Tessaline stood in the broken light of the stained-glass dome, her eyes hidden beneath a band of soft gray silk. Her skin was pale, dusted with ink. Around her neck hung a ring of rusted keys, each one etched with different symbols—Ien recognized none of them, but each made his mark throb just a little harder.
"You've seen the map?" she asked.
Ien swallowed. "It moved. And… it named me."
"Maps don't name," she said gently. "They remember."
He blinked. "What does that mean?"
Tessaline stepped forward and knelt beside the map. "That was a reading of a collapsed path. A 'Spiral Vein' is what we call a timeline that tried to exist. It didn't make it. Most don't."
Ien watched as the map twisted again, cities fading like breath on glass.
"Why is mine still moving?" he asked.
"Because your existence is a breach," she said. "And because the Spiral remembers what others don't."
She reached into her satchel and removed a small, timeworn volume. The cover was plain, but embossed with a symbol he recognized immediately.
The Spiral.
She opened it and read aloud:
"There are three great silences in the memory of the world.
The First was birth. The Second was death.
The Third is erasure."
She closed the book.
"You've stepped into the Third Silence, Ien. That's why you're still breathing when you shouldn't be. That's why the Choir came for you."
He backed away slightly. "You're saying I'm not supposed to be alive?"
"No," she said calmly. "I'm saying you're supposed to be forgotten."