He didn't sleep that night. Not fully.
Every time his body tried to drift, something in his chest jolted him back — like a thread had been pulled too tight, snapping him upright before he slipped too far.
By the fourth time, he stopped trying.
Instead, he sat against the coilwall, knees drawn to his chest, fingers tracing the lines of the spiral on his wrist.
It had changed again.
Not larger. Not darker.
Just… deeper.
When he pressed a fingertip to the center, he no longer felt skin. He felt absence. A hollow point where the world bent a little wrong.
And underneath it all, he realized something quietly terrifying:
He hadn't felt cold in hours.
Kesh returned just before midlight, hair damp, coat smeared with soot.
"Tunnel's clear," she said. "No sign of the Choir. No watchers. No leaks."
She dropped beside him and bit into a softroot bar like it owed her money.
He didn't move.
She glanced sideways. "You slept?"
He shook his head.
"Dreams?"
He nodded.
"Real ones or false?"
He hesitated.
She frowned. "Could you feel anything in them?"
He paused again — then shook his head.
Her expression shifted.
"Then they were real," she said. "Sort of."
They moved again later, this time toward the lower pipe-grid — a place where no one sane lived, and where sounds traveled wrong. Kesh said they'd be safe there until the next pulse, whatever that meant.
She walked ahead.
He followed — or tried to.
Halfway down the second shaft, he stumbled.
Caught himself.
Then stared at his own hands.
There was blood on his knuckles. Dried. Faint. But real.
He hadn't noticed.
Hadn't even felt it.
Kesh turned. Saw the look on his face.
"Yeah," she said. "That's what it feels like."
They sat in a pressure lock between two sealed doors, the space wide enough to stretch out, but small enough that the air tasted used.
She lit a dull crystal torch and tossed it onto the floor. It hissed.
"You're burning out of the first layer," she said. "The Truth of Pain doesn't just take sensation. It takes response. Your body doesn't know how to warn you anymore. You could break your leg and walk on it for hours."
She leaned back, arms folded behind her head.
"That's how most Proxies die early, by the way. Not from fighting. Not from Hollowing. Just from not noticing something important until it's too late."
He stared at his hands again.
Fingers trembling. But not from fear.
From nothing.
He clenched them tighter.
Kesh watched him carefully.
"You need an anchor," she said.
He looked up.
"Something real. Physical. Familiar. Something that reminds you what hurts and why it matters."
She dug into her coat and pulled out a piece of worn cloth — blue, frayed, stitched with faint spiral marks.
"I used to carry this," she said. "When I started forgetting what my sister's voice sounded like."
She didn't offer it to him. Just held it. Then tucked it away again.
"You'll need something of your own."
That night, the dreams returned.
He was back in the Lower Halves — but it wasn't his memory. Not exactly.
He stood in an alley where the walls whispered. Where the bricks dripped names. A child wept in the corner, but no one looked. No one heard. No one moved.
He reached for the child.
It turned.
And wore his own face.
Mouth sewn shut.
Eyes bleeding black spiral ink.
Then it said — without sound:
"Don't forget how it felt."
He woke with dry eyes and a cracked lip.
Still no pain.
Still no sound.
But the spiral pulsed once.