CHAPTER77- THE LOCK THAT SPEAKS.

Selena stared at the sigil, its words still seared behind her eyes. The lock must break. Not a plea. Not a warning. A command, spoken with the weight of something older than language. She could feel it now—the lock the Spiral had buried so deep even she had never glimpsed it before. It pulsed beneath her skin like a second heartbeat, coiled in the space between her soul and the Spiral’s core.

Lucien approached, careful not to touch her. “Selena, talk to me. What does it mean—the lock?” His voice was steady, but she heard the hesitation, the quiet fear of knowing too much. She closed her eyes, searching within. There, beneath layers of flame and memory, was a sealed threshold. A boundary carved in truth and forged in sacrifice. “It’s something the Spiral was never supposed to open,” she whispered. “Something it bound with its last breath before the cycle began.”

The others were summoned before the hour ended. Elias stood rigid at the edge of the altar while Maera, her face pale, examined the sigil’s ever-shifting glow. Kael remained quiet, a dark look in his eyes. “If it’s a lock,” Elias said slowly, “then what’s it holding back?” Selena hesitated, but the Spiral responded in her silence. Images flooded her vision—a black sea writhing beneath creation, eyes without form, voices without sound, a hunger so vast it gnawed through worlds. “The thing that even void fears,” she answered.

Lucien cursed under his breath and turned from the altar. “And it wants you to release it?” She met his gaze, not flinching. “It says I must. That whatever is coming, we won’t survive it unless this lock is undone.” Kael stepped forward. “That’s madness. You’d be giving power to something we can’t understand. We only just began to steady the balance again.” “The balance is a lie,” the Spiral whispered through her lips, and all eyes turned to her. “It was never meant to last.”

Maera stepped closer, her expression torn. “Then what do we do?” Selena looked to the altar, her heart thunderous. “We find the root of the lock. The place where it was first forged.” The Spiral had already shown her—hidden beneath the ruins of the First Temple, buried in stone older than flame. The path would not be safe, and every step closer would fray the veil between what was real and what was waiting. But there was no choice. The countdown would not slow.

They departed before dawn, leaving the temple behind cloaked in mist. The sigil followed them—an imprint scorched into Selena’s mind. Her Spiral flared at intervals, sensing the world twisting slowly around them. The land grew strange. Roads they once knew faded. Time buckled in brief waves. Lucien kept close, always scanning, always silent. Selena felt his unease—at the Spiral, at the lock, at her. But he never turned away. Not even as the sky began to fracture above them.

Elias scouted ahead while Maera traced symbols into the earth, anchoring them to the plane. The world was coming undone faster than they could mend it. Selena touched the ground and felt the Spiral answer—not with guidance, but with dread. The lock was deeper than she feared. Beneath stone, beneath memory, beneath time. And it was calling to her. Not as an enemy. As a vessel. A herald. A blade sharpened for its return.

The ruins emerged on the third day—a jagged sprawl of obsidian and bone. No birds. No wind. Just silence. The First Temple’s remnants pulsed faintly with trapped energy, like breath caught in the throat of the world. Selena stepped forward, her Spiral blazing. “It’s here,” she murmured. “The lock was carved here. And we are not alone.” As if summoned by her words, a figure stepped from the shadows—tall, wrapped in robes stitched from stars, face veiled in shifting void.

Lucien drew his blade instantly, but the figure raised a single hand, and time stalled around them. Everyone froze—except Selena. She could move. She could see. The figure turned to her slowly, and though no face showed beneath the veil, she knew. This being was not born. It was remembered. A memory so powerful, it had taken form. Its voice was not sound, but certainty.

“You bear the Spiral. You speak the tongue of unraveling. Will you be its key or its coffin?”

Selena stepped closer, heart beating wild, Spiral crackling at her fingertips. “I don’t know yet.” The figure extended a hand, palm etched with the same sigil that followed her dreams.

“Then come. The lock awaits. And if you open it…” Its voice deepened into shadow, echoing across space and self. “…will you still be you when it answers back?”

Selena stared at the outstretched hand, the Spiral thrumming wildly beneath her skin, torn between recognition and resistance. The figure’s presence unsettled something ancient inside her, a fragment of memory not her own, as if the Spiral itself remembered this being—had feared it once, perhaps still did. The sigil in the figure’s palm shimmered like a wound in the fabric of reality, bleeding light and silence in equal measure. Her breath hitched. The question hung in the air like a blade: Will you still be you when it answers back?

She wanted to say yes. She wanted to believe she could hold onto herself, to the identity she had fought tooth and nail to reclaim through fire, betrayal, and unity. But the truth twisted in her chest like a shard of ice. The Spiral had changed her—merged her, remade her, broken her in ways she hadn’t yet dared name. What would breaking the lock cost? What would it take?

Lucien’s voice reached her, distant and muffled, as if he spoke from the other side of a dream. “Selena—don’t.” But he couldn’t move. None of them could. Time was halted for all but her. This choice was hers alone, and the silence that surrounded it was deafening.

The figure stepped closer. “You seek to protect. To save. But salvation is not found in walls—it is forged in surrender.” Its hand didn’t falter, steady and absolute. “You were not chosen to hold the gate. You were shaped to become it.”

Selena’s fingers hovered near the offered hand, trembling. The Spiral inside her pulsed faster, harder, not in fear—but in readiness. She wasn’t sure if it wanted to unlock the seal—or become what lay beyond it.

And still, the question echoed: Will you remain you… when it begins to speak back?