Ash Settles on the Spiral
Sky blinked against the weak morning light filtering through the cracked beams overhead. Dust danced in the rays like slow static, drifting around the ration box Nyx had left him.
The half-loaf was still warm when he bit into it last night. The water? Clean enough to taste like memory. And the blade…
Sky turned his head to the side.
There it was. Leaning beside the cot where his fingers could brush the hilt. Resonance-forged, obsidian-polished, with that signature void-etched ribbon tied at the grip. Her color. Her field. Her claim.
He reached over and dragged it closer, resting it across his lap. Then he closed his eyes again, arms behind his head, letting the silence seep back in.
Then he remembered it.
The kiss.
Not just the kiss—the kiss.
His brain lit up like it had touched a live wire. His face flushed instantly, heat rushing up his neck like pressure backlash. He sat up—then immediately dropped back into the cot, groaning into his sleeve.
"Gods above, what was that—?!" he wheezed.
No answer. Just the echo of her voice in his mind: "Is a wife not allowed to kiss her husband?"
Sky made a strangled noise—half protest, half embarrassment—and grabbed the edge of the blanket like it might smother the memory. It didn't. It only made it worse. Her hand on his chest. Her breath against his ear. Her lips—
"Ghhhk—!!" He curled inward like a dying star, rolling across the cot with a high-pitched groan that no self-respecting Spiral should ever make.
He kicked one leg, flopped to the other side, then gave up entirely—face buried in the crook of his elbow, a pathetic little giggle bubbling out.
A real, dumbass, barely-holding-it-together giggle.
"I'm so screwed," he mumbled into the sheets.
The Core inside him pulsed once, as if confused.
Sky sighed. "Shut up. You liked it too."
He lay there for a while, arms over his face, slowly breathing through the heat behind his ears. Eventually, his heartbeat slowed, his Core settled, and the gravity in the room folded quiet again.
But the smile?
That stayed.
Lines in the Dust
The heat still lingered in his cheeks when Sky finally pulled himself out of the shelter.
The cot protested with a squeak as he sat up, muttering under his breath. "Spiral, my ass." He straightened his coat, smoothed down the worst of the bed hair, and stepped into the morning light with all the dignity of a man trying to pretend he hadn't just rolled around squealing into his blanket like a schoolboy.
Ash crunched underfoot—fine, pale, and layered thick across the collapsed alley leading from his shelter. Wind carried it in lazy sweeps, ghosting over the rooftops like memory that refused to settle. The sky was overcast again—colorless, smeared in industrial haze, with distant zones bleeding faint color into the air.
Sky moved with careful steps. Not out of fear—just respect. He wasn't alone out here, not ever.
As he passed a rusted sheet of corrugated steel bolted to the skeletal remains of a food stand, he paused. Someone had carved something into it.
A spiral.
Jagged, uneven, scratched into the metal with a piece of glass or maybe a bone shard. The grooves were shallow but deliberate, etched by someone who had seen the real mark—and tried to recreate it.
Sky stepped closer.
Below the symbol, someone had scrawled:
"Black Flame Boy."
"He bends light."
"He doesn't flicker—he pulls."
Sky didn't move for a long moment.
The wind stirred his coat around his boots. Pressure trembled in the air, subtle. Observant. The world watched, even now.
He lifted a hand and traced one edge of the spiral with a fingertip. The scratch caught his skin—a dull, harmless snag.
He didn't smile.
He didn't frown either.
He just stood there, quiet, the dark pulse of his Core steady beneath his ribs.
Then, without a word, he pulled a piece of charred wood from the rubble nearby and made one small adjustment—adding a second ring around the center.
Not to correct it.
To complete it.
Then he walked on.
Beast in the Fog
The city's outer rings were quiet, but not the good kind.
It was the quiet of too many bones scattered beneath too little dirt. The kind of silence that came after something learned how to hunt… and liked the taste.
Sky's boots whispered across cracked concrete as he passed a half-toppled radio tower. The air here tasted metallic—blood mixed with static. He didn't flinch. Didn't slow.
A sound to his left.
Low.
Wet.
A rattling growl, like a throat filled with needles.
Sky turned his head—just slightly. Just enough.
Two figures were struggling near a buckled pipeline. Scavengers. Young. Armed with nothing but desperation and a jagged bit of pipe. One of them screamed and swung, but the weapon bounced uselessly off a hunched, quivering form twice their size.
It stood like a dog. But not really. Spine too long. Legs too thick. Back lined with protruding spines that dripped something too dark to be water. It snarled, twitching, the gills at its neck pulsing open like a breathing wound.
A Rustmaw.
Scourge-Class. Low tier. Stupid. But fast—and cruel.
The scavengers backed up, slipping in ash, one of them bleeding from the forearm. The beast shifted its weight. Ready to pounce.
Sky didn't move.
Not yet.
He watched. Measured the rhythm of the thing's core—small, unstable. Flickering like a dying spark inside a stomach too empty to hold it.
The Rustmaw tensed.
Sky exhaled.
And the beast collapsed.
No roar. No flash of violence. Just a soundless pulse—a single downward spike of pressure that folded space beneath its ribs. The ground cracked, and its body slammed into it like the weight of the world had doubled in one breath.
The scavengers stared. Frozen. One dropped the pipe.
Sky kept walking.
"You're… Spiral," one of them whispered, voice cracked and wide-eyed.
He didn't answer.
Didn't look back.
The body of the beast twitched once—then stilled, ribs bent inward like it had been folded shut.
Sky's Core didn't flare.
It simply pulled.
Borders and Pressure
The checkpoint looked smaller than he remembered.
Two metal scaffolds welded into a crude archway, draped with old solar cloth and broken cables. A pair of motion sensors hung from a jury-rigged mast, flickering weak red every few seconds like dying eyes. The guards posted beneath didn't look alert—they looked bored. Tired. The kind of bored that gets stupid fast.
Sky approached slow.
Deliberate.
One boot in front of the other, coat trailing dust behind him. The iron-knuckle ring Neyra left him glinted once in the morning haze, barely catching the light.
One of the guards perked up, squinting. He elbowed the other.
"Hey," the first one called out. "Stop right there. You new?"
Sky didn't answer. He didn't break stride either.
Second guard stepped in, lifting a crude arc-baton. "We're talkin' to you, Core-user. Show ID or state intention. We don't care how strong you think you are—"
The ground cracked.
Just a hairline fracture beneath the second guard's boot—but it echoed up his leg like a warning. His posture changed immediately.
Sky finally stopped.
He tilted his head slightly to the left, eyes half-lidded, voice cold enough to pass for truth.
"You going to ask permission?"
The first guard hesitated. "What?"
Sky stepped forward once.
A ripple of pressure slid outward—barely visible, but undeniable. The ash hanging in the air stopped drifting. The wind died. Even the frayed tarp over the checkpoint stilled, like the atmosphere itself wasn't sure it had clearance to move.
Sky's Core didn't flare.
It curled.
It tightened.
The air got heavier.
The second guard's baton lowered on reflex. His fingers twitched—then went still.
"No," he muttered, throat dry. "No, sir. You're good."
Sky walked past them without a word.
Not fast. Not aggressive. Just with gravity under his skin and no interest in being delayed.
Behind him, the first guard swallowed hard and whispered to the other:
"That's him. The one who flattened a Mauler with a thought."
"Spiral?" the second whispered back.
The first just nodded.
Sky didn't hear them.
He didn't need to.
Closing Image
The city didn't welcome him.
It shifted around him.
Gravemarket's outer fringe was a sprawl of leaning towers and tension-wrapped walkways, stitched together with repurposed junk and survival instinct. Cracked steel hung like vines, and old Core-cannisters lit narrow paths with flickers of unstable green. The deeper Sky moved, the quieter everything became—not in volume, but response.
People stopped talking when he passed.
Some pretended not to notice him. Others stared too long, then flinched when he glanced their way.
Not fear.
Not yet.
But recognition.
At the far end of a scaffold ledge, tucked behind a meshwork of cables and tarpaulin, a figure leaned against a rusted pipe—dirty coat, shiv at the belt, and a makeshift comm-crystal clutched in one palm. Sky saw him but didn't change course.
The man didn't run.
Didn't move.
He just muttered into the crystal like someone reporting weather he didn't understand.
"Yeah. He's back."
"No, I'm looking at him."
"Spiral just crossed the border."
Sky didn't need to hear the words.
He felt the shift—like information traveling through unseen wires, leaping between rooftops and street corners, carried in whispers and broken breath.
By nightfall, it wouldn't be a question anymore.
The Spiral was in Gravemarket.
He passed an old mural half-covered in ash. A Resistance symbol, maybe. Or a faded rally slogan. Someone had scrawled over it in red coal dust—another spiral. A fresh one. Better than the first.
Still incomplete.
Sky didn't stop this time.
He just raised one hand as he walked and curled his fingers into a loose fist. The ash on the mural stirred faintly—like gravity had remembered how to dream. Then it settled again, in the shape of two coiled rings.
He didn't look back.
His boots clicked once more on the scaffold, then vanished into the deeper halls of the city—where silence waits to be shattered and power walks on two legs.