On the bed lay a figure—young, unmoving, wrapped in a blanket of woven glyphs.
Thane stepped forward. The figure didn’t stir.
Solenne’s voice entered his mind, quieter than before.
“This is not your memory. It is the Archive’s. But it chose you to witness.”
Thane knelt beside the bed. The child’s face was obscured, but the blanket pulsed faintly, as if alive. He reached out, brushing the edge of the fabric. A glyph lit up beneath his fingers—
A spiral within a spiral.
Suddenly, the room dissolved.
He was back in the chamber. The sphere had slowed. The red thread dimmed. The black thread pulsed once.
Thane turned to the pedestal. “What was that?”
“A memory of grief,” Solenne replied. “Unclaimed. Preserved. Waiting.”
Thane’s voice was steady, but his hands trembled. “Why show me this?”
“Because you offered direction lost,” she said. “And the Archive responds in kind.”
He looked down at his hands. The compass was gone, but a faint spiral glyph now shimmered on his palm—
etched into the skin like a scar.
“What is this?” This is really weird.
“A key,” Solenne said. “To the next corridor.”
Thane stepped back, eyes scanning the chamber. The spiral corridor behind him had changed—its walls now lined with faintly glowing glyphs, each one echoing the mark on his hand.
He turned toward it, ready to walk deeper. But before he could move, the sphere pulsed again.
A new voice emerged—not Solenne’s, not the Archive’s, but something older.
“You are not the first. But you may be the last. The Hollow Star remembers. And it mourns.”
Thane didn’t speak. He simply stared a few seconds and then nodded, trying to understand and then walked.
