The illusion had not ended.
It only changed its shape.
The group stood together in the spiral chamber—or thought they did. The feathers floated higher, their black glass edges humming with unseen current. The light overhead twisted, stretching too long, too thin. The walls were still stone. But now they breathed.
Selene was the first to notice.
"This isn't real."
Kieran's voice was quiet. "It's not over, is it."
"No," she said. "It's begun."
---
The spiral let out a low chime—soft, harmonic, impossible to locate. It resonated in their bones. And in an instant, the room blinked—like a dream turning sideways.
The others were gone.
Kieran stood alone again.
But it wasn't the chamber anymore.
It was a classroom.
Wooden desks. Dusty light. A broken chalkboard on one end. Faint laughter outside the window. Somewhere he knew—but hadn't seen since he was a child.
Then someone entered.
A boy.
Maybe twelve.
Golden feather in his hand.
"I waited," the boy said.
Kieran stepped back. "No. This isn't you."
"You forgot," the boy whispered. "You chose to forget."
Kieran's shadow twisted at his feet, coiling like a living rope.
"Stop," he growled.
The boy grinned with too many teeth. "You're not Kieran anymore. You're just the shell he left behind."
The room shattered.
---
Calla found herself in the flames again.
Not metaphor. Not memory.
She was burning.
Her hands were cinders. Her voice cracked with heat. People screamed around her—blaming her, praising her, begging her. She tried to save them. Again.
And again.
And again.
Each time she reached for someone, they caught fire.
Each time she cried out, the flames grew louder.
---
Rei stood in a room of steel mirrors.
Every version of himself stared back.
One stood taller. One was dead. One was a beast. One wore the gold of a Crownwrought and the smile of a devil.
"You don't get to win," one said.
"You get to survive," said another. "That's all you're good for."
He screamed—and his voice bounced off a thousand faces that looked like his but weren't.
---
Talon stood in a gallery of paintings.
They were his.
All of them.
Except he didn't remember painting them.
And each one showed his friends dying.
Calla in flames. Nova bleeding. Kieran swallowed by a black sun.
He turned—and there was a canvas waiting for him.
Blank.
Brush in his hand.
"Your turn."
---
Nova was alone in a hall of doors.
She opened one.
A ruined battlefield. Her father's blade in the dirt.
Another.
A dead girl with her face, lying beside a creature she had sworn to kill.
Another.
A future she didn't believe in, where her name was a warning, not a legacy.
Then all the doors slammed shut.
---
Sera was floating.
Weightless.
Silent.
But not peaceful.
All around her, words appeared in the dark.
One at a time.
Erase.
Forget.
Unmake.
A voice finally spoke—soft and unbearable:
"You were never real. You're just the absence left behind."
She opened her mouth to scream—
And found no voice.
---
Selene walked a road lined with moons.
Each one broken. Bleeding starlight.
She carried a lantern that didn't glow.
Ahead, a throne made of bones. Upon it, her own corpse.
Its eyes opened.
Its voice echoed from behind her ribs.
"You know how this ends. You always did."
She dropped the lantern.
And the world unraveled.
---
Back in the Spiral
Kieran blinked.
The chamber returned—but not whole.
Everything was wrong.
Calla knelt in the corner, laughing and sobbing. Talon was trying to cut something invisible from his chest. Rei stood frozen, whispering "not me, not me." Nova had her knives out—facing Sera. Sera didn't move.
Selene alone was steady—but even she was bleeding from the eyes.
The spiral pulsed again.
A voice—not many, but one—finally spoke.
"We have seen you.
We have tasted your shape.
Now show us what breaks first."
The Choir was awake.