She dreamt anyway.
The warning inked on parchment bled into the dark, its scent of ash and mint still clinging to her breath.
Something scraped the corridor stone, a limping drag, soft but certain.
When she opened her eyes, the candle was dead, and frost had bloomed on the sill like breath that had forgotten how to fade.

The sound came again: scrape, pause, scrape, followed by the faintest whimper, low and animal, carrying through the iron latch.
Myrren rose, blanket falling, the floor biting cold against her bare feet. She pressed her palm to the door. The wood trembled once beneath her touch.

When she cracked it open, the corridor stretched empty except for the fox.

Its fur, once copper-bright, was matted dark along its flank. One hind leg dragged uselessly, its breath steaming white. In its jaws it held a thorn, black as ink and wound in a spiral, tip glinting with frost.

The scent hit her at once: frostmint and iron, the same perfume that had threaded the tribunal hall, the same that clung to the parchment warning her not to dream.

The fox limped forward and laid the thorn at her bare feet. For a heartbeat it looked up at her, eyes glassed with pain, and she thought she saw a reflection of herself there, a creature doomed to repeat the same circle until it bled out. Then it turned, staggered once, and vanished down the stairwell.

She knelt. The thorn’s spiral grooves pulsed faintly, light catching on the edges as if fire breathed beneath glass. When she reached for it, the air stung, a scentcrafter’s burn, not heat but reaction, the warning of toxin meeting skin. She hissed and drew back, her fingertips already tinged pale blue where the oil touched.

Poison, yes, but also a message. The Silent Veil always carved their warnings in spirals.

Behind her, the candle on the desk guttered to life again though she had not touched it. A curl of smoke rose, forming the outline of a spiral before dissolving.

She wrapped the thorn in her sleeve and tucked it beneath the cot. The fabric smoldered faintly where it touched, leaving a ring the size of a coin.

From the far corridor came another presence, the scent of cypress and steel. Corven’s shadow leaned briefly across the threshold, a silent silhouette that did not cross.

“You shouldn’t touch what calls you,” his voice murmured, low enough she almost believed she imagined it.

Before she could answer, the air cooled and the shadow withdrew.

Myrren’s pulse echoed the fox’s fading limp, slow, uneven and inevitable.
And beneath her palm, through wool and skin, she felt the spiral thorn’s heartbeat answer once, twice, then still.

Sleep never truly claimed her; it only folded the room in reverse.
The scent of frostmint and iron thickened until it became air itself, and through it she drifted, half waking and half remembering.

Then warmth.

A hand of light brushed her cheek, roughened by sword callus yet trembling with devotion.
Thane. His mouth found hers in slow ignition, heat blooming through every breath. The kiss burned golden, honey, smoke, and flame, so bright she thought the world itself might melt. When he whispered her name, it rang like a vow hammered on an anvil: mine, and safe, and saved.

She believed him for an instant.
Until the fire spread.

It licked across her throat, the same place the spiral shadow had branded her. It seared a ring there, light tasting of ash. She tried to speak, but her voice came out as smoke.
The fire dimmed, replaced by coolness, a pressure against her wrist.

Corven.

He emerged from the dark like breath after drowning, eyes gray as stormwater. His hand traced where the fire had been, and shadows seeped into her skin like balm and bruise all at once. His kiss was different, no warmth, only depth, silence thick as blood. When their mouths met, the world inverted. The air still her pulse slowed, and she felt the tether tug behind her ribs.

Two loops, one heart.
Light that burned. Shadow that bound.

She tore back, gasping. The dream bent around her, both men lingering like reflections that refused to fade.

And then the Seer’s voice slipped through the dark, neither man’s, neither mercy nor threat.
“Three choices. Two deaths. One tether.”

The words coiled, threading through both sets of hands still on her skin.
Thane’s fire flared, consuming the shadow; Corven’s tether pulled, smothering the flame. Between them, she felt herself unspool, threads drawn to breaking.

“Which am I to choose?” she whispered, but no voice answered.

The spiral behind her eyes began to spin faster, faster, until the dream shattered like glass thrown against stone.

She woke with a cry caught in her throat, heart hammering, lips tasting of both smoke and cypress.
The chamber lay unchanged, yet the candle burned higher, its flame the color of bruised gold. The wrapped thorn beneath her cot throbbed once, echoing the tether’s pull.

In the silence that followed, she thought she heard a chain shift somewhere below the floorboards.
Or perhaps it was only her pulse, learning the rhythm of the spiral again.

She pressed shaking fingers to her throat.
The skin there was unmarked, yet raw, as if kissed by flame and shadow both.

Outside, dawn bells tolled. The scent of ash and mint drifted through the shutter cracks, mingling with smoke from the square.
Another day deferred. Another loop beginning.

And in the hollow of her palm, unseen, the faintest shimmer of onyx dust remained, like the dream refusing to fade.

By dawn the frost had retreated, but the cold had not.
The city bells were still tolling when the bolt on her door scraped open. Captain Holt’s silhouette filled the frame, helmet tucked beneath one arm. Behind him, torchlight caught the pallor of the corridor walls, freshly scrubbed, as though someone had tried to wash the night away.

“You’re wanted in the upper hall,” he said. No explanation. His tone was carved from weariness, not cruelty. “They found something.”

Her pulse stuttered. The thorn.

But he did not reach for the cot where she’d hidden it. Instead, he handed her a sealed parchment. Wax, already cracked from haste.
The Queen’s crest again.

Report to observation. The contagion spreads.

“Contagion?” she murmured.

Holt’s jaw tightened. “That’s what they’re calling it now. The spiral sickness. Priests are saying it jumps by proximity. One of the scribes cut his palm and swore he saw the mark bleed into his own skin.” His gaze flicked toward her throat. “You’re the proof they want, Myrren. Careful where you breathe.”

She felt the words sink like hooks.
Through the window, she saw smoke coiling above the square, burnt offerings or something less holy.

At the hall’s far end stood Thane, golden even in the ash light, surrounded by nobles whose perfumes couldn’t mask fear. His hair was unbound, eyes rimmed red. When he saw her, the circle of courtiers hesitated, parting like reeds bent by wind.

“Myrren.” His voice cracked, hoarse, sleepless. He stepped forward but didn’t touch her; his hands trembled too visibly. “They say a mark was left on your door. Frostmint spiral, blackened wood.”

Her breath caught. So it was seen.

“Then it wasn’t a dream,” she said softly.

“No.” His gaze darted to the onlookers. “Now they whisper of infection. The Queen calls it Veil-borne. I told them I’d burn the door myself.” His tone sharpened with the fevered devotion that once felt like protection. “I’ll burn anything that touches you if it keeps them from naming you cursed.”

“Even me?”

The words slipped out before she could stop them. The question hung, fragile and cruel.
His jaw worked once. He didn’t answer.

Across the hall’s shadowed edge, Corven leaned against a pillar. The torchlight barely caught him, yet she felt his presence like a pulse beneath her skin. When Thane’s light flared, the air near Corven darkened, his shadows curling in instinctive recoil.

“She cannot burn what already binds her,” Corven said, voice low. “Look closer, prince, your fire only feeds the spiral.”

Thane turned, fury flaring golden behind his eyes. “And your silence chokes it?”

“Perhaps.”

Their gazes locked, fire and void, devotion and fatalism clashing until even the guards looked away.

Myrren’s hands shook. “Stop.” Her whisper barely broke air, but the torches flickered as if obeying. “This is what they want. The court feeds on fear.”

Holt cleared his throat, stepping between them. “Fear’s already eating, Mistress. Another servant’s missing. And the fox from last night? Found dead at the gates. Its blood traced in a spiral.”

Her heart plunged. The message repeated itself, circle tightening.

“Seal your doors tonight,” Holt finished. “And pray the spiral stops at your threshold.”

But Myrren already knew spirals never stopped; they only found new centers.

The corridors smelled of candle soot and fear. By nightfall, guards prowled every landing, whispering prayers beneath their breath. Myrren stayed in her chamber, the thorn still wrapped in her sleeve, its faint heat pulsing like a fever she could not sweat out.

Ori insisted on sitting near the door, knees drawn up, quill scratching across a page. “If they rewrite our names, I’ll have a copy,” she said, half-smiling. Her ink smelled of violet oil, sweet and defiant.

The candle burned lower. Wind hissed through the shutter cracks, carrying the sound of the square, the crowd restless, the scaffold finished.

A scrape.
Too close.

“Ori?”

But her friend was already rising, listening. “It’s just the guard,” she began, then the door shuddered, kicked inward.

A nobleman staggered through, court robe half-torn, eyes wide and gleaming with fanatic light. His dagger flashed silver. “It spreads,” he hissed. “The spiral spreads through servants and scent. It must be stopped before the crown rots.”

“Ori, move.”

The blade caught her shoulder as she turned, slicing red across linen. She screamed; the sound split the chamber. Myrren lunged, catching the noble’s wrist. The thorn slipped from her sleeve, clattering between them.

It rolled once, stopped, and the grooves lit faintly, black fire curling up from its tip.

The man froze, horror dawning as the onyx dust spiraled up his arm. “Veil’s mark,” he gasped. “Saints preserve.”
Then he dropped the dagger and fled, his own blood smoking where it touched the floor.

Myrren pressed cloth against Ori’s wound. “Hold still, it’s shallow.”

Ori’s voice shook. “He said stop the spiral. It’s already in court.”

Through the open door, the torches in the hall guttered out one by one, as if some unseen breath drew them dark.

Myrren looked down. The thorn had cracked in half, ash leaking from its core like spilled ink. The scent of frostmint rose, cold, sweet and final.

Far below, bells began to toll again. The same number as before. No more. No less.

She met Ori’s frightened eyes.
“It never stops,” Myrren whispered.

And the last candle died.