The stars didn't come out that night.
Not a single one.
Coren Vale stood at the window of his cramped apartment, fingers twitching around the mask tucked beneath his coat. The sky outside was like a stretched sheet of black paper that looked like it absorbed light completely, cloudless yet empty, like something had swallowed the heavens whole.
And above it all—one moon. Wrong in every way.
It hung too low. Too wide. Its light cast no shadows, only a dull, sickly glow that made the city's rooftops look like the skin of a dying thing.
It wasn't the moon Coren had known all his life.
It was something else wearing its shape.
He didn't blink for minutes. He was afraid if he did, it would change again.
---
The next day was worse.
People acted like nothing had happened. Like the moon hadn't shifted. Like the city hadn't begun to twitch in its skin.
Viremore bustled. Carts creaked down the roads. Merchants argued with stone-faced nobles over the price of imported spices. A preacher in red robes howled praise to a Saint Coren had never heard of. It was almost as if everything be saw was a lie.
But beneath it all—behind their eyes—was something wrong.
Everyone was pretending harder than usual.
And now, Coren could feel the pretense. His Spiral pulsed every time someone smiled too wide, laughed too hard, greeted him with hollow familiarity.
It was like the whole city was lying to itself.
---
Back in the archives, he kept to the lower stacks. The other archivists barely noticed him anymore. Or perhaps they'd been ordered not to.
He didn't care.
His mind was somewhere else.
On the mask beneath his coat.
On the Spiral coiled under his glove.
On the memory-well in the sublevels and the vision it had given him: that ancient, impossible city, where truths grew like tumors and lies bled from the sky.
He wasn't sleeping well. The dreams had changed.
Now, instead of a single whisper, he heard choirs. Not voices—thoughts. Thousands of them. All trying to scream at once.
He'd started writing them down.
One phrase repeated itself:
"The false moon feeds."
---
Three nights after his descent, it returned.
The woman.
The one with gold eyes and travel-worn boots.
She didn't knock.
She simply appeared—on the roof of the apartment opposite his, crouched like a gargoyle, watching him through his window as if he were the one out of place.
He opened the window with trembling fingers.
"You could knock."
"Knocking implies permission," she said. "You don't get that anymore."
Coren stared at her. "Who are you?"
She tilted her head.
"I go by Faye now. Short for something I've forgotten."
"You never gave me a straight answer."
"No one with a mask ever does."
She leapt across the gap—ten feet of air and wet stone. Landed on his windowsill like a shadow that had decided to wear bones.
"You wore it," she said, nodding to his coat.
"Briefly."
"And?"
"I saw things I shouldn't have."
"Good. That means it's working."
Coren narrowed his eyes. "What do you want from me?"
"Want? Nothing. But you've been marked, Vale. That's not a tattoo. It's a doorway. You walked through it the moment you opened that notebook."
Coren's stomach turned.
"I didn't ask for this."
"No one does. The Spiral doesn't ask. It chooses."
She paused.
Then drew something from her pocket. A small glass vial. The liquid inside shimmered like oil and fire and memory.
"You're not the only one who's seen the moon," she said.
Coren's breath caught. "Then it has changed."
"It's not a change," she said, voice flat. "It's a reveal."
She tossed the vial into his hands. He barely caught it.
"What is it?"
"Distilled memory. Drink it before the next ritual. It'll open you wider."
"Wider to what?"
"To the city's real face."
Before he could ask more, she was gone.
Just like before. Disappeared.
Only this time, the Spiral shivered in his palm—as if it, too, remembered her.
---
The ritual came two days later.
A simple note, folded into a codex in the restricted wing:
"Midnight. Cathedral Ruins. Wear the mask."
He almost didn't go.
Almost.
But by now, Coren understood one truth clearly,
He couldn't walk away.
Not without the Spiral dragging half his mind into that memory-well forever.
Not now that he had already got invoved to this extent.
So at midnight, under the crooked eye of the false moon, he stood before the ruins of the Old Cathedral.
It had burned a decade ago. No one ever rebuilt it. Officially, it was haunted. That kept the gawkers away.
But tonight, its courtyard was lit with sigil-fires.
Rings of chalk. Runes carved in salt and blood. Candles that flickered blue and whispered names.
Seven figures stood around the circle.
Each masked.
Faye was among them.
She didn't greet him—just handed him a blade.
Iron. Rusted. Marked with the same Spiral carved into his skin.
"Cut," she said.
He hesitated.
"Where?"
"Where it hurts most."
He glanced at his hand.
"No," she said. "Not the hand."
He understood.
He pulled up his sleeve.
And sliced a shallow line across the old scar on his forearm—the one from childhood, where he'd fallen on broken glass while running from a dog.
It bled quickly.
The Spiral pulsed.
And so did the ground.
The sigils caught fire—real, impossible fire, blue as grief.
The seven began to chant.
Not loudly. Not in unison. Just… around him. Whispering truths not meant to be spoken.
"Beneath the city, it dreams…"
"Lies rot slower than the flesh…"
"She wears a moon that eats prayers…"
Coren stood still, mask on, blood dripping from his fingers into the soil.
And the world bent.
Not broke.
Bent.
Like the walls between skin and sky had become tired of holding.
He saw through them.
Through the cobbled stone beneath his feet. Through the dirt. The bone.
He saw what Viremore had buried.
Something massive.
Coiled.
Asleep.
He saw them all.
The Spiral screamed in joy.
And for the first time in his life, Coren screamed with it.