stared into the darkness. "I hear my father laughing. Before he forgot my name."
Elira heard crying.
A little girl.
In a burned cottage.
Alone.
That girl had no name back then.
No one to root for her.
Only smoke and silence.
At the bottom of the spiral, they found a door made of broken clocks.
It ticked even though the hands didn't move.
Amaryn touched it.
It opened.
Not with a creak.
But a sigh.
Like it had been waiting too long.
Inside was a plain room.
With floating fragments of paper.
Some blank.
Some stained.
Some whispering to themselves in sad voices.
"Where are we?" Flick whispered.
A voice answered from the walls:
"You are in the Shelf of the Forgotten."
They turned.
No one was there.
Just a mirror.
But not a mirror for faces.
It showed memories.
The ones people throw away.
Abandon.
Hide.
The voice continued:
"To pass, you must each give something up."
"Something that once defined you."
Elira's heart thumped.
Varn stepped forward first.
He removed a silver ring from his finger.
"My father gave me this before he left. I swore I'd wear it until I found him."
He dropped it.
It vanished into mist.
Sera placed a crumpled note into the air.
"My sister's last message. She wrote it before the shadow took her."
Flick hesitated. Then held up a small wooden star.
"This was the first thing I ever stole. It made me feel real."
Gone.
Solin placed a broken chess piece.
"I used to believe I had to win. Always."
Amaryn offered a glowing memory orb.
"Of the day I was chosen. The day I started losing who I was."
Then all eyes turned to Elira.
She reached into her pocket.
Pulled out a folded page.
The boy's note.
"I'll find my story. But I think you're in it."
She clutched it tightly.
Tears in her throat.
But then she shook her head.
"No."
The mirror pulsed.
"You refuse?"
"I'll give something else," she said.
She held out her fear.
Spoke it aloud.
"My fear that I was never meant to be part of this. That I'm just lucky. That they'll find out I don't belong."
The mirror was silent.
Then—
It shattered.
And a path opened.
Amaryn smiled.
"You gave a truth. That counts."
Beyond the mirror was a field of sleeping statues.
Each one a forgotten hero.
Elira stepped among them.
She didn't belong here.
She wasn't forgotten.
She was still becoming.
And her story was just getting louder.
At the far end of the field, something flickered.
A doorway shaped like a spine.
Made of black fire.
Waiting.
They moved toward it.
Holding nothing
And everything
They needed.