The bell never rang that morning.
Not for the shift-change. Not for the steam rotations. Not for him.
He opened his eyes to dim gray light spilling in through the grates in the ceiling. Cold metal pressed against his back. Pipes above hissed and clicked as they adjusted to the day's pressure, but the usual clang of footsteps, the shouts of warden hands—none of it came.
Twelve years old. That was what the chalk-mark beside his cot told him. Twelve tallies. But no one had come to mark it. No voice had called him by name, not even in passing. As far as the world was concerned, he had never been born.
He stood and dressed in silence. The wardrobes in the lower dorms held only workwear: coarse sleeves, a rust-buckled coat, boots that pinched if your feet grew. His had.
The boy moved through the maintenance hall, down past the condensation chambers and the brass filter valves that groaned once every hour. This was the deepest part of Mournreach—the city built on stilts along the edge of the great abyss.
Down here, the fog ran thick through every corridor. It gathered beneath the grates, swirled behind your boots. Even when the lamps were lit, it made the world feel half-swallowed. Forgotten.
He knew the schedule. At this hour, he should have been cleaning ducts, or running cable along the spine-walks. But something else called to him today. A soundless tug. A direction he didn't remember learning.
The overlook.
He climbed three levels in silence, boots scraping the scaffold as he rose. Above him, the sounds of the upper city stirred faintly—the chimes of distant elevators, the clatter of tools against stone. But here, at the halfway ledge between the dorm tiers and the factories, he saw it clearly.
The Hole.
It sat at the center of everything. A wound in the world, perfectly round, perfectly still. No smoke came from it. No light. Just a pull that dragged the wind downward, gentle and constant, as if the sky itself wanted to fall.
He stepped close to the guardrail. His hands gripped the rusted metal. Others might have looked away, mumbled a prayer, turned to recite their work-chant and gone about their day. He didn't.
Because he heard something.
A pressure in the chest. Not pain. Not breathlessness. Something else. A voice, but not in his ears. A word, but not in any tongue he'd been taught.
His name.
Not the number-marked designation the stewards gave him. Not a nickname from the other children. A true name. One he hadn't known he'd forgotten until the Hole spoke it aloud.
It rang inside his skull like a dropped coin hitting stone.
He fell to his knees.
The fog didn't move. The air didn't stir. No ripples on the void's surface. But something was different. Something had seen him.
The boy clutched his chest. His pulse was sharp and fast. The moment stretched. And then—
A symbol.
Etched faintly on the ground in front of him, no larger than his palm. A spiral. Simple. Ink-black against the iron decking.
He blinked once, and it vanished.
He didn't speak to anyone that day. Not that anyone would have listened.
The foreman at the pump tiers sent him to re-oil the shaft ladders, but he barely remembered the walk there. Every task felt distant. Dim. He worked in silence. He ate nothing.
That night, back in the dorm, he stared at the ceiling until the fog outside the vents thinned and the brass clock hissed its midnight breath.
Then came the whisper again.
You are a vessel.
The words didn't echo. They didn't come from the wall, or the air, or the stone. They came from below. Beneath the city. Beneath everything.
The Hole was speaking.
Ten truths have been lost. Ten names unraveled. The world will not remember itself.
The boy sat up.
He touched his chest again. It felt warm, almost fevered.
You have been chosen. You are not a child anymore.
There was no reply he could give. His throat felt dry. His lips wouldn't form the words.
But the Hole didn't seem to need them.
It had named him already.