It began in silence—not a lack of sound, but a dense, pregnant quiet that coiled around Lynchie's thoughts like vines tightening on glass. The air inside the Spiral Librarium had not stirred since the last glyph pulsed and vanished, yet something deeper had shifted. The ink-dust on the shelves seemed to breathe. The chandeliers above trembled ever so slightly, casting looping shadows across the cobbled floor.
Lynchie stood frozen between the shelves, the small obsidian shard now glowing faintly in her palm. It was no longer cold. It pulsed with a warmth that was oddly human, like a heartbeat pressed to her own. She dared not close her fingers around it. Not yet.
Behind her, Vyen's steps halted. She didn't need to look—his breath had changed. Measured. Cautious. Reverent.
"The Choir," he said quietly, "has noticed."
A chill swept across her neck, not from any wind, but from understanding. The Choir of Syllables—the invisible, ever-listening fragments of the Spiral Codex that whispered into sleeping minds and divine ink alike—wasn't supposed to awaken.
And yet.
A low tone vibrated through the stone beneath them, like a bell struck somewhere beneath the world. Books across the highest ledges flared with dim light. One spine cracked open. Then another. Then another. Pages flipped. Glyphs shimmered like dew shaken from leaves at dawn. She wasn't reading them, but they were reading her.
"What did I—"
"You didn't summon it," Vyen whispered, stepping beside her. His voice barely moved air. "You answered it."
The shard pulsed again, brighter now. Lynchie's head tilted without meaning to. She could hear it—a harmony not meant for mortal ears. Not music. Not language. But structure.
Names without names. Words without shape. An ancient resonance that lived beneath alphabets and prayers.
The First Tongue.
It bled out of the shard and into the air, staining the light.
Glyphs lifted from the books like ghost-lanterns and gathered above the great well in the center of the Librarium, where no student was ever allowed to stand.
The barrier glyphs shattered.
One by one.
And the Spiral Choir began to hum.
It was not beautiful. It was not terrifying.
It was true.
And Lynchie fell to her knees.