Kael didn't sleep.
He couldn't.
Every time he closed his eyes, the whisper returned not louder, but closer. Like it had crawled through the cracks in his cell. Like it was waiting just beneath his skin.
You are not broken...
He blinked into the dark, jaw clenched. The pain in his back still pulsed from the lashes, but something else throbbed deeper a heat that wasn't his. Faint. Barely there. But it moved when he breathed. It answered when he listened.
The collar buzzed.
His thoughts scattered. He gritted his teeth. He couldn't think about this too much not with that thing on him. The iron loop didn't just track behavior. It suppressed. It killed anything that tried to flare inside you.
He'd seen it before when one of the prisoners, an older man with pale eyes, had started muttering nonsense one night. Screaming about "threads," "spirals," and "wings made of night." The collar had burned straight through his throat. No warning. No chance.
But Kael hadn't seen it as a malfunction.
He'd seen it as fear.
They were afraid of something.
And maybe... just maybe, it was this.
The next morning, Kael's body moved on instinct shuffle, carry, drop, obey. The guards didn't notice the difference. But he did.
His body felt the same. Weak. Broken. Hollow.
But beneath the skin, something pulsed.
It wasn't strength. Not yet. It was like a string tied to a falling weight tugging gently at his core. Guiding. Pulling him somewhere he couldn't see.
Listen...
He wasn't sure if the whisper came from outside anymore.
Later that day, in the wash tunnel, he passed by the mirrored shard of a rusted metal panel. Most didn't look at themselves anymore. But he did. Just for a second.
And he froze.
There was a mark barely visible, just beneath his collarbone. A thin, spiraled burn like someone had drawn an incomplete circle with ash.
He pressed a finger to it.
It pulsed.
A ripple of cold ran up his spine. The collar sparked again but weaker this time. Almost... hesitant.
It doesn't know what this is, Kael thought. It's not stopping it...
That Night
The whispers sharpened. Not louder. Not clearer. But they had direction now.
They pulled him toward the eastern wall of his cell. Just stone. Old and cracked.
But he moved anyway.
Fingers scraped along the seams until he found one that felt wrong. It wasn't colder but emptier. Like the space behind it wasn't stone at all.
He pressed his hand to it.
And the mark beneath his skin burned.
The wall pulsed back.
Then he saw it faint blue light leaking from the seam. A symbol. One he didn't recognize. But something in him did.
The Spiral stirs...
His vision blurred. For a moment, the world shifted. The walls around him breathed. The ground below him hummed. Not sound but pattern.
Thread. Spiral. Pulse. Collapse. Rebirth.
It made no sense.
But it didn't have to.
Kael felt something in his chest shatter quietly. Like a single link in a massive chain breaking loose.
He didn't know it yet, but this was the first Whispered Event.
The beginning.
Elsewhere...
Deep beneath the prison, the sealed chamber responded.
One of the seven seals cracked.
Blue light spilled from the wound.
And something without form turned slightly in its slumber.
Not awake. Not yet.
But aware.
One remembers.
The Spiral breathes again.