Speaker 1: I was hired to assess the site's viability for future development,
your run of the mill routine topographical and environmental survey.
The land parcel in question was flagged decades ago as
a former settlement, some mining camp or agricultural commune that
folded before the First World War. There were no confirmed
structures left standing, just a few ghosted shapes on topographic
overlays and a vague mention in a handwritten railroad manifest.
The assumption was that nature had reclaimed it. The client
was a state expansion bureau that needed confirmation before approving
the site for rezoning. Three days on foot, two days
to log data out, easy money. I reached the ridge
near sunset. From that vantage, I expected overgrowth, ruin, maybe
a few stack stones swallowed by decades of erosion. Instead,
I found a town sat nestled at the base of
the valley like it had never been lost. Dozens of rooftops,
chimneys trailing thin plumes of smoke, worn wooden porches, two
story homes with split beam shutters and latiased windows. Not
a single modern fixture in sight. No telephone poles, no asphalt,
no signage beyond a small warped placard nailed to a
leaning post at the valley mouth burned into the wood
marrows end and beneath it carved faintly, almost like a
whisper for those returning. I started down the slope with
careful steps, crunching through brush, expecting someone, anyone, to react
to my approach. It was active, yet somehow still. Clothes
fluttered gently on drying lines. Her figure walked through the
garden rows behind one home, dragging a hoe. In even intervals,
smoke called upward from chimneys. I heard a creak as
a door swung open somewhere deeper in, but no engines,
no dogs barking or kids yelling. A woman passed me
on the main road, carrying a basket of roots bundled
in cloth. She wore a bonnet, a thick skirt, and
a weathered shawl. Her shoes were unlaced and smeared with
something dark. She moved around me like I'd always been there,
refusing to acknowledge me, like old furniture. Some part of me,
the part that spent too many nights alone in nowhere towns,
just wanted answers. This place wasn't abandoned. Which meant someone
was maintaining it off grid. I figured i'd knock on
a few dogs in the morning. Maybe someone would have
a generator tucked behind the chapel or offer up a
real explanation. A man greeted me. He was standing on
the porch with his hands folded in front of him,
face lean but gentle, expression unreadable. You will want a
room for the night, he said. I nodded. He handed
me hebrass key without requiring payment. You will want the
room with a basin, he said, as I stepped past
him and onto the porch. The inn was larger than
it looked from the road, two full floors with a
long central corridor that swallowed sound. The floorboards were clean,
but worn thin in the center, ground down from decades
of use. There were no rugs or decorations. The walls
were lined with frames. At first I thought there were mirrors,
but they were too dark for that. Instead there were
panes of glass clouded with soot edges, chipped surfaces dulled
by age, empty frames, no names or plaques. Whatever had
once been hung there had been removed, yet the nails
remained in place. The man didn't comment as I looked
He simply turned and walked, lantern in hand, expecting me
to follow, to the end of the hall. Inside my
room was bare. There was a narrow bed with tightly
tugged sheets, a small writing desk bolted to the floor,
a single oil lantern hanging from a hook at the
ceiling and at the foot of the bed, centered precisely
between the posts, a wide stone basin. The water inside
was dark, thickened like rain water. Left standing too long,
it caught the lantern light poory, swallowing most of it.
I assumed it was for washing old plumbing. I didn't
touch it. I set my pack down and finally did
what I should have done earlier. Tried to log my arrival,
but there was no signal. I tried punching in date
of regardless, coordinates, elevation, estimate, structural count. The screen lagged,
then froze. I wiped it clean, tried again, same result.
I put it away, hoping to try when signal returned. Outside,
the footsteps had stopped, no wind through the trees. The
quiet felt held in place, like breath waiting to be released.
Some time later, I don't know how long, I heard
a sound from the foot of the bed, a slow,
wet slosh. It wasn't loud or sudden, just the sound
of something settling into a new shape. I sat up.
The basin was still. The surface of the water hadn't changed.
I leaned closer, lantern in hand. The water reflected the
ceiling beams clearly enough, but the reflection showed more water
than there was filled higher nearer the rim, I tilted
my head. The level didn't change. I stepped back. Rest
didn't come easily. I wasn't necessarily overwhelmed. There was nothing
overtly strange that would put me on edge. However, all
the little things set off a survival instinct in the
back of my head, but eventually I managed to get
some sleep. At first light, I made a direct path
toward the ridge, focused on getting out. I used the
same trail I'd taken into the valley, mapped by memory
and footpath, but in the daylight things looked different. The
road curved past the inn and split near a grove
of low gnarll trees. I remembered that clearly for this time.
The trail forked in a new direction, a fresh cut path,
smooth and trodden. Still, I climbed my gut didn't settle.
After twenty minutes of steady ascent, I reached the edge
of a clearing i'd never seen, and beyond it the
same signage i'd passed the day before Marrow's end. For
those returning, the carving was identical, same angle, same split
in the lower post. My boots made the same noise
on the same gravel i'd looped, except I hadn't turned once. Now,
entering with the sun up, I could see the town
had changed in my absence. The townspeople moved in synchronized cycles.
I passed the root patch again and saw the same
woman from yesterday cutting the same crop in the same arc.
A knife never paused. I saw a man hanging herbs
from twine near a crooked post, and when I passed
by him half an hour later, he was still hanging them,
same motion, same plants, only the twine had lengthened. No
one acknowledged me, not even in the passive, dismissive way
they had before. They moved as if they were enacting
a play. I tried knocking on doors, but most were locked.
Inside the view I could open, there was nothing but
unused furniture arranged identically in each house. Then I saw
the children, three of them, stood in the narrow alley
behind the butcher's shop, watching a beetle drag itself across
the dirt coldly. They watched me for a few seconds
in the corner of their eyes. They just didn't look
like I wasn't an object worth registering. Then I saw
the youngest looking one blink once slowly, and the beetles
stopped moving. In an overgrown field, a woman bent over
a patch of gray root like vegetables, hacking at them
with a curved blade. Nearby, a man dragged a whetstone
along the edge of a billhook, his stroke steady and mechanical.
A pair of goats are being led across the road
by a child with a switch in one hand, not
using it, just holding it upright like a flag. At
the town square, I confronted an older man carrying an
unlit lantern. Where's the road out, I asked. He tilted
his head. We prepare, he said, prepare for what? He
looked at me with unfocused, glazed eyes. Some, he said slowly,
for longer than others. He sounded delirious. Nothing he was
saying made sense. Then he walked past me and continued
walking even after the road ended. That was when I
saw the well. It sat in a square like an altar.
A long rope hung slack down the shaft, still coiled
with use. Around the lip of the stone were carved words,
worn but legible. All offerings must bear intent. The o
in offerings was cracked through, as if something had been
wedged into it. I leaned in to look closer. Inside
the well, not far. I saw fabric, a sleeve, a shoulder,
a body half immersed and bent wrong, like it had
been folded inward and offered to the shaft. Their skin
was pale and waxy, and their limbs pulled long and jointless,
resembling the townspeople. I backed away and stumbled toward the church.
It was open. Inside was quiet, dustless, pews and unlit
lanterns lined the space, and the air smelled like stone
and heat. I moved toward the altar. The pulpit was
set to the side. The wall behind it was plain,
but on the floor I found a thin length of
twine tied in a circle around it. The dust that
had been moved with purpose, lines jutted out in concentric angles.
I couldn't figure it out. I stared trying to apply meaning,
but it just seemed too random. But when I tried
to accept it was nothing, it pulled my mind in
two directions at once, And then my mind tried to
pull away, dismiss it as I saw it just as shape.
Yet I couldn't let it go until I forced my
legs to take me back to the inn. I didn't
sleep after what I saw. With no method to escape,
I paced the room until the lantern burned out, then
sat in the dark with the curtains drawn, listening to
the faint movement of feet across floorboards that weren't mine,
A murmur behind the wall, a quiet shift of the
water in the basin, like breath trying to time itself
with mine. At first light, I tried again to leave,
Rather than head toward the trail I'd failed to follow
the day before, I skirted the outer buildings, weaving behind
the backs of houses and storage sheds, staying just far
enough from the town center that I wouldn't be seen
or worse noticed. It was colder back there. The houses
thinned into open ground behind the church, where the grass
grew in tight circles, pale as bone. It wasn't the
path had come in on, but it pointed toward the
tree line, and that was enough. Near the slope's edge,
I found a rusted iron gate wedge between two stone posts.
The metal had slumped with age, its joints warped from
old pressure. One side leaned open, just enough space to
squeeze through. I stepped forward, pushing the gate wider with
my palm. The metal gave and tore my hand open
a long, appealing weld. The pain was sharp, instant. I
swore and stumbled back, cradling my hand as blood ran
freely across my skin, too freely. The cot was shallow,
but the floe was steady, hot, unnervingly fast. I pressed
my hand to my jacket to slow it, but the
blood had already begun to trail across the soil, moving strangely.
Branching veins of red crept through the dirt, crawling outward
in thin, impossibly symmetrical lines. The earth darkened where it passed,
capillary thin rivulets spidering out in every direction. My mind
went back toward I I saw in the church. I
backed away, chest tight, heart thudding hard enough I could
feel it in my ears. The blood didn't stop. It
was like it was forming a pattern. I don't remember
getting back to the inn, having moved with urgency to
tend to my wound in solitude. I just remember the
act of slamming the door behind me, breathing through clenched teeth,
and crouching at the foot of the bed to unwrap
my hand and bandage it tight with a clean shirt sleeve.
By the time night came, I was shaking. It felt
as if my balance was slightly off center. My hand
had stopped throbbing, but I didn't shake the dressing. I
didn't want to see how clean it was. The lantern
was off. Some time after midnight. I woke to the
sound of someone breathing beneath the bear. Each breath long,
fluid wet, each exhil stretching longer than the last. I froze.
The basin at the foot of the bed was half
filled again. I hadn't touched it since arriving. The surface
of the water was in motion, as if it was climbing.
Thin tingrials of liquid crawled upward against the stone, sliding
up the rim and curling shapes, trying to crest over.
I stood too fast. The floor creaked under my heel.
The breathing stopped, but I continued running. I reached the door.
The handle was warm, like it was alive. It resisted
slightly when I turned it, like skin recoiling from touch.
Then gently it pulsed in a steady throb. I took
my hand back and stepped away. The room smelled of
copper and something sweet and raw, like over ripe fruit
or sick animal's den. I sat down on the bed
and waited for the sun, too scared to look away,
and equally as terrified to go out at night, frozen
in place by an impossible decision. By morning, my palm
had healed without trace, smooth and uniform, like it had
never been opened at all. But on the inside of
my forearm, faint but visible under the skin, a new
mark had surfaced, A sigil, pale and curling like something
once soft and wet, had wrapped around the bone and
decided to stay. A second attempt to leave had failed
before it started. By midday, I tried every exit I
could map, the sloping trail behind the chapel, the ridge
line behind the butcher's lot, the old boundary fence beside
the orchard. Each time, I followed the route as far
as I dared. Each time I ended back in the
same place, the signpost leaning just slightly to the left,
the words Mirror's end burned into it. The town wasn't looping.
I checked every landmark, every tree. Things changed subtly between attempts.
A path would straighten, a stone would be gone, but
the result was the same. There was no path out.
What's worse is that each attempt was never stopped. The
townsfolk just went about their business. Either two programmed into
their routines, were fully confident I'd never escape. By late afternoon,
the center containment had shifted into something tighter. I didn't
want to admit it yet, but the truth had crept
in around the edges. This place wasn't keeping me. It
felt like it was absorbing me, peace by peace, thought
by thought. So instead of trying to make discoveries outwardly,
I went to thoroughly investigate the town. I decided to
try the cellars behind the inn, behind the kitchen, past
the warped wooden door, I found a cramped hallway stacked
with dry sacks of root vegetables, and bundles of brittle herbs.
The air was thick with dust and something else, a
mineral sweetness like rain over rust. Beneath the sacks, a
hatch made of heavy wood and iron bracket swollen shut.
I tried to pry open with a boot and an
old tool I found nearby. The hinges groaned, then gave
a burst of heat, rolled out, warm, damp, unfamiliar. Beneath
the stairs carved into a surface that didn't look like
stone or timber. The texture was mat and slightly translucent, reddish,
with veins of darker pigment running through it in looping spirals.
I couldn't tell if it had been poured, grown, or
something between. From below, I sought answers. I hesitated, then
started down. The walls of the tunnel were slightly flexible
with a reddish tint. It was veined and warm, a
hybrid of resin and cartilage or some natural polymer grown
into architecture material I'd never seen or heard about. Every
few meters, the surface texture changed. In one place it
was smooth like bone, In another it ridged like a
fingerprints stretched across twenty feet. At certain angles I could
see embedded spirals in the walls like gloops of clotting
fluid hardened mid paw. The further I went, the more
the air changed. Soon it was heavy with damp and
a taste of iron. Underneath it, there was something sweeter.
It reminded me of my sister's first pregnancy, the smell
of vitamins, sweat and milk soaked laundry. At the bottom,
the corridor leveled into a low chamber, its walls sloping
inward like a womb mid contraction. In the center of
the room was a waist high pillar shaped like a spool,
fused to the floor. The surface around the pillar rippled.
I stepped back, and a thin channel in the wall
slid open behind me, like a vertical mouth opening behind skin.
Sideways inside, I saw the start of a staircase, spiraling
downward deeper. It felt like this place was offering my answers,
Yet my gut tightened in warning. I did not go further.
Whatever that opening was, it had waited for my presence.
Only when I approached did it open. It felt too welcoming.
I turned and climbed back out. By the time I
reached the hatch, the air above had cooled back in
the hallway, the inn was still lantern still burned. The
desk was manned the same man, same posture, his eyes
seemingly focused on something that wasn't there. When I passed
back in my room, I tossed and turned. I couldn't
sleep that night. I heard the basin fill again, slower
this time. The day after felt charged, and by nightfall
something had changed in the rhythm of Mirror's end. The
town had always felt orchestrated, the repetitive tasks, the choreographs, silences,
but now the pattern was breaking or accelerating. The townsfolk
no longer moved with the sluggish patience of sleep walkers.
They twitched when they moved, Subtle gestures across bodies while
they did their routine. A hand wiping a brow here,
echoed by another sharpening a blade there, intermingled with an
animalistic jitter. Something hiding behind the passivism, waiting to be
opened up there. Slackened faces softened into a quiet tension,
as if something inside them was pushing forward, pressuring the
surface of their skin. Eyes bulged slightly, but not with fear,
with purpose. It didn't feel like watching a crowd. It
felt like standing inside one large thing that had just
started to breathe. I backed away from the town square
and tried the church first, the only place away from
the people, but the door was locked. I crossed to
the inn. The lights were on and the windows glowed amber,
but the latch didn't budge. When I twisted it from inside.
I heard the soft click of metal, a lock being
turned by hand, then quiet, I stepped back into the
center of the square. The sky was visible now between rooftops,
and I realized something else had shifted. The stars had changed,
their positions were wrong. Smeared across the sky like spilled
oil dragged by an invisible brush. Some pulsed faintly in
spiral formations. I didn't recognize patterns that made no sense,
and the moon glowed red and hung too low, sitting
just above the valley rim as if drawn inward. I
turned toward the orchard path, not a leave. I already
knew that was impossible, but I needed distance, any distance
from the town square, from the coordination, from the idea
that I might end up like them. As I walked,
I passed the woman hanging rags along a line. Strangely,
her head rotated toward me, shifting the way a plant
might reord towards sunlight. Her body stayed completely still. Her
eyes didn't blink, they simply opened wider. Further down, two
men bent over the same crate, lifting it in perfect synchronization.
Breath held, I quickened my pace. I didn't make it far.
Half way to the orchard fence, I heard something wet
collapse behind me. I turned and saw the strange children
from the alley. They stood barefoot in the grass, arms
limbed at their sides, head tilted eerily left. I watched
in frozen horror as they stepped backward out of themselves,
shading skin like a costume, and fell to the ground
with a soft sound, like fabric soaked in broth. What
rose from inside was taller and moved clumsily, like it
wasn't used to its long limbs. Its face felt unfinished.
There was only a shallow curve of smooth red flesh
where the nose and eyes should have been. The raw
red started to harden. It looked like oxidization, but far
too fast, and soon its gangly frame had weight, a thinner,
more emaciated figure of another town'sperson, born or revealing its
true form. As one of the others, it turned its
attention to the well in the square. I tove behind
an old supply cart behind the fence with a broken wheel.
From there, I could see the well and the people
around it clearly. The bodies formed a ring around it.
A wet sound filled the air, dripping upward. Then something
hit the top of the cart with a heavy, glancing slap,
frightening me. I shifted just enough to see past the wheel.
Above me, hovering silently was the stone basin from my room,
suspended in the air, slowly rotating its contents. That reddish,
half coagulated water was draining upward, drawn to an unseen
source above the rooftops. The basin itself was perfectly level,
floating with intent, and below it, the townsfolk began to
hum in harmony as they each began to slowly crawl
into the well. Two broke off from the pack and
turned toward me. My eyes widened as I tried to
crawl out, but I felt drained of everything. I was
enabled to move a finger. My vision darkened as they approached,
and blacked out completely as I saw them reach out
to my hiding spot. I came to in my room
at the inn. The lantern of the desk burned low,
flickering against the ceiling, like it was struggling to stay lit.
I sat up slowly, disoriented by the absence of memory.
I couldn't remember anything after hiding beneath the cart. The
sheets beneath me were dry, but my clothes clung to
my skin, damp heavy. I touched my sleeve and brought
my fingers to my nose. The same bit of scent
from the basin, old copper salt, and something sweeter underneath,
like boiled milk left too long in the sun. I
rolled my sleeve back. The sichel had changed. Where it
had been a rough spiral, inked like a birthmark, it
had now spread its lines thinner, more intricate, curling like
veins across the inside of my arm and wrapping beneath
the bicep. The flesher covered was pink, flushed, and worn
to the touch, not inflamed or wounded. It didn't hurt,
if anything, It pulsed with a rhythm. I recognized it
had sinked to my heart beat. The hallway outside was quiet,
but the air carried a different weight. The building itself
had changed. The walls. Those still straight seemed to lean
closer perceptibly, as if pressure had built up behind the plaster.
The wood along the trim had darkened with moisture, and
the wallpaper at the corners was curling away, exposing seams beneath.
There was no one at the front desk the time.
I moved, slowly, listening for sound, the creak of footsteps,
a whisper, a breath, But the only thing I could
hear was the faint creaking of the building itself. Until now,
I'd spend every waking moment in mirror's end trying to
leave it, or, failing that, trying to understand it. But
the more I moved, the more it moved with me.
The more I've resisted, the less it needed to react.
This town or whatever had rooted itself beneath it was methodical, patient.
It didn't need obedience or panic. It only needed participation,
and I had been participating since the moment I took
the key. I thought about the basin, the way it
floated above the square, how it turned slowly in place,
perfectly level, dripping upward, like it was feeding something that
existed outside of gravity or time. It hadn't been symbolic.
It had been functional, maybe a censor, maybe a sacrament,
or maybe something simpler, a part of the machine that
was building me into whatever came next. If the process
couldn't be escaped, maybe it could be disrupted. Maybe there
was still something in this system that would break if
I pulled too hard on the wrong place. Either way,
it was my only option because all the exits to
the inn were locked and sealed. They didn't even budge
when pushed, which left one place I could go. The hatch.
The rusted hand or moved more easily this time, as
if it were welcoming me, and it no longer smelled
like rot, just damp and meaty. As I ascended, I
immediately noticed the change. Before the tunnel had resembled a
resin mold, something grown but still structured. Now it had softened,
like the material was still forming itself. The walls were thicker, rounder,
and pulsed ever so slightly under the surface, as if
liquid moved within. The air glowed faintly red, as if
filtered through capillaries. The further I moved, the warmer it got.
The wall gave slightly beneath my fingers, like bushing into
a pregnant stomach. Something twitched on the other side of
the membrane. I looked closer. Behind the translucent flesh, I
saw shape suspended and fluid, a spine without ribs, a
mouth limbs. The smell began to shift, iron, milk, plastic skin.
It reminded me of neonatal wards, of old berthing rooms,
of hospital cribs. In the dark. A tunnel widen ahead
of me. I stepped into a chamber and sat directly
beneath the town center, round and evenly proportioned, like the
cavity beneath a joint. The air was warmer here, heavier,
and carried a low pressure that pressed against my ears
and made my footstep sound muffled. Seven archways ring the chamber,
spaced with mathematical care. Each glowed faintly from within the light,
distinct in tone and temperature. One radiated a soft, arterial red,
another carried a sickly gold like old pile under lamp light.
Others glimmered in other worldly hues, their color shifting when
I tried to focus on them. Directly. At the center
stood a low pedestal gown from the same resinous substance
as the tunnel. Its surface was smooth in some places
and ridged in others, as though it had hardened round
objects placed there repeatedly over time. Resting in shallow impressions.
Along its top were several basins. They were identical to
the one that had been in my room. Some were
filled nearly to the brim with thick, dark fluid that
moved slowly, resisting gravity in subtle ways. Others had collapsed inwards,
their rims sagging split as if they had been discarded
after use. One hovered just above its recess, turning slowly
thin threads of liquid lifting upward from its surface and
vanishing into the air above. Behind the pedestal, the black
wall curved upward into a wide spiral, rendered in hard
blackened resin. The shapes were anatomical but abstracted, and the
spiral's beginning was a human form, proportion normally upright and intact.
Further along the forms stretched limbs lengthening beyond balance, joints
reorented for reach rather than stability. Past that the figure opened,
the torso hollowed into la tisework. Organs reduced the supporting
structures At the outermost curve, the form no longer resembled
a body at all, if folded inward, forming a looped shape,
sealed and continuous like an umbilical coil, with no external
lankor Each face ran a band of minute engraving, hundreds
of names, each carved with care, aligned in a symmetrical way.
My name was at the very bottom, like I was
the final step, but I was not willing to let
that happen. I stepped forward and took hold of the basin,
marked with the same fine cracking pattern as the one
I'd been given. The sigil at its base mirrored the
one spreading beneath my skin. It felt warm in my hands,
neither fragile nor heavy, balanced, and away the suggested it
had been made to be carried. I lifted it and
brought it down against the pedestal. The basin didn't break.
Its form softened and folded inward, collapsing in on itself
like wax, loose incohesion, the fluid inside lifting briefly before
dispersing into the resin beneath. The pedestal absorbed it without resistance,
the impression filling in smoothly as that the basin had
never been there at all. The chamber reacted immediately. The
tunnel behind me sealed shot with a thick muscular contraction
that reverberated through the floor. Heat searched through the room,
sharp and dry, carrying the scent of scorched calcium and
chemical antiseptic. The light within the archways flared, intensifying in
color and brightness, and I felt as subtle shift and
pressure as something reoriented around me. From one of the arches,
A figure stepped forward. It was the man from the inn.
He wore the same black garments, though they clung wetly
to his frien now darkened by fluid that seeped steadily
from his joints, making it look more like a priest's gown.
His posture had changed. The alignment of his spine was
too fluid, each movement rolling smoothly into the next, as
though his bones had learned a different way to cooperate.
He stopped a few steps from the pedestal and raised
his arm. The sigil along his forearm had fully bloomed,
expanded into a complex network of curves and channels, the
pulse visibly beneath the skin. It was complete in a
way mine was not. Its symmetry precise, its rhythm steady.
When he opened his mouth, no words came. Instead, a
second face pressed forward from within his throat. Small and undeveloped,
I sealed beneath thin folds of skin. It watched without expression,
its presence explanatory rather than threatening, like this was simply
the next demonstration in a process already under way. I
stepped back instinctively, and my shoulder brushed the spiral wall
behind me. The moment my arm brushed the spiral wall,
I felt the contact register like a pressure plate, engaging
deep within the structure the citul and my arm flared,
not in pain, in clarity, and a single word came
to mind, prophecy. At first I thought I was still
in the chamber, but the air was too still. The
light had shifted. There was no tension any more. Every basin,
including the one I had tried to destroy, now floated
above the pedestal, hovering inches above their depressions. Their surfaces
were calm, their contents full, held in suspension, like they
knew the order of things and were waiting for their
turn around the chambers that the people of Marror's end,
the innkeeper, the cleric, even the beings, the children became
before them a basin. Each bore a sigil fully bloomed
across their flesh, some on their forearms, others on their backs, throats,
even their cheeks. They raised their hands or their shoulders
or the backs of their necks, aligning the siedels over
the bowls, and then they poured whatever it was. It
came out slow, thick, with motion, lightless, and impossibly dense.
How identity might behave if it could be disi diilled,
a slowing off of selfhood in liquid form. One by one,
the townsfolk offered their essence into the air. The strands
hovered weightless, then bent upward, all of them into a
single hollow space above the pedestal. Something was coming through.
It didn't descend, It condensed. At first it looked like
vapor catching the threat of fluid mid air, But then
structure took hold, a spine without vertebrae, mouths folding over
the mouths, arms that ended in gestures, not hands. Wherever
it looked, the air rotated into spirals, like water circling
the drain above a sinkhole. Its eyes were sigels, opening
and closing like mouths tasting the room. It sang without breath,
notes folding backwards, inverted hymns. But there was an underlying sound,
the only thing that had anything I could recognize from
this known world. It sounded vaguely like a baby crying,
echoed and distant, the sounds of new beginnings. Images played
across it, like projections through wet silk, failed shapes, partial transformations,
but undoubtedly rebirth. It wasn't creating followers, it was remaking
them in its twisted image, an imperfect ideal sold to salvation.
The last basin remained untouched mine. I thought back to
the names Mine filled out in the bottom corner, making
a perfect symmetrical list. The final tally counted up from
year years of dedication, the final peace of the puzzle.
The vision pulled inward, tightened the God. If that was
what it was paused in expectation, I saw myself across
the chamber, stepping forward, my own schigul fully opened, bleeding
that same substance into the air. The basin accepted it.
The cycle completed, and just as the God opened one
final eye, not like the others, something clearer, something meant
to see. The vision broke. The spiral wall fell away
from my shoulder. The chamber snapped back into focus. The
air had changed. They were already moving me toward my ball.
I was being carried hands beneath my arms, more at
my legs, lifting with a kind of reverence. The basin
sat ahead of me, floating where I had seen it
in the vision. Thin strands of fluid veined outward from
its sides, connecting to the central hollow above the pedestal,
like umbilicals. The god hadn't reformed yet, but something pressed
against the air, await a presence, waiting to condense again.
My forearm burned, the sigel had begun to open. They
lowered me toward the basin. The others were already in place,
the clerk, the woman with the roots, the children, their
heads bowed, their arms slack. Each stood beside a filled ball,
the sigels still weeping faint trails of essence into the air.
The moment my skin touched the rim, the basin flared.
My sigel stung open like a blister under pressure, the
heat radiating inward. I felt something shift inside me, detail
being pulled forward. My bearers left join their own basins,
threads being pulled from them as they neared until full
strands of their being were slowly allowed to be drained.
I thought I was locked in as they had been,
But in a final push of defiance, I pulled away.
The drawer slowed but didn't stop. Threads had already left
me thin and shimmering. I saw my arm against my chest,
staggering back from the pedestal. Then I turned and struck
the pedestal itself, the root for connection. The sound cracked
across the chamber, like reality buckling above. The forming guard
twisted did in place, its limbs unspooling too far, the spirals,
and its eyes collapsing inward. It didn't scream, It folded,
its mouthless shape, giving off a sound like pressure, violently
equalizing a howl of absence. In completeness, the resin walls split,
venting heat and chemical smelling steam. Basin shattered, one by one,
their contents lifting skyward before reversing mid air, slamming down
in sprays that hid the floor, the walls, the townsfolk.
They convulsed, every single one, backs, arching joints, locking muscles,
seizing beneath skin that blistered from within. But they didn't scream.
Already too drained of whatever was leaving them to move
of their own volition. Their siguals flared with light before
dimming to ash. Some dropped to their knees, Others collapsed backward,
arms open and quite release as their bodies twitched and
clenched over and over until motion drained from them entirely.
They didn't die, but there was nothing left to move them.
Whatever they had given, they had truly given. There was
no strength left to hold themselves up. The archways flared
one last time and sealed one by one behind sharp
pulses of red light. They were one offering too short.
Whatever they were trying had failed by a small fraction minute,
but enough. The guard collapsed inward, its body liquefying mid
air into a film of suspended sheen, hovering above the
pedestal like the top layer of still blood. The air
like scorched milk and iron, not rot failed birth. I
ran The tunnel walls still flexed, and the scent of
the thing's retreat clung to everything. But no one followed,
No one stopped me, no one even looked. They couldn't.
They had spent themselves in full, and the system no
longer had their final peace it had broken. I came
through the same slope I descended days ago, though the
incline felt steeper now, the soil brittle and warm beneath
my hands, my lungs burned. The air itself had changed,
thick with a chemical tang that had haunted the tunnels below.
The thing that had risen and failed to root something
and tried to live. Mirror's end was collapsing. The town's
corr had buckled inward. Roofs lay folded over themselves. Walls
had split from withdrawal, as if a structure that had
never been meant to hold shape was finally letting go.
Streets I had walked were now cracked wide open, leading
slow streams of red fluid that pulsed and congealed like
clotting arteries. Veins thick, root like cords of glistening tissue
ran along beams and foundation stones, twisting around door frames,
threading through shutters and window panes. They wrapped the town
square like vines in full bloom, smothering the old stone
work beneath a living let tease of wet pressure near
the clapsed in the basin I had once watched from
bed now lay shattered in the dirt. It hissed faintly,
cooling from a long burn. A soft plume of vapor
called up and was lost in the morning stillness, followed
by the faint sound of wet settling. At the edge
of the valley, I found the forest untouched. The trees
still swayed with early light filtering through their branches. Leaves
shifted with calm, natural rhythm. The trail of dew called
the sun. Everything beyond the town looked exactly as it
had when I first arrived. The air didn't walk around it,
The ground didn't pull me back. Whatever had bound me
to Marrow's End, whatever looped the land into a closed circuit,
had been broken. I saw the same tree line, the
same rocky outcrop where I had parked, but they no
longer held that dreamlike haze. They were just trees, just stone.
I started walking. As I reached the place where the
road once reject me, where I turned back again and again.
I stepped forward. My foot touched gravel, solid, cold and undistorted,
and a sharp pain irrupted up my arm. I staggered,
clutching my forearm. Breath caught. When I pulled back my
sleeve The sigual was gone, but the skin beneath was
red and raw, the skin not carved away, but seared
to the edge of pealing. The lines of it still
echoed faintly in the damaged tissue, but they no longer pulsed,
no longer claimed me. Pain started to root, but relief
came with it, as it felt natural, a real wound,
not one in still through something I couldn't comprehend. I
stood there a moment longer, letting the air reach me fully.
Then I ran half way down the switchback. I stopped
to breathe and turn back. From this vantage, I could
see the whole valley. The red tendrils were still shifting,
still rippling across the earth. They moved without pattern, now unraveling, struggling,
and then without warning, the town flattened. The collapse was inexplosive.
It was a surrender, the way lungs deflate after breath.
As left, the veins dissolved into vapor. Even the wooden
sign mirror's end for those returning, fell into itself. All
of it vanished in its place, clean dart, a shallow
depression with something had almost happened when something had tried
to be borne. The world looked untouched, but I knew better.
A few days past, I walked until signal returned. The
organization responded quickly, clearly relieved. They said they nearly sent
someone to check, having understood that remoteness had probably caused
the delay. To them, it was no harm done. I
had just been delayed due to natural causes or work causes.
I filed the report recommendation, do not pursue development rational
unstable terrain, deep sink or risk, evidence of active mineral
reaching and soil instability, poor investment, high liability. It was clean,
technical and irrefutable. It wasn't a lie, of course, but
enough of the truth remained in the language to keep
others away, leaving out the parts that would get me investigated.
They accepted it without question. I should have felt victorious. Instead,
I sat in my apartment days later, staring at the
blank page of a confession, wanting some way to document
what I'd seen while it was still fresh, wondering how
to categorize what I'd seen. The libation, the name's eedged
in sequence the thing that had formed from them. It
hadn't demanded worship or sacrifice. It had simply wanted to happen.
Each person, each schedule, each basin a step in a process,
the refined shape and memory into something more. A filtration
of what made us human ascended into Eldritch's rebirth. I
remember the diagram, the spiral of becoming, the hollowing, the fold,
the return to origin through replication. What was its end goal? Transcendence,
a new age on Earth, some second genesis we weren't
opposed to witness, or maybe a return to something older
than unknown history. I don't know, and I don't think
I ever will, and that scares me