The fog pressed closer, not like weather, but like a curtain deciding the scene was over. It didn't drift in — it returned, the way a shadow snaps back when the light is gone.
Viridion's spoon hovered over the broth, ripples still spiraling outward from a center that refused to hold still. He felt as though the village was breathing, and the fog was its exhale.
Oriven noticed his gaze. "Don't watch the sky too long," he said, breaking a piece of bread. "It watches back."
Viridion smirked faintly. "That's a metaphor, right?"
Oriven didn't answer. He dipped the bread into the broth, and the ripples recoiled from it like animals avoiding a predator.
From somewhere outside, a bell rang — but not in the clean rhythm of warning or celebration. This was uneven, recursive. A three-note chime that repeated, but each time started in the middle of itself.
The innkeeper stiffened. No words, no panic. Just a subtle shift in the air, like the room had agreed on something unsaid.
Oriven's eyes narrowed. "They've started early this year."
Viridion set the spoon down. "Started what?"
Before Oriven could answer, the door creaked open and a gust of paradox-heavy wind swept through — cold in the bones, warm on the skin. A child no taller than the counter stepped inside, carrying a lantern that didn't give light so much as remember it. The glass panels flickered with images of the room itself, half a second behind.
"Oriven," the boy said. "It's on the stairs again."
The room fell silent. Even the fire in the hearth slowed its downward curl.
Oriven rose without haste, as though this was expected, inevitable. "Finish your food," he told Viridion. "If you follow me, don't touch the railings."
Viridion hesitated. "Why—"
"Because they'll try to keep you."
The stairs were carved into the rock wall at the far end of the inn, spiraling both upward and downward in ways that refused to decide which was which. Lanterns were hung at irregular intervals, their light bent sideways, casting shadows that pointed toward the center of the spiral rather than away from it.
Halfway up — or down — Viridion saw it.
A figure stood on the steps ahead, perfectly still. It was him. Same coat, same stance, same eyes — but older. Or younger. The age shifted when he blinked, as though time itself wasn't sure when this version belonged.
Oriven didn't break stride. As they passed, the other Viridion leaned slightly toward him, and in a voice that was barely sound, whispered:
"You took the wrong turn five steps ago."
And then it was gone.
The stairwell swallowed sound. Viridion could hear his own pulse, but not the scuff of his boots or the creak of stone beneath Oriven's weight.
They came to a landing that wasn't a landing — just a widening of the spiral where the wall held an inlaid disk of black glass. It reflected nothing. Not them, not the lantern-light, not even the darkness.
"This," Oriven said, kneeling beside it, "is where the step begins before it ends."
He pressed his palm to the glass. For a moment, nothing happened. Then the black surface thinned, becoming water without turning liquid, and through it, Viridion saw dozens of staircases stacked on top of one another, all occupied — by himself. Some hurried upward, others sat and wept, one lay bleeding, another laughed with teeth too sharp to be his own.
Viridion took a half-step back. "What is this place?"
"Not a place," Oriven murmured. "A question. The stairs don't lead anywhere. They only ask: Which you are you climbing toward?"
He moved his hand in a slow arc, tracing a sigil into the black glass. The reflections shivered, and one by one, the other Viridions turned away, until only his own unaltered reflection remained.
The water-solid disk dulled again. Oriven stood. "The village doesn't keep the stairs for itself. It keeps them… for someone else."
Viridion frowned. "Who?"
Oriven didn't answer immediately. Instead, he started descending.
As they walked, Viridion realized the lanterns were now flickering with images that weren't of the stairwell at all — forests of crystal, deserts with rivers of shadow, a bridge of bone spanning an ocean of books.
One frame held longer than the rest: a figure with copper eyes and a coat lined in ash-gray feathers, standing in a place where stars hung at arm's reach. They looked directly at him, though Viridion knew — knew — this was not possible.
The image vanished.
Viridion's voice was tight. "That person—"
"—will find you," Oriven said. "But not yet."
Back in the main room, the fog at the windows had thickened into a living wall. People were quietly shuttering doors, locking mechanisms that seemed more ceremonial than practical. The boy with the memory-lantern had vanished.
Oriven sat again, pouring himself a cup of the spiced broth. "You've now seen the first of the Engine's roots," he said. "It grows through minds, not worlds. Remember that when you start thinking you can map it."
Viridion sat across from him, his mind still echoing with the whisper from the other self on the stairs. You took the wrong turn five steps ago.
Somewhere beyond the fog, a sound like a vast page turning rippled through the air.