NOVPUBThe shadows in House Gorrim didn't move naturally that night.
The flickering of candlelight didn't cause them. The moon through stained glass didn't touch them. They moved with a rhythm that didn't belong to anything human—like breath drawn in places no lungs could reach.
Lyrix slept uneasily in his chambers. If you could even call it sleep. More like a restless crawl through fractured memories and looping thoughts. His body lay under fine velvet sheets, but his mind was still pacing, still grinding against itself like two dull blades.
And in the corner of the ceiling, behind the ornate chandelier carved from wyvern teeth, something was watching.
The Spiral.
A shimmer where the angles didn't quite add up. Like the room had one too many walls.
It watched the boy twitch. It listened to his breath stutter.
It had seen thousands like him before.
But this one… this one could be useful.
"Joshua…" Lyrix whispered in his sleep, brow twitching. His voice cracked.
The Spiral leaned in—without moving.
"You think you're hunting him," it whispered, though no sound escaped into the room. "But he's already decided your fate."
The words didn't touch Lyrix's ears, but they rooted into his thoughts, like rain seeping into cracked stone.
"Show him he's wrong."
The boy jerked awake.
A thin sheen of sweat coated his skin. His hair stuck to his forehead, and his hands trembled as he sat up, staring at the far wall like he'd seen something there.
But there was nothing. Only portraits. Books. A glass of wine still untouched on the desk.
And yet…
Something lingered.
Lyrix got out of bed and paced. He pulled open a drawer filled with old city scrolls. Trade maps. Forbidden history books.
Something in his chest itched—something that hadn't been there before. A thought he couldn't shake.
What if Joshua wasn't just dangerous?
What if he was inevitable?
No. No, he couldn't think like that.
But the Spiral's whisper was still curling behind his thoughts.
"Strength. Not power—strength. You need more than spies. You need more than gold. You need tools."
Lyrix's fingers hovered over an old map—a hidden part of Krayon Sol, long since buried by noble decree.
The Depths Below.
Once a prison. Now sealed. But beneath it lay remnants of an old war. Wards. Vaults. Secrets.
His hands moved without thinking, brushing off dust, circling three locations.
Vault Sigma. Shrine of the Drowned Moon. And the Breathing Gate.
He didn't know how he remembered those names.
But he did.
"They fear what's buried," the Spiral said, just beyond reach. "Because they built their peace on its bones."
Lyrix stood up straight, heart pounding.
What if these places held something—anything—that could match whatever Joshua was?
The Spiral whispered again. "Begin at the Shrine."
It took Lyrix two days to find someone mad enough to guide him. A sewer-runner named Tellin, who lived off rats and myth, took his coin without looking him in the eye.
They descended into the old city at dusk.
The deeper they went, the more the air changed—thick, still, humming with a sound that didn't pass through the ears but the bones.
When they reached the Shrine of the Drowned Moon, Lyrix almost turned back.
It wasn't a shrine. Not anymore.
It was a wound in the world. A place where water floated instead of falling, and words echoed before they were spoken.
An altar of black stone jutted from the center, surrounded by a ring of broken chains.
Lyrix stepped forward, his boots brushing against bones—human, maybe. Maybe not.
"Touch it," the Spiral whispered.
He did.
A scream—no, hundreds of them—rushed through him like a tidal wave. His vision went white. Then black. Then something other.
And when he came to, he was still there. But something in his hand was glowing. 𝘯𝑜𝘷𝘱𝘶𝑏.𝘤𝘰𝑚
A shard of moon crystal, pulsing like a heartbeat.
It burned his palm.
But he smiled anyway.
"Joshua," he muttered, the name tasting different now.
The second site was harder.
Vault Sigma.
It wasn't on any map anymore. The Spiral led him through dreams, through symbols in the street signs, through shadows that leaned the wrong way.
And what he found was not a vault, but a machine.
A relic of the old architects. A thing that breathed without lungs, that ticked without gears.
It asked him a question.
Not in words.
In memories.
It showed him Joshua's face. Then his own.
Then it waited.
Lyrix, bleeding from his nose, whispered one word: "Rival."
The vault opened.
Inside, he found a weapon.
Not a blade. Not a gun.
A scroll made of something that looked like silk and bone.
And written on it, a ritual that had no title. No author.
Only this warning:
Use this, and you won't be you anymore.
Lyrix laughed. Bitter. Hollow.
"I'm already not me."
Weeks passed.
And the Spiral kept feeding him.
Not commands. Not orders.
Just nudges. Images. Whispers.
"Joshua can't be beaten by brute force. He must be dismantled."
Lyrix began assembling a network.
Not his father's nobles. Not Gorrim loyalists.
Broken things.
A failed summoner named Ashra, who spoke to fire like it owed her a debt.
A mute rogue who bled ink when he was cut.
A smith whose tools only forged cursed things.
He built his own little warband. Quietly. Beneath the surface.
He called them the Pale Choir.
Because when they moved, no one saw them. But everyone heard them—afterward.
He tested the moon shard's power on a street gang.
The screams didn't stop for hours.
The ritual? He tried it in secret.
And the thing he summoned didn't stay long.
But it looked at him.
Like it recognized him.
And it smiled.
Back in House Gorrim, Lyrix stopped sleeping altogether.
He talked to walls now.
Or maybe just to the Spiral.
He didn't know anymore.
His reflection didn't match his movements.
The servants stopped looking him in the eye.
But none of it mattered.
He could feel it.
He was getting closer.
To something bigger than revenge. Bigger than pride.
A purpose.
One night, he stood at the rooftop of Gorrim Tower, overlooking Krayon Sol.
Below, the city moved like a breathing beast.
He could feel it shifting. Changing.
"Soon," the Spiral whispered.
Lyrix didn't flinch.
"I want him to suffer," he said. "Not just fall. I want him to know he lost."
"And he will," the Spiral replied. "But only if you let go of what you were. Stop being the son. Become the storm."
Lyrix's eyes glinted under the moonlight.
"Then tell me where to go next."
The Spiral smiled.
Not with a mouth.
But with the city itself.
Streetlights flickered in a pattern only Lyrix could see.
Ravens flew in a spiral over the Spire District.
A beggar laughed and whispered: "The Breathing Gate opens in three days."
Lyrix didn't ask how he knew.
He just nodded.
Because now, he didn't need faith.
He had momentum.
And Joshua?
Joshua wouldn't see it coming.
Far beneath the ground, the Spiral coiled deeper into the roots of Krayon Sol.
It didn't need to fight Joshua.
Not yet.
Because it had Lyrix.
And Lyrix… was almost ready.
