Epigraph: "In Eryndor, we carve our souls to pay our debts." —Unknown Keeper
The Clinic crouched in the Undervein's belly, a rusted box stitched together with desperation and duct tape. Its walls, pocked with the scratches of screaming patients, flickered under fluorescent tubes that buzzed like dying insects. Elias Vren stood over the operating table, his hands steady despite the whiskey souring his blood. The neural probe gleamed in his grip, a sliver of steel and circuitry sharp enough to slice a man's past clean from his skull. His client—a drifter with eyes like broken glass—lay strapped to the table, leather belts biting into skin stained with older blood.
"Hold still," Elias rasped, voice rough as the Undervein's gravel. The drifter moaned, staring at the ceiling where a holographic display spun his memories: neon-lit alleys, a woman's laugh, a knife glinting red. Elias didn't care. Stories were for suckers, and in Eryndor, everyone was a mark. He twisted a dial, and the memory orb—a fist-sized sphere of bioluminescent glass—hummed on the table, ready to drink the drifter's pain. One less regret, one more orb to fence to the Orbbreakers. His debts were due tomorrow, and they didn't take IOUs.
Outside, Eryndor groaned, its machinery a heartbeat under the city's skin. Neon signs bled through the Clinic's cracked windows, promising Forget Your Pain. Rewrite Your Fate in tongues no one spoke. The air stank of ozone and despair, thickened by the Shiver's aftershock—a ripple that had bent the Undervein's walls an hour ago, twisting voices into backward chants. Elias ignored it. The Shiver was just Eryndor's fever, breaking and fading. He had a job to do.
The probe sank into the drifter's temple, a bead of blood glowing under the lights, as if the city's haze had seeped into his veins. The display narrowed to a single memory: the woman's laugh, now a scream, her face melting into shadow. Elias adjusted the probe, fingers precise despite the tremor in his soul. The orb pulsed, swallowing the fragment. Easy money.
Then the memory fought back.
The drifter's body jerked, his moan spiking to a scream. The display glitched, the woman's face looping—laugh, scream, blood, repeat. "Bad edit," Elias growled, twisting the dial. Some memories clung like cancers, refusing to die. He'd seen it before, in clients who begged to forget but couldn't let go. Like him and Mara.
Her name clawed his mind, unbidden. Mara, laughing in their old apartment, hair catching the light. Mara, burning, her screams echoing in a decade he couldn't touch. Ten years erased, leaving guilt, fire, and a hole where his life should've been. Elias shoved the thought down, focusing on the probe. The drifter's scream split, and the orb flared, too bright, too alive.
The Shiver hit.
It came like a blade, slicing reality apart. The Clinic's lights inverted—white to black, black to white. The table buckled, edges curling like burning paper. The drifter's scream fractured, echoing forward and backward, a chorus clawing Elias's skull. The probe twisted in his hand, melting into liquid, and the orb cracked, leaking light that seared his eyes. Elias stumbled back, heart hammering, as the air thickened with ash and something ancient, something awake.
He blinked, and the Clinic was gone.
A void swallowed the room, its walls a mosaic of faces—hundreds, thousands, screaming, eyes bleeding light. At the center stood a Hollow. Humanoid, but wrong—its face a shattered mirror, reflecting Mara's smile, her burns, her accusation. Its body glitched, limbs stretching into claws, snapping back. "You did this," it whispered, Mara's voice layered with Elias's, laced with static. "You carved her out."
Elias's knees buckled, breath trapped in his throat. He'd heard of Hollows—Undervein ghost stories, shadows born of bad edits—but never like this. Never her. He reached for the probe, now a useless curl of metal, and backed toward a wall that wasn't there. The Hollow didn't move, but its weight crushed his mind, dragging memories up: Mara's laugh, her scream, the fire he didn't start. Or did he?
The Shiver collapsed, and the Clinic snapped back. The Hollow vanished. The drifter was dead, eyes burned to ash, chest still. The orb was dust, its light snuffed. Elias sank to the floor, whiskey bottle in hand, and drank until his hands stopped shaking. Bad edits killed, and this one had been a slaughter. The Orbbreakers would come, Hollow or not. He needed a job, now.
The Clinic's door creaked, uninvited. A woman stepped inside, her presence a knife in the room's decay. Thirties, eyes unblinking, face familiar like a half-dreamed ghost. Her coat was Undervein-patched, but her stance was wrong—too steady, too sure. A satchel hung at her side, glowing with the pulse of memory orbs, rare and untainted, worth more than Elias's life.
"Dr. Vren," she said, voice low, cutting the Clinic's hum. "I need an edit. Now."
Elias wiped whiskey from his lips, squinting at the woman who called herself Lira. Her eyes, unblinking, held the Clinic's flicker like a trap, and her satchel's glow—memory orbs, rare as hope—pulled at his greed. The drifter's corpse still lay on the table, eyes burned to ash, a reminder of what bad edits cost. Elias's debts to the Orbbreakers loomed, sharp as the probe now useless in his hand. He should've sent her away, but Mara's face—burned, accusing—flashed in his mind, mirrored in Lira's too-familiar features.
"Clinic's closed," he said, voice gravel and grit. "Come back tomorrow."
Lira didn't flinch. "You'll want this job. It's worth more than your debts." Her lips curved, not a smile but a challenge, and the air around her shimmered, a faint ripple like the Shiver's echo. The Clinic's lights dimmed, casting her shadow too long, too sharp, across the scarred walls. Elias laughed, bitter as the Undervein's air. "Lady, nothing's worth that." But his gaze locked on the satchel, its orbs pulsing with a steadiness he hadn't seen in years. Untainted, unedited, the kind that could buy him out from under the Orbbreakers' knives. Maybe enough to run, to chase the hole where Mara's memory burned. He stood, brushing dust from his coat. "What's the edit?"
"I erased myself," Lira said, stepping closer, her boots silent on the bloodstained floor. "But it didn't take. Fix it."
Elias froze, bottle halfway to his lips. "Erased yourself? That's not how it works. Nobody edits are one-way—out." He'd done them, back when he was desperate: clients who paid to vanish, their existence carved from the world's memory, leaving empty homes and families weeping for ghosts they couldn't name. No one came back. The procedure was forbidden for a reason—too many paradoxes, too many Hollows. "You're either lying or dead. Which is it?"
"I'm neither," she said, and the air rippled again, harder, making the Clinic's walls groan. Her face flickered—not a trick of the light, but a glitch, her features blurring into Mara's for a heartbeat, burned and screaming, then snapping back. Elias's breath caught, the bottle slipping from his hand to shatter on the floor. Whiskey pooled, reflecting her eyes, now glowing faintly, like orbs themselves.
"What the hell are you?" he whispered, backing toward the table, hand fumbling for a scalpel that wasn't there. "The mistake," Lira said, her voice low, cutting through the Clinic's hum. "Fix it, or we all become Nobody." She opened her satchel, revealing five orbs, each pulsing with a light so pure it hurt to look at. "Payment. More than you've seen in a lifetime."
Elias's heart pounded, greed warring with fear. The orbs were real—worth enough to clear his debts, maybe buy answers about Mara. But Lira's words gnawed at him. Erased herself, but it didn't take. Impossible. Yet her presence bent the room, made the air taste of ash and static, like the Hollow's whisper. He saw Mara again, not in Lira's face but in his mind, her hands reaching through fire, pleading. He shook it off, pointing to the table. "Lie down. Let's see what's left of you."
Lira complied, moving with a grace that didn't belong in the Undervein. She lay on the table, still warm from the drifter's death, and set her satchel beside her. Elias prepped a new probe, hands steadier now, driven by a hunger he couldn't name—greed, guilt, or the pull of her paradox. The holographic display booted up, but her neural signature was a void, a black screen humming with static, like staring into the Spiral's heart. He hesitated, glancing at her. "This goes wrong, you're not walking out."
"It's already wrong," she said, eyes locked on the ceiling. "Start cutting."
The probe sank into her temple, too easily, like piercing air. No blood welled, only a faint glow, as if her veins carried light instead. The display flickered, then erupted—a cascade of images, none coherent: a lab with spinning orbs, a child's body in a street, a cult chanting in a cavern, Lira's face multiplied, screaming, laughing, dissolving. Elias's head throbbed, the images bleeding into his own memories: Mara's laugh, her scream, his hands on a probe, promising to fix it all. He twisted the dial, desperate to focus, but the orb on the table didn't pulse. It screamed.
The Shiver came, harder, faster, a blade through reality's gut. The Clinic's walls dissolved, bleeding into a spiral of light and shadow. The display exploded, projecting Lira's face—hundreds of Liras, scientist, cultist, mother, ghost, each screaming in a tongue that hurt to hear. Elias's mind buckled, his knees hitting the floor as memories flooded: Mara burning, his voice whispering I can save you, a fire he didn't start—or did he? The probe melted in his hand, dripping like wax, and the air thickened, heavy with ash and the Hollow's scent.
It was there, in the void where the Clinic had been. The Hollow, its mirrored face now Lira's, now Mara's, now Elias's own, reflecting every guilt he'd buried. Its body flickered, a glitch of claws and eyes, stretching into the spiral's light. "You did this," it roared, its voice a chorus of everyone he'd failed—Mara, the drifter, himself. "You carved her out, and now you carve the world."
Elias screamed, clawing at his eyes, but the Hollow's weight crushed his mind, dragging up memories he didn't own: a lab, Lira's hands on a machine, a city vanishing, a child's laughter cut short. He saw himself, not as he was but as he might've been, standing beside Lira, promising to rewrite reality. The spiral tightened, its light searing his skin, and he felt the Clinic's floor beneath him again, cold and real, but wrong.
The Shiver faded, leaving silence. The Clinic was back, but not whole—walls cracked, lights shattered, the table empty. Lira was gone. The probe was slag, the orb dust. The satchel remained, its orbs glowing brighter, heavier, as if alive. Elias's hands shook as he crawled to it, finding a note inside, scratched in a script that wasn't hers: You're already inside.
He staggered to his feet, the words on the note burning in his mind. The Clinic's walls were etched with new scratches, forming a message that hadn't been there before: Find me in the Spiral, or we all become Nobody. Elias drank the last of the whiskey, the bottle already broken but somehow whole in his hand, a paradox like Lira herself. The Shiver hummed in his bones, and somewhere, deep beneath Eryndor, the Hollow Spiral waited.
Elias dropped the note, its edges curling as if touched by fire, and stumbled to the wall, tracing the scratches with shaking fingers. They weren't random—each mark curved, deliberate, forming letters that seemed to shift when he blinked, like the Spiral's own tongue. Lira was gone, her absence a paradox as sharp as her presence had been. The table where she'd lain was cracked, its leather straps frayed, as if her body had burned through them without flame. Elias's mind reeled, replaying her words: I erased myself, but it didn't take. Impossible. Yet the Hollow had known her, had worn her face, and Mara's, and his own.
Mara. Her name was a blade, cutting deeper each time. Elias saw her again, not in the Clinic but in the hole where his decade lived—her laugh, her hands, her body consumed by fire he couldn't remember starting. Or stopping. The Hollow's whisper clawed at him: You did this. You carved her out. He sank to his knees, the whiskey bottle—broken, then whole, now broken again—clattering to the floor. The paradox of it, like Lira's existence, gnawed at his sanity. Eryndor was a lie, and he was its liar.
The Clinic's lights flickered, casting shadows that moved wrong, stretching into claws, then snapping back. Elias's breath hitched, expecting the Hollow's return, but the room stayed empty, its silence heavier than screams. He crawled to the satchel, its orbs humming with a frequency that vibrated in his bones, like the Undervein's machinery amplified a thousandfold. He reached for one, then stopped—touching them felt like touching Lira, or Mara, or the Spiral itself. Instead, he opened the satchel wider, searching for answers.
Inside, beneath the orbs, was a fragment of metal, no bigger than a coin, etched with a symbol: a spiral, its lines twisting inward, endless, alive. Elias's fingers brushed it, and the Clinic shuddered, not a Shiver but something deeper, as if the city itself flinched. A memory flashed—not his, but hers, or theirs: Lira in a cavern, her hands on a machine, orbs spinning like planets, a voice chanting, The Spiral sees through time. The image dissolved, leaving Elias gasping, the symbol's weight heavy in his palm. It wasn't just a clue—it was a key, or a trap.
He stood, clutching the spiral fragment, and moved to the Clinic's door, its hinges groaning as if reluctant to let him leave. The Undervein's air hit him, thick with ozone and the distant wail of sirens—another Shiver, another district unraveling. Neon signs flickered, their promises now gibberish: Forget. Rewrite. Nobody. Elias's debts loomed, the Orbbreakers' knives waiting, but Lira's note drowned them out. Find me in the Spiral. He didn't know where it was, or what it was, but the symbol in his hand pulsed, guiding him like a heartbeat. Then, a sound broke the silence—a low hum, not machinery but something alive, rising from the tunnels' depths. Elias froze, the spiral fragment warm in his hand, its pulse syncing with the hum. The air shimmered, a faint Shiver rippling, and for a moment, the tunnel wasn't a tunnel but a spiral, its walls organic, veined with light, closing around him. He blinked, and the Undervein snapped back, but the hum lingered, calling him deeper, toward Eryndor's heart. He walked, driven by Lira's note, the symbol's weight, and Mara's ghost. The Clinic was behind him, its wreckage a scar he'd carry, like the Hollow's whisper, like his debts. The Undervein's tunnels twisted, leading nowhere and everywhere, but the spiral fragment knew the way. Elias's mind fractured, memories bleeding: Mara's scream, Lira's eyes, his hands on a probe, rewriting reality. He didn't know what the Spiral was, but he knew it was waiting, and he was already inside. The hum grew louder, and the shadows moved, not Hollows but something worse—Eryndor itself, watching, rewriting. Elias clutched the spiral fragment, its light guiding him through the dark, toward a truth he didn't want but couldn't escape. Lira was out there, or in him, or nowhere, and the Spiral was the only way to know. He walked, and the city walked with him, its pulse a countdown to Nobody.