Darkness did not fall; it folded.
Light became shards that cut her name apart.
When Myrren’s body hit the floor, the marble dissolved and the scent of roses curdled to ash.
A heartbeat that was not hers thudded in her ear.
Two voices called from the fracture, one gold and one shadow, and both burned out before she could answer.
Silence filled the world like breath held too long.
Then, from that silence, a thread of frostmint coiled through her lungs.
She followed it because it was all that remained of air.
Cold slid into her throat, the taste turning to ironwood and memory.
When she opened her eyes, the world was no longer light or dark; it was caught somewhere between.

Fog pressed against her skin like wet linen.
The gallows loomed ahead, its rope swaying in wind that had no source.
This was not the first time she had stood here, but it was the first time she understood it.

Crowds murmured beyond the haze, hundreds of half-formed faces repeating the same breath.
Each exhale scraped like sand through glass.
The fox waited beneath the scaffold, fur slick with dew and eyes dark as ink.
In their reflection she saw herself hanging.
Not yet, but soon.

The air carried a scent she could not ignore: frostmint and ironwood, the Veil’s sleeping draught.
It clung to the rope fibers, to her hair, to the world itself.
Every inhale tightened the ghost of the noose around her neck.

“Do you hear it?”
The voice came from behind, low and restrained, threaded with the quiet ache of recognition.
She turned.

Corven stood beside her on the platform, boots dusted with ash, shadows coiling at his wrists like obedient serpents.
His eyes were storms, silver at the edges where light tried to live.
“You shouldn’t be here,” she whispered.

“I always am,” he said.

Her pulse hammered. “Then tell me what this is.”

“The Veil’s design. Their memory machine.” His gaze lifted to the black horizon. “Every loop ends with you swinging above their altar, and me watching it happen.”

She laughed once, raw. “Then stop watching.”

He looked at her, truly looked, as though memorizing the lines of her face before a fire.
“I’ve tried,” he said. “Every version of me has tried.”

Something moved above them. A figure blurred into existence, faceless, whispering a single word that shook the planks.
“Both.”

The fox’s ears flattened. The rope twitched.

Myrren’s palm burned. She lifted it to see the onyx spiral pulsing, light threading through its grooves like a second heartbeat.
The scent thickened; frostmint turned metallic, sweet and suffocating.
The world wavered between two exposures: one where Thane reached for her with flame, one where Corven wrapped her in shadow.
She was the hinge between them, breaking apart.

“Choose,” said the whisper above.

Corven’s hand closed over hers, steady and unyielding.
“Don’t,” he said. “Choice is their chain.”

The fox leapt onto the platform, tail brushing her ankle like a spark, a tether.
The gallows beam groaned.

“Myrren,” Corven said softly, “if you wake, remember this.”
He leaned closer; his breath was winter and regret.
“The spiral isn’t fate. It’s a cage.”

The word struck like a bell.
The rope snapped tight.
The world shattered.

She woke up choking.

The sound tore through the small hunting lodge, raw enough to startle the birds roosting in the eaves.
Her hands found the floorboards, damp with spilled tonic. A thin line of smoke trailed from the hearth, twisting into a faint spiral before vanishing.

She knew this ceiling. Rough pine, water-stained in the same corner. The lodge again. The place she always returned to after the light shattered. Either Corven had carried her here, or the spiral itself had.

She tasted frostmint on her tongue, sharp as guilt.
Ironwood followed, bitter and slow, a perfume of obedience.
The combination was too deliberate to be a coincidence.

Someone had seeded her sleep.

“Breathe.”

Corven’s voice came from the window. His silhouette was carved in moonlight, head bowed as if listening to something far away. The scent of his shadow always carried a faint sweetness, like rain trapped in burned cedar.

It was that place again, the gallows,” she whispered. “Only this time you were there.”

“I always am.” He turned, eyes steady. “You think the dreams belong to you, but they belong to the Veil. They write them into your blood with the scentcraft they stole from you.”

Her heart lurched. “Then the poison …”

“Frostmint to open the memory, ironwood to hold it in place.” He gestured toward the table where her satchel lay open. “It was mixed perfectly, Myrren. Too perfect.”

She crawled to the table and sniffed the rim of the vial. The scent hit her like light behind her eyes. “It’s mine,” she whispered. “My formula. I used it years ago to lull the body before antidote testing.”

“They are using your own genius to build their prison.”

Her stomach turned. The onyx spiral pulsed against her wrist, the same rhythm as in the dream. She pressed a fingertip to its surface and felt it throb like flesh.

“It anchored the vision,” she said. “I can still smell the smoke, the rope, everything.”

“Throw it into the fire.”

“You know what it is,” she said quietly.

“I know what it does.” His tone sharpened. “It makes you remember only what they allow.”

She met his gaze. “And you? You remember everything, don’t you?”

He hesitated. Shadows flickered behind him as though they too were waiting for his answer.

“Enough to hate it,” he said finally. “Enough to know that every time you die, the spiral resets, and I wake to find you walking toward another noose.”

The words hit her harder than the cold floor. “Then why save me?”

“Because I have seen what happens when I do not.”

The fire popped. Sparks climbed the chimney like tiny souls escaping.

Outside, a horse snorted. Hooves shifted in the mud. The faint jingle of armor carried through the walls.

Corven looked toward the door. “They have found us.”

“The Queen’s men?”

He nodded once. “Her protection always comes when you are weakest.”

Myrren stood, wiping sweat from her palms. “Protection or capture?”

“Both.”

The onyx spiral flared, a pulse of light like a warning. The air in the room changed, the faint trace of incense rolling under the door.

“She is binding the scent to the order,” Myrren murmured. “Her messengers carry it. Every decree from her throne spreads the spiral farther.”

Corven moved closer, his presence steady but dangerous. “Then you must decide if you will follow her scent or burn it away.”

Myrren stared at the vial on the table, the one mixed from her own recipe. The frostmint shimmered against the glass, a color between blue and silver.

“This poison is mine,” she said. “So is the cure.”

Her hand shook as she reached for the copper kettle. The shadows at Corven’s feet twitched in warning.

He whispered, “Be certain, Myrren. Once you begin to unmake their spiral, you cannot stop.”

She poured the mixture into the kettle. The scent rose, thick and cold, carrying a note of defiance that smelled like her name.

“I am already inside it,” she said. “Now I’ll see if it can bleed.”

A knock sounded, too measured to be afraid.

Myrren froze, one hand on the kettle, the other still trembling from memory.
Corven’s shadows drew inward, silent as breath before lightning.
Outside, horses shifted in the mud. Metal brushed leather. The smell of wet parchment and ashwax seals bled under the door: a court scent.

She already knew what came next. The riders always came after the rupture, bearing the same command to return.

The Queen had found them.

A voice followed, formal and resonant.
“By order of Her Majesty Aelira of Eirden. Myrren Vale is to return to the capital at once, for her protection and the Crown’s stability.”

Corven’s head tilted, listening to the cadence of the words. “Listen to that,” he murmured. “Even her orders carry the rhythm of the spiral. Each syllable is a link.”

The onyx token at Myrren’s wrist pulsed, the same beat as the messenger’s tone. Her stomach turned. “She’s binding her commands with scent and sound both,” she whispered. “She’s weaving obedience into language.”

Another knock, harder. “Open, or we force entry.”

Corven’s expression sharpened, but he did not move toward the door. “If they see the token, they will accuse you of treason. The nobles already whisper that you serve the Veil.”

“I will not hide again.”

The fox appeared first, its fur wet and its eyes gleaming like oil, slipping from behind the woodpile as though it had walked straight out of the dream. It sat by the door and waited.

Myrren’s throat tightened. “It followed me out.”

Corven did not answer.

The latch turned from the other side. The door burst open and Holt stood framed by the rain. His armor was tarnished, his eyes hollow with sleeplessness. Behind him waited two riders in silver-trimmed cloaks, the Queen’s mark stitched on their collars.

He saw Myrren, then the kettle, then Corven. His jaw clenched. “I’ve done this before,” he muttered. “Every time, it ends the same.”

Myrren stepped forward. “Then help me change it.”

“Orders are orders.” Holt’s voice cracked like stone. “You come with us. The Queen claims you’re in danger.”

“Danger she created,” Corven said, moving between them.

The soldiers reached for their hilts. Shadows flickered across the walls in answer.

Holt’s hand shot up. “Stand down.” His gaze stayed on Myrren. “I don’t know what this is, girl, but every time you vanish, the kingdom bleeds a little more.”

Myrren lifted her wrist. The spiral token caught the firelight, gleaming darkly. Holt’s breath hitched; the soldiers recoiled as if she had drawn a blade.

“She marked me long ago,” Myrren said. “But this time, I will not wear her chains quietly.”

Outside, thunder rolled. The fox yipped once, a strange, high note that sounded almost human.

Holt looked from her to Corven, then to the riders. “If you mean to go,” he said quietly, “go now, before I remember which side I’m on.”

Myrren gathered her satchel and tucked the token beneath her sleeve. “We ride to the Queen,” she said. “But we ride my way.”

Corven’s shadow stretched beside hers until they nearly touched. “And if the spiral calls again?”

“Then I’ll answer it in my own voice.”

For a moment, no one moved. Then Holt nodded once, the smallest rebellion he could afford. “I’ll ready the horses.”

The soldiers hesitated, caught between command and confusion. The fox slipped through their legs, a living omen, and disappeared into the rain.

Myrren followed its path with her eyes. The night smelled of frostmint and war.

Rain drummed harder. The soldiers vanished into it, swallowed by trees and thunder.
Inside the lodge, the air shimmered as if the storm were trapped indoors.
The scent of frostmint thickened, circling her like invisible chains.

Myrren held her breath.
If scent was a script, she could still rewrite it.
She reached for the kettle, her hands shaking, and poured the mixture of mint and ironwood over the fire.

Flame met liquid and screamed.
Smoke turned silver, rising in coils that wound through the rafters.
The walls blurred. The floor shuddered.

Corven caught her arm. “What are you doing?”

“Breaking it.”

The smoke spun faster, shaping itself into the spiral she had seen in dreams. Its center glowed with light and shadow twisting together, alive and aware. It pulsed once and she felt something tear inside her chest.

The token at her wrist flared. She ripped it free and threw it into the fire.
For a heartbeat it burned black, then split apart, scattering sparks that hummed like voices.

Every whisper she had ever heard in the gallows, every echo of Both, every prophecy tangled through her veins, shrieked and fell silent.
The spiral collapsed in on itself.

Myrren staggered, gasping. The lodge lights flickered, half here, half not. Through the broken veil of smoke, she saw two realities fighting, the gallows and the lodge, the hanging rope and the door, the rain and the firelight.. Corven pulled her close before the collapse could swallow her. His hand pressed against the small of her back, anchoring her in one world.
“Breathe,” he said. “You’re pulling the loop apart.”

“Then let it come apart.”

“It will take you with it.”

“Then we end it together.”

Her counter-scent still lingered in the air, wild and sharp. It bit into the mint, cracked the ironwood, turned obedience into freedom.

The spiral screamed one last time and shattered. The smoke thinned, leaving only the scent of rain and ash.

Myrren sagged against him, trembling. The world felt raw, unfinished, fragile as glass before the first breath.

Corven tilted her chin upward until she met his eyes. His voice was quiet but absolute.
“You’ve broken the cage,” he said. “But they will rebuild it.”

“Then I’ll break it again.”

He smiled, the faintest trace of sorrow in it, and leaned close enough that his breath brushed her ear.

“You will always belong to the spiral,” he whispered. “Or to me.”

The words slid into her like a blade wrapped in silk.
The fire hissed out. The night went black.