Ashes of the Hollow – Volume I
Caldrith Hollow reeked after rain. The kind of stink that clung to your teeth — wet ash, rotted fish, slop-pit runoff, and chimney soot all cooked together into a foul stew that rolled down from the rafters and hugged the cracked cobblestones like fog.
Perched high on a rusted drainage pipe, Noctics crouched like a starving crow. His bones ached. His hands trembled from cold, hunger, or something deeper. But his eyes—coal-dark and too old for his face—were sharp. Fixed.
Below him, a butcher's cart creaked into view, pushed by a heavyset man in an oil-soaked apron. The cart jostled with each pothole, but the real treasure hung in the leather pouch at the man's side. It clinked—just loud enough for a trained ear.
Five silver staves. Maybe six.
Enough to eat for three or four days. Maybe even buy new boots. Or fire.
Noctics exhaled slowly. Breath hissed between cracked lips. He tightened his fingers on the pipe, but the metal was slick with grime, and his skin felt raw. His limbs quivered again, but not just from weakness. Something stirred behind his eyes. A sensation. Wrong.
A pulling.
It started low in his spine, like a string being wound too tight. His vision spun. The rooftops below twisted, the brick lines tilting—like the world itself had coiled into a spiral beneath him.
Again.
That feeling had been happening more frequently lately. Ever since the Bloodmoon. Or maybe before. He couldn't remember.
For a breath, it was as if he were looking down not at a street, but into the mouth of some great vortex. Not metaphor—real. Deep. Alive.
He blinked. The world snapped back. The pipe groaned beneath him.
He glanced down again. The butcher paused beside the alley's edge. A flick of red caught Noctics' eye.
There, tied to a drainspout: a fraying thread, crimson against the blackstone wall. The signal.
"Marked."
His contact had been here. The pouch was full.
He moved. Slid backwards along the pipe, then dropped down onto the ledge of a cracked windowsill. His bare feet landed soft. Quiet.
But the spiral sensation lingered. His thoughts looped, unfocused. Like a name at the tip of his tongue. Like a memory that wasn't his.
Climb, if you dare…
The whisper passed through his skull like smoke. He ignored it.
Noctics inched closer. He waited for the butcher to pass beneath the overhang, exactly as planned. One movement. One slash. Grab and run.
Except—
The butcher turned too soon.
Their eyes met. The man's were dark, alert. Not dull like a Hollow merchant. Not surprised, either.
A trap.
Noctics bolted.
He didn't get far.
Something heavy cracked against the back of his knee. He crumpled sideways into the gutter as boots stamped toward him from three directions. Gloved hands seized his arms. One slammed his face into a wall. A knee pinned his spine. A voice growled beside his ear:
"Thought you could slip through the threads, rat?"
House Ferren. Black armbands. Smoke-coat uniforms. Not the city guard. Worse. Private. Paid. Quiet.
Blood ran from Noctics' nose. His cheek stung. One of the guards yanked his head up by the hair.
"Speak."
He spat into the man's eye.
They beat him harder for that. But he didn't speak.
Not about the signal. Not about the red thread. Not about the Spiral.
Even if he could, the words wouldn't come. Not since the Spiral began to turn in him. Language warped around it. His own name felt foreign some days.
The guards dragged him into a ruin near the riverbank. Dust. Mold. Rats in the beams. Moonlight spilled through a rotted hole in the roof.
They chained his wrists.
Then came the iron.
Red-hot. Marked with an unclean sigil. A spiral of thorns and teeth.
"Hold him still."
They branded him just above the heart.
And that was when the world broke.
Not in metaphor. Not in pain.
Literally.
---
He fell through himself.
---
Sound vanished.
Heat turned to cold.
The mark on his chest burned like a second sun—then imploded. He screamed, but no air came. Everything bent. Light folded inward like dying stars.
He dropped.
Fell not onto floorboards or stone—but into black water. Waist-deep. Sluggish. Cold as grief.
He gasped.
The world was gone.
The Hollow, the guards, the pipe, the cart—all torn from his body like clothes in fire.
Now, there was only dark.
Above him, the Moon stared—huge, wrong, black-veined and cracked like an egg leaking light. It pulsed.
You are seen.
He turned in the mire. Trees rose from the depths, their bark like obsidian, their leaves like bone. Shapes moved between the trunks—hulking, slow, watching.
And something else stirred below the surface.
The Spiral Nexus has opened.
Noctics fell to his knees in the water.
Not because of fear.
But because something inside him—beneath him—was rising.
A coil of sensation wound through his chest, burning through marrow, climbing his spine, warping every heartbeat. Thoughts split. Memory stuttered. He felt younger and older. Less and more.
"I… am…" he whispered.
But the words drowned.
He looked down at his reflection.
And saw not one face.
But many.
Flickering. Blending. A man with silver eyes. A boy with a blindfold. A corpse with a grin. A thing with no face.
Each one staring back.
Each one him.
Each one not.
---
This is not a dream, the water whispered. This is the First Spiral.
---
Noctics tried to stand, but his legs would not answer. He coughed black water. His fingers twitched—jerking with invisible threads.
He could feel it now.
Not just within him.
But beneath him.
A structure. Rotating. Endless.
Made of light and bone and impossible angles. Like a staircase wrapped around a god's dying thought. The Spiral Nexus.
He had no word for it, but his soul did. It screamed.
Climb.
Or drown.
Something moved behind him.
Heavy.
Breathing.
A beast of shadow and chain, tall as a tower, eyes like lanterns sunk in oil.
Noctics couldn't move.
Not because of terror—though it was vast.
But because the Spiral was still turning.
And with each turn, it unmade him.
One name at a time.
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