"Growth begins where certainty ends."
The spiral staircase felt like it had been carved by someone who didn't trust stairs to exist the same way twice. Each step had a slightly different rise, the walls curved at angles your eyes didn't want to track, and the whole place breathed like the stone had lungs.
Aarav stumbled down a few more steps before the adrenaline crashed and his brain caught up to the moment.
The echo-spawn had said his name.
Not whispered it.
Not approximated it.
It had _known_ him.
Aarav swallowed hard. "That thing shouldn't know who I am."
Meera reached up from below, tugging his sleeve and pulling him out of his frozen trance. "Yeah, but it does. And we're not giving it round two."
The boy clung to her, shaking. Amar hovered behind them like a walking barricade, the hollow man still slumped over his shoulder.
"Keep moving," Amar said. "The closed door only buys us time. Not safety."
Aarav forced his legs to work again, feeling the echo of the spawn's voice ricocheting inside his skull. It was wrong. Too precise. Like an AI hallucinating a perfect prediction. A calculated threat.
Arin's absence hit him next. Hard.
He stopped again. "Arin was right there. Did he—"
"No," Amar said. "Don't go there. Not until we know."
Meera shot him a sharp glare. "And we're getting him back. This is a detour. Not a burial."
Aarav clenched his fists. "That thing broke his shield like it was nothing."
"Yeah," Amar said, "but you saw him. He didn't hesitate. If the guy wasn't dead after a hundred close calls before this, he's not dying to some geometry demon."
The reassurance landed messy, jagged—but it landed.
They reached the bottom.
The staircase opened into a long stone hall that looked like someone had sliced a line straight through time. The walls glowed faintly, pulsing in soft waves. Ancient carvings covered every surface—spirals, stars, fractal patterns, and a symbol Aarav recognized:
A crown.
Split down the center.
The mark of the Voided King.
The boy whimpered and buried his face in Meera's coat.
Aarav walked closer to the carved crown, fingertips hovering just above the stone. The hum inside his chest throbbed in warning.
Meera grabbed his wrist. "Don't touch it."
He paused. "Why?"
"Anything down here with his mark is basically a cursed LinkedIn endorsement," she said. "Hard pass."
Aarav let out a breath that wasn't quite a laugh but wasn't misery either.
The hallway stretched deeper, narrowing as they walked. The carvings changed the farther they went—shifting from cosmological diagrams to something more… human.
Faces.
Figures.
Anchors from long before their time.
Amar slowed beside one carving—a woman with three arms and hollow eyes, framed by symbols Aarav didn't recognize.
"What are these?" Amar asked.
"History," Aarav answered before he realized he _knew_.
Or maybe the resonance in him knew.
He frowned, confused.
Meera turned to Arin's absence like he was still there. "He'd know what this hall is."
Aarav swallowed. "I think… it's a memory archive."
Amar's eyebrow lifted. "You think?"
Aarav nodded, heart pounding. "I didn't know that a minute ago."
Meera touched his shoulder. "Your resonance is filling in knowledge. That's not great, but it's also not the end of the world."
"Yet," Amar muttered.
They walked deeper until the hallway ended at a sealed door.
A heavy stone slab.
Circular.
Perfectly smooth.
Completely unmoving.
Except the hum behind it pulsed like a heartbeat.
Aarav felt his chest pulse back. In sync.
Meera stepped back. "Nope. No. Absolutely not. Every time something reacts to you, we get attacked by reality glitches."
Aarav ignored her and pressed his palm against the door.
The stone warmed instantly.
Then it spoke.
Not aloud.
Inside him.
A single word:
_Welcome._
Aarav jerked his hand back. "It recognized me."
Amar put a hand on his shoulder. "You good?"
"Define good," Aarav muttered.
The slab began to rotate—slowly, silently—revealing a chamber beyond.
A room of mirrors.
Hundreds of them, suspended in the air, rotating slowly like planets in orbit. Each mirror reflected a different version of the chamber—some identical, some cracked, some with shadows where no shadows should be.
Meera's voice dropped to a whisper. "This isn't an archive. This is…"
"An Anchor Vault," Aarav said, the words arriving in his mind like déjà vu.
Amar frowned. "What's that supposed to mean?"
Aarav stepped forward. "It's where Anchors were trained. Tested. Broken down and rebuilt."
Meera flinched. "And we walked straight into it."
The boy tugged her sleeve. "I don't want to see the mirrors."
Aarav didn't want to either.
But the mirrors began to shift.
One glowed with a pale light.
Another cracked down the center.
A third showed the echo-spawn at the top of the stairs, still searching.
But the one directly in front of Aarav—
—that one showed him.
Not how he was.
How he could be.
Eyes hollow.
Crown broken.
Light leaking from the cracks in his skin.
Aarav stumbled back.
"No," he whispered. "That's not me."
The mirror whispered in return:
_Not yet._
Amar stepped between him and the mirror, dagger drawn as if he could fight a reflection. "Stay back."
Meera pulled the boy close. "This place is reading his fears."
Aarav forced his eyes away—but the mirrors shifted again.
This time forming a path.
A corridor of mirrors leading deeper.
Arin's voice echoed in Aarav's memory:
_Anchors are shaped by choice, not resonance._
Aarav inhaled once, shaky.
Then stepped onto the mirror path.
Amar cursed under his breath. "He's going to get us killed."
Meera sighed. "Yeah. But he's doing it bravely."
They followed him in.
As the mirrors rotated around them in slow, gravitational arcs, Aarav felt the resonance in his chest swell, constricting, pulling—
—and then one mirror at the end of the hall lit up violently bright.
A shape stood behind its surface.
A silhouette.
Tall.
Stoic.
Radiating a presence he recognized instantly.
Aarav whispered the name before he could stop himself.
"…Arin?"
The figure raised its head.
But the voice that spoke wasn't Arin's.
It was deeper.
Older.
Fractured.
_Aarav… anchor… choose._
The mirror shattered.
And the chamber exploded with light.
"A new truth settled inside him, quiet but undeniable."