The corridors grew narrower as they moved deeper into the Lower Halves. Pipes hung lower. The walls no longer bore names, only maintenance markings and faded chalk glyphs — circles within circles, some crossed out, others smeared like someone had tried to erase them but gave up halfway. The light changed too. No longer golden or warm, but blue-tinted, filtered through glass panels that vibrated faintly when the wind shifted through the upper vents.
Kesh didn't talk for a while.
She led him through a service door, then down another stairwell that creaked with the weight of forgotten steps. Everything here felt older than the rest of the city. Less like it had been built and more like it had always been beneath. There were no crowds here. No workers. No scavengers. Only stillness. And the faint echo of breathing that wasn't theirs.
Finally, she stopped beside a rusted panel embedded in the wall.
"Give me your hand," she said.
He hesitated.
"Your wrist, then."
He held it out. The spiral pulsed slightly — not in resistance, but in warning. Kesh took a breath, then removed a small bone needle from her pouch. She pricked the edge of his mark, drawing a bead of blood that shimmered like it wasn't sure whether it wanted to be liquid or smoke.
The panel clicked.
"Anchorpoint recognizes Spiral Drift," said a mechanical voice that sounded like it had been half-drowned in static. "Proxy registered. Coordinates open."
The wall split sideways with a groan, revealing a room lit by candles floating midair. Dozens of them — some steady, others flickering wildly — suspended in place with no strings, no wax pools, no source. Below them, a vast table carved from black stone stretched across the chamber. Maps were spread out like skins. All hand-drawn. All constantly shifting.
Kesh stepped in and motioned for him to follow.
"This is where they trained us."
He stared at the maps. None of them made sense. Landmasses folded in on themselves. Rivers that looped like time itself. Cities marked with names he'd never seen before, only to blink and find those names had vanished.
"Surveyor maps," she said. "Each one charted by memory, not sight. They show what the mind recalls, not what actually exists."
He stepped closer. "How does that work?"
"It doesn't," she said. "That's the problem."
She pulled one scroll aside and rolled it open across a clean section of the table. This one was simpler — a spiral-shaped coastline with a line drawn through its center. A red mark sat at the very core, with symbols radiating outward like broken clock hands.
Kesh pointed to the red mark.
"This is where we're going. Anchorpoint Zero. Directly above the inner rim of the Hole."
He blinked. "That close?"
"Too close," she said. "You'll see why soon."
Her fingers moved to the next ring.
"These," she tapped the outer symbols, "are emotional fault lines. Places where the Drift pulls strongest. You feel them when you cross — like deja vu, but with weight. The Spiral sends signals from below. Some people hear voices. Others dream things they haven't lived yet. Some lose names. Some gain new ones."
He said nothing. Just stared at the place she'd marked — the spiral's heart — and felt the pull of something buried deep behind his ribs. The same pressure that had started back in the mirror room. A sense that his thoughts weren't entirely his anymore. That some of them had grown sideways.
"You want to know what the Spiral is doing to you," Kesh said. "You'll find out at Zero."
"And if I don't like the answer?"
"Too late," she said. "You already agreed."
"I never said yes."
"You sat in the chair. That's the same thing."
They spent the next hour studying the maps.
Kesh showed him how to read memory distortions. She taught him how to recognize false topographies — loops in terrain where paths reset, or valleys where time slipped two seconds behind the rest of the world. She spoke about the Proxy Council, briefly. Said they used to meet in places like this, before everything fragmented. Before the Wardens started executing anyone who dared map the Spiral's breath.
"It's illegal now," she added, "to mark the fault lines."
He glanced up. "So why keep them?"
"Because I forget things, too."
She reached into her coat and pulled out a strange compass — flat, disc-shaped, covered in black etchings with no needle, just a single suspended thread of silver. It pointed at him the moment she held it.
"This is mine," she said. "The first thing I ever stole from the Archive."
"What does it do?"
"It shows me where the Spiral is strongest — where truths are breaking open. But it only points toward people." She paused. "Or… what they're becoming."
"And it's pointing at me?"
Kesh nodded.
"It's been pointing at you since you woke up."
That night, they slept in the anchor room. The candles stayed lit, though none melted. He lay on a cot in the corner, hands folded behind his head, staring at the ceiling as the flickering lights cast slow spirals across the metal beams.
He didn't feel tired.
Not really.
But he closed his eyes anyway.
And dreamed.
Only this time, it wasn't fragments.
It wasn't false memories or glimpses of things he didn't understand.
This time, it was a single image:
The Hole.
Massive. Quiet. Alive.
But instead of whispering, it watched.
It had no eyes.
But it watched him anyway.
And as he stood at the edge, looking in, a voice inside his own head asked:
"What if you've already jumped?"
Then the dream collapsed.
And he woke up gasping.