The stars were vanishing.
Kael had seen death in all its forms—his own, especially—but never had he witnessed the sky unwrite itself. Constellations that had watched over the world for millennia blinked out like candles. No smoke, no sound—just darkness consuming light.
It had been three days since the Hollow Tongue was slain beneath the Heartroot, and already reality was warping.
The land itself stank of memory. The trees whispered names Kael didn't recognize but somehow mourned. The rivers ran slower, as if time itself was thickening. And Nyra... she hadn't slept since the battle.
"The death of the curse left a wound in the world," she murmured, staring into a mirror of black water. Her reflection didn't match her movements anymore. It blinked late.
Kael nodded grimly. "I feel it too."
They had taken refuge in the remnants of an ancient monastery once dedicated to the Severed Veil—a forgotten order sworn to chronicle the tongues of gods. Inside, they found books written in blood and silence. Most were unreadable, but one page had burned itself into Kael's vision.
> "When the Hollow Tongue is slain, the gate shall bleed, and the Maw shall hunger anew. Only the Thirteenth may resist its call, or the spiral will collapse into endless night."
Kael clenched the page in his fist, letting it crumble into dust. "The Maw."
"A god older than the curse," Nyra said. "Or something worse."
That night, the stars pulsed red.
---
They weren't alone.
Whispers traveled faster than any wind. From the northern peaks of Droskal to the bone-dunes of Vire, a name resurfaced among the mad and the dying:
The Cult of the Endless Maw.
It had been centuries since its last breath, but now, robed figures moved in shadowed halls, painting glyphs in ash. They spoke in half-syllables and fed their tongues to statues. They welcomed the sky's unraveling.
In the shattered city of Bellgrave, a child's voice rang through ruins:
"He comes again. The Thirteenth Flame. Feed him, and the gate shall open."
Kael and Nyra followed the trail of bodies—lips sewn shut, eyes plucked, all facing the same direction. A sign of worship, not slaughter.
The further they went, the more warped the world became. Time bent oddly in some regions—Kael blinked and lost minutes, Nyra aged a day in an hour then reverted. At the center of the distortion lay Hearthollow, a city buried in myth.
The heart of the cult.
---
On the outskirts, they met an old man made of bees.
He called himself Orven—a Memory Host, once a servant of the Severed Veil. His form buzzed and shimmered, but his voice was solid.
"The Maw has waited long. The curse was a cork in an ancient bottle. Now the thirst returns."
Kael asked, "What is it?"
Orven replied, "Not what. When. It is the hunger between moments. The god that devours time itself."
Nyra stiffened. "And the cult wants to summon it?"
Orven nodded. "They want to end sequence. A world without time, without change—only eternal stillness beneath the Maw."
---
Inside Hearthollow, madness reigned.
The buildings pulsed like lungs. Gravity twisted sideways. People screamed in reverse. Cultists danced around an inverted hourglass suspended in a dome of obsidian, its sand flowing upward.
Kael stepped into the center of it all.
The cult fell silent.
A figure emerged—cloaked in layered time: faces from every age, all overlapping, all himself. The Maw's Herald.
He spoke in a voice that was Kael's own:
"You are late, Thirteenth. The spiral nears its end. You were the curse's keeper. Now you must be its heir."
Kael raised his hand. Glyphs flared.
"Not this time."
But the hourglass split.
Time fractured.
And Kael watched as a future version of himself—eyes hollow, mouth open in an endless scream—descended from the void.
The cult chanted.
"All hail the Maw's Vessel. The Spiral's End. The Curse Returned."
Kael turned to Nyra.
"We didn't kill the curse. We unleashed it."
The sky rained blood.
---
The ground beneath Hearthollow shattered as the fracture in time widened, exposing ancient machinery carved into the bones of the world. Great bronze wheels turned in silence, untouched for eons, and now awakening.
"This place was never a city," Nyra whispered, dread settling into her marrow. "It's a lock."
Kael stepped forward, his boots clicking against stone that shimmered between epochs. With each step, the world trembled.
The cultists fell to their knees.
"He walks the Spiral," they chanted. "The Maw awakens in his breath."
Kael's hands burned with forgotten sigils. They weren't his own—they belonged to something older.
Then came the Archivist.
Not a man. Not a god.
A construct of memory itself—bound in wax scrolls and black feathers, its mouth stitched shut with time-fibers.
It hovered before Kael and spoke not in words, but in remembrance.
Kael saw it all: ten thousand versions of himself across fragmented histories—some kings, some monsters, some screaming endlessly into silence. Each had touched the Maw. Each had fallen.
But one stood apart: a version who had refused the Spiral, who had rewritten fate.
And he had burned.
Kael staggered back. "I am not them."
Nyra gripped his shoulder. "You don't have to be. We can choose a different way."
The Archivist bled ink.
A door appeared in the air, formed of broken clocks and frozen tears. Beyond it: the Maw's core.
Kael took Nyra's hand.
They stepped through.
And reality ended.
---
Inside the Maw, time had no meaning. Stars blinked in reverse. Rivers of thought poured into stone. The bones of forgotten gods floated in a sea of unlight.
Kael felt his soul unravel.
He saw Nyra as a child, then as dust, then as a flame. She was all things at once.
And at the center, a voice.
It did not speak—it consumed.
> "Thirteenth. You are not bound. You are chosen. Let us end the Spiral. Let us feast upon sequence. Become the Maw's Will."
Kael's body lifted, his veins glowing.
Nyra screamed, reaching for him, but her hand passed through.
Then—he remembered Orven's final words:
"The Maw cannot take what is whole. Only what is broken."
Kael clenched his heart.
"I am not broken."
He slammed his fists into the memory-stone floor, and the sigils of ten thousand timelines surged around him.
The Maw recoiled.
And Kael spoke the final glyph:
"I deny you."
The world shattered.
The Spiral screamed.
And Kael fell.
---
He awoke beneath the ruins of Hearthollow, Nyra beside him, her hands warm with healing.
Above, the stars had returned.
But Kael knew: the Maw had tasted him.
And it was not finished.