The mist rolled low across the valley, veiling the fractured earth like gauze over a wound not yet healed. It was too quiet—no birdsong, no wind. Only the silence of a world holding its breath, waiting.
Lynchie felt that breath in her lungs as she stood at the ridge overlooking the basin where the sealed Spiral rift still pulsed faintly beneath the rock. Each beat echoed in her ribs. It didn't feel like a wound closed. It felt like something watching.
She gripped the edge of her cloak tighter, the fabric damp from morning frost. Beside her, Zev watched the valley with the posture of someone who didn't trust silence. His arms were folded, one gauntlet off, fingers tapping lightly against the hilt of his curved blade—an unconscious rhythm. Defensive. Ready.
"They're not retreating," he murmured.
"No," she said. "They're gathering."
"Three horns. Three fronts. They know exactly where to press."
Lynchie's eyes narrowed. The Spiral had not gone quiet in her. It shifted constantly now—less like a tool, more like a tide, brushing the edges of her senses. It pulled at the marrow in her bones, whispered through the cracks in her thoughts. She could hear patterns now—winds that didn't blow, vibrations beneath her feet that no one else could feel.
"They're coming for me," she said. "They won't stop with this rift."
Zev turned to her. "Then we make them regret ever opening it."
He meant it like a promise, but Lynchie could see the hesitation behind his words. He was still afraid—of the Spiral, of her, of what she might become if they kept pushing her past the edge.
And still, he hadn't left her side.
She stepped back from the ridge. "The warding lines will need to be doubled along the southern slope. They'll try to push in through the weak points."
"We've already sent runners to the wardmasters," Zev said. "But if the Mirror-Spoken move before dusk, the outer ring won't hold."
"I'll reinforce it," she said, and the Spiral sparked in her veins in answer. It liked being used. That worried her more than she admitted.
A rustle of footsteps interrupted them. Vyen appeared from the mist, his long coat soaked, his braid undone and wild. His expression was grim, clutching a weathered scroll that glowed faintly at the seams.
"You'll want to see this," he said, handing it to Lynchie.
She unrolled the parchment—and the Spiral flared like a flare of lightning in her core. The scroll wasn't old. It was ancient. Older than the Wards. Older, perhaps, than the First Spiral itself. The ink was silver-threaded and shimmered as she read the glyphs aloud in a whisper.
A key born of fracture. A bridge bound in light. The first gate was never meant to close.
She looked up. "This is prophecy."
"No," Vyen said. "This is record. From the other side."
Zev's jaw tightened. "Drexen."
Lynchie swallowed hard. "It means the rift wasn't a crack. It was a door. A testing point. And now they know the door can open."
Vyen nodded. "And they know who holds the hinge."
A chill coiled around her spine. For the first time, she understood: she wasn't just a weapon.
She was the mechanism.
Below them, the horns began again—closer now, relentless. A black line moved through the mist at the far edge of the basin. Troops, maybe hundreds. Then, rising behind them, towering and slow, a shape she had only seen in fractured memories drawn from the Spiral itself.
A construct. Wrought from memory and ruin. A Spiral-born titan.
"Oh, gods," Zev muttered. "They brought it here."
"They've started the war," Vyen said.
Lynchie didn't answer. She was already reaching inward, drawing Spiral threads through the earth, letting the power hum beneath her skin.
But this time, she didn't fight the pull.
She shaped it.
Twisted it.
And as she lifted her hands, the ground shivered, and the ancient Wards—long dormant—flared to life like stars reborn across the valley.
The war had begun.
And she would meet it not as a weapon.
But as the Spiral's will.