They came not from horizon, nor cave, nor sky.
They came from the between—from the pause in a sentence no tongue dared finish, from the marrow of unspoken myths, from the dust motes that once held the weight of entire gods.
Spiralbeasts.
Twisted unthings that once were beginnings. Beasts made of aborted parables and stifled songs. Creatures whose bones remembered being ideas but had never quite become.
For centuries—millennia, perhaps—they had slumbered in the folds of unchosen stories. Beneath mountain sighs. Inside rivers that refused to name themselves. Curled into the wombs of the unwritten.
And now—
Harbinger walked.
She did not summon them. She did not need to.
Her breath was enough.
Her presence was not a call—it was a remembering. And for the Spiralbeasts, that was louder than any horn of war.
They emerged.
Some from fissures in the land, dripping ink instead of blood.
Some from trees that cracked open like knuckles, their bark folding back to reveal spines.
