FICTION – 3TC#MM84
Part II of the Spiral Series
The wind hadn’t stopped.
It moved differently now—slow and strange, like the exhale of something buried deep beneath the ground. It pulled at the corners of her tent, lifting canvas in little fits and snaps, always seeming to tuck itself into cracks where it didn’t belong.
That was what woke her. Not sound, not light. Just pressure.
And then, the artifact cracked again.
Carla snapped upright, breath caught in her throat, the sound sharp and final like a neck breaking in the dark. Her hand flew to her satchel. The clasp was ice-cold. She fumbled it open, fingers stiff with sleep or fear—she couldn’t tell which.
Inside, the artifact pulsed softly. Not glowing, exactly. Breathing. The black stone was veined with dim silver, like capillaries beneath bruised skin. It was cold. It shouldn’t have been. It had gone silent days ago, after the lightning storm and the screaming.
But now, it pulsed.
She stared too long. Her jaw ached. Something inside the artifact wanted her to touch it again. To grip it the way she had before.
Wind scraped across the broken plain, carrying ash and the copper tang of blood. The sky above never returned to its blue hue. It hung overhead like a wound that refused to scab, pulsing faintly in red and violet. Birds no longer came near. Their calls had been replaced by clicking sounds, sharp and unnatural, like someone cracking knuckles in rhythm.
She stepped outside.
The land where the fortress once stood remained warped—trees curved inward like giant hooks, soil blistered like molten glass. Some places she avoided instinctively, though she didn’t remember why. Her body knew what her mind refused: something still lived here.
And it was moving.
On the ridge, something gleamed—symbols etched into a rock face that hadn’t existed a day ago. She climbed toward it. The air thickened with every step, heavy as steam, vibrating with low pressure in her ears.
The glyphs weren’t carved. They were pinned. Slivers of hide, nailed into the stone with bones. Symbols like those from the tomb, but bent, broken, misremembered—like a child trying to copy a nightmare. They wept a thin, translucent fluid. Fresh.
She reached out. The surface twitched.
A breath behind her.
A footstep.
She turned.
A figure limped into view. Hooded. Shifting. Its form shimmered like heat off scorched pavement. The voice came in pieces, static and rust:
“You… turned the key… wrong.”
Carla stepped back, clutching the artifact.
“I sealed it,” she said, though her voice betrayed her.
The figure tilted its head. The hood slipped just enough to reveal a hint of a face—misplaced features, teeth where they shouldn’t be, eyes stitched halfway shut.
“You sealed one. But they were never meant to be alone.”
A chill ran up her spine.
There are more.
The artifact pulsed again. A new groove had appeared—smaller, deeper, purposeful. Not a fracture. A design. It was evolving.
Above, the sky flickered again. Not lightning cracks. Fractures like glass under pressure, thin and spreading. The heavens are trying and failing to hold their shape.
The creature she sealed had not been alone.
The world was a vault. Each seal is a cell. Each twist of the artifact, a new calculation. Her choice had shifted the weight. Something else was pressing through.
Her grip tightened around the artifact, the edges biting into her palm. She was breathing hard, chest aching. Her thoughts raced: Where was the next seal? How many were left? Could she fix what she had started?
She was lost again, not just in the land, but in her role. She had thought herself a savior. Now she feared she had only shuffled the locks.
And she wasn’t alone.
Others would feel the pulse.
Some would fight.
Others would cower.
And a few… would answer the call.
Memoirs of Madness 