The dawn didn't rise so much as it bled—seeping slow and grey across the frostbitten stretch of Shiverwake like a wound refusing to scab. Vaern woke not with a start, but with a twitch, the kind born from dreams that leave more shadow than memory. The sky above was sick, a flat pallor that pressed on the world like mildew on lungs.
He sat up stiffly. Breath rasped from his throat in short, uneven gasps, fogging the air as if something inside him didn't believe in oxygen anymore. His hands trembled—not from cold, but from something smaller, deeper, something marrow-deep. The veins beneath his skin had turned blue-black overnight, mapping twisted trails under flesh gone too pale. His fingers flexed with the effort of a man learning how to move again.
The fire was long dead. Charcoal and bone—the only things left from the night before. Ash clung to the pit like dried scabs. The wind hadn't dared disturb it.
The Ghost Sigil on his arm pulsed lazily. Not bright. Not eager. Just… waiting. A slow curl of golden light beneath the skin, like it had plans it hadn't bothered to share with him yet.
Yren sat nearby. Her whetstone screeched against the edge of her blade, bone-on-bone, the sound cold enough to make teeth ache. The whetstone wasn't stone at all—Vaern could see that now. It was rib. Something large, something long dead, polished down until it gleamed like ivory pulled from a god's grave.
"Dream again?" she asked, not looking up.
He didn't answer. Not out of stubbornness, but because the dream still lingered. Thick. Clinging. There'd been a ribbon—hers, Serah's. Unraveling thread by thread until it frayed to nothing. There'd been a voice that might have been his own, younger, cracked raw with screaming. And a book. Breathing. Watching. Its whisper curled in a tongue that made his molars throb.
Yren spit into the snow. The spit sizzled like acid. "You're shaking," she said flatly.
He was. Not visibly, not yet. But something inside him had started to hum. Not fast. Not loud. Just steady. Like a saw pressed to bone, waiting for the first push.
The Sigil had already eaten his fear. Then his grief. And now it gnawed at something smaller, quieter. He didn't know what it was. But he knew he'd miss it when it was gone.
She tossed him a strip of meat. It landed in the snow with a wet slap. Brown. Dense. Woven with gristle. "Eat," she said. "We reach the Cradle today. If you faint, I won't carry you."
He ate.
It tasted like iron and ash. Weeper meat, he was sure. Preserved with salt and things that weren't salt. His stomach twisted around the first chew. The second went down easier. By the third, his body had stopped caring.
They followed the frozen river north. Its surface cracked in spiderwebs, a dead thing that hadn't noticed it was dead. Bones jutted from beneath the ice—pale and reaching. Some still clasped rusted amulets. Some held hands.
Yren walked without hesitation. Her boots crunched through frost with rhythm. "Path of the Devout," she muttered. "Pilgrims used to crawl it. Barefoot. Half of them froze. The rest? Fed the Spiral their pain." She kicked a skull into a rock. It shattered. "Faith's a funny thing. Eats you alive, then thanks you for the meal."
Vaern paused beside a patch of ice where something glimmered. He scraped the frost away. Underneath, a sigil lay carved deep. Sharp. Unweathered. The Ghost Sigil inside his arm pulsed once. Then again. Hotter. Faster.
His hand burned.
Yren grabbed his wrist and yanked it back. "Don't touch that," she snapped. "Veresh script. The kind that speaks back."
The glow faded.
They walked faster after that. The trees thinned. The snow deepened. Eventually, the cliffs opened to reveal Hearthspire Cradle.
It wasn't a ruin. Not in the way things collapse and decay.
It was… a skeleton.
Spiral towers jutted from the cliff like snapped ribs. Arches hung midair where ceilings once stood. The carvings were still visible—long whorls in gold and bone—but they were wrong. The stone moved when you stared too long. The shadows weren't shadows.
The altar sat in the center. Massive. Black. Gold veins pulsed beneath its surface like worms beneath thin skin. Symbols ran along its face, too deep to be chiseled by mortal hands.
Yren stepped closer. Her fingers traced the lines with reverence.
"This is where they made Weavers," she said quietly. "Before Orders. Before war. Before we forgot what we were."
She looked at him.
"Touch it."
Vaern hesitated. Then pressed his palm to the stone.
His Ghost Sigil burst to life.
Golden light poured from his arm into the altar. The stone screamed. Not with sound—with memory. The carvings lit. Symbols burned into his eyes.
Nur-Vas Ethes. Vorth Mirn.
The Spiral remembers. The Thread lies.
Pain hit him like a spear between the eyes. He collapsed.
He wasn't in Hearthspire anymore.
He was somewhere older.
Children knelt in rows. Dozens. Eyes closed. Palms bare.
A figure walked among them, face hidden behind woven bone. In one hand, a brand. In the other, a blade.
The brand came down. Flesh hissed. A child screamed. The brand came down again. The knife cut. Blood spilled.
"You are the shuttles," the masked figure said. "The thread draws through you. You weave the Spiral with sacrifice."
More screaming. One child tried to run.
The blade took his legs.
Vaern choked.
He knew this place.
Not because he'd read about it.
Because something in his blood remembered.
Because this was no vision.
This was a lesson.
This was inheritance.