The dawn in the Spiral Observatory was not like any other.
Where once the light filtered gently through the glass dome in pale amber hues, this morning it poured in with hues Lynchie could not name—shades between time, between emotion, between thought. The sky above was a tapestry of shifting iridescence, as though the firmament itself now carried glyphs she had yet to read.
She sat at the base of the Aethertree, knees pulled to her chest, as the wind stirred around her. It wasn't wind, not exactly. More like memory made mobile, brushing along her skin with the warmth of old laughter and the sting of warnings unheeded.
Zev leaned against the stone wall nearby, arms crossed, his eyes never fully leaving her.
They had barely spoken since Dar'miel vanished.
The mark on Lynchie's back—glyph, scar, or seed—still pulsed faintly. It wasn't painful, not exactly. But every beat of its rhythm called to something deep within the Observatory, like a drum echoing in an unlit chamber.
"You haven't slept," Zev said.
Lynchie nodded. "Not in the way that matters."
He approached cautiously, gaze flicking to her shoulders. "Does it still burn?"
"No," she whispered. "It breathes."
He didn't ask what that meant.
Because she wasn't sure she could explain it.
The Spiral Codices had been reawakened overnight, whole wings of the Library unlocking themselves with reverent creaks and celestial sighs. Vyen had disappeared into the depths of the Hall of Lost Indices, murmuring to himself in old dialects.
But it wasn't the library or the mark that haunted her now.
It was Dar'miel's final words.
That is how I began.
A beginning implied continuity. That meant Dar'miel had once been what Lynchie was now. Not merely a manifestation—but a choice. A possibility taken too far, or not far enough.
Zev finally sat beside her.
"I've seen glyph-echoes before," he said, voice low. "Remnants left behind when Spiral-sentients evolve or collapse. But nothing like what you touched."
Lynchie turned to him. "She said I'd forget everything if I turned back. But I didn't."
"You didn't choose back," Zev said.
His eyes caught the light oddly, as if the Spiral itself was reflected there.
"You chose forward. Into it."
She looked away. "I don't know what I'm becoming."
He hesitated. "I do."
She met his eyes again.
He wasn't smiling. He wasn't reassuring her.
But he was seeing her.
"You're becoming the Spiral's counterspell," he said.
She blinked. "What does that mean?"
"I don't know yet," Zev admitted. "But I've read stories. And once, Vyen showed me a phrase buried in a restricted ledger: 'The day a glyph breathes, the Song of Dust will begin again.'"
"The Song of Dust," she echoed.
The phrase tasted like ash and music.
It meant something to the mark on her back—because it flared when she said it aloud. And from the tree beside her, a leaf of crystal fell silently to the floor, shattering into light.
"The Spiral Wards will want answers," Zev added. "You're not a student anymore. You're… what they feared someone might become."
She stood, suddenly breathless. "Then I need to leave."
Zev's brow furrowed. "What?"
"I need to find the origin of the Spiral. Not just the Observatory. Not the glyphs carved into its bones. I want to know what came before language itself."
He stood too, looking shaken. "That place isn't mapped. It's theorized, maybe—rumored in the Unwrit Scriptorium—but no one's ever—"
"I saw it in her," Lynchie said. "In Dar'miel. In the gap between her syllables. It exists. And if the Spiral is a question, then that place is the answer buried under it."
Zev looked like he wanted to argue. But he didn't.
Instead, he said, "Then I'm coming with you."
She stared at him. "Zev—"
He stepped closer. "You dragged me through every impossible threshold already. Glyph echoes. Reversal echoes. A living Spiral fracture. And you think I'm going to stop now?"
A faint smile ghosted her lips. "You might have to kill me one day."
"I'll write you a softer ending first," he said, voice barely audible.
They didn't speak after that. There was nothing left to say.
The Observatory breathed behind them, alive with song. Vyen's voice, distant and urgent, echoed somewhere below, as if reading a text that hadn't been written yet.
Above them, the glyph that had awakened two nights ago now expanded across the sky, slowly unraveling.
And within it, at the center of the spiral...
A door began to form.