He awoke not with clarity, but with a taste.
It was bitter at first, then metallic, then something stranger, a flavor like charred parchment soaked in brine. His tongue recoiled. His teeth clicked shut instinctively, but the sensation remained. Foreign. Wrong. Nestled in the hollow beneath the palate.
The boy sat up slowly. The chamber around him was dimmer now, as if the silence itself had dimmed. Not darker, not quieter, but thinner. Like everything had been pulled through a sieve and come out drained.
His throat ached. Not from screaming, but from restraint. The memory of words unspoken built like pressure along the roof of his mouth. His chest felt sore. His tongue moved against something that did not belong.
He coughed. It was not a violent sound. Not loud. Just a small act of defiance, like knocking on a sealed door. He coughed again, and this time something caught.
His body stiffened. He reached two fingers into his mouth, slowly, afraid of what he might find.
And he pulled out a feather.
It was long, narrow, and soaked in ink-dark brine. Black in color, but shimmered slightly when it caught what little light there was. Its barbs were smooth. Too smooth. Not like a bird's feather. More like something remembered incorrectly. Like the memory of a feather.
He stared at it, unmoving. The feather did not drip. It did not dissolve. It simply rested in his palm as if it had always been there. As if it belonged to him.
A tremor passed through his wrist. He dropped it.
But the feather did not fall. It hovered, for a moment, and then vanished into the air with a soundless twist, folding itself into nothing.
The boy did not move for several breaths. He knew what it meant.
Not because someone had told him, but because something inside him already understood. The feather was a symbol. A part of the second truth's shape. A signal of readiness. Of the truth beginning to coalesce, to tear itself free of metaphor.
It was no longer content to live in implication. It wanted form.
The boy stood, shakily. His throat was raw. When he swallowed, he tasted the feather still. Not the object, but the idea of it. A shape pressed against memory. A whisper of unspoken violence curling in the hollow behind his jaw.
The space around him began to hum. Not with noise. Not with voice. With intention.
He looked up. The chamber's false ceiling had vanished. Above him stretched a dome of skyless black, layered like oil over forgotten glass. Images flickered within it, the Choir in procession, Ashur's face in shadow, the failed Proxies slumped against their own names.
He saw the riverbank again. This time he did not look away.
The hand was there, reaching.
And he saw himself walk past it.
Not by mistake.
Not in fear.
But with deliberate, hollowed steps.
The boy clutched at his stomach. Nausea bloomed. He did not vomit. There was nothing left in him to purge. The world had already taken what it wanted. What remained was truth, caught in the gaps between ribs and memory.
He remembered the echo's voice. "I let them die." He remembered the bell of absence. And now the feather.
One more sign. One more crack in the pattern of forgetting.
He walked. There was no door, but the space yielded. It made way for him. The walls did not shift. They simply stopped pretending to be walls. Memory unraveled around him as he moved, scenes appearing and dissolving, a corridor where names had once been etched, a prayer circle speaking backwards, a child without a face reading from a blank page.
The boy ignored them all. His body moved with slow, steady dread.
The air thickened as he passed. It resisted him now, not with weight but with memory. He was moving deeper into himself, not outward. Each step pulled him toward the place where the truth had first lodged itself, long ago, when he chose silence over salvation.
He turned a corner that didn't exist. And found himself standing before a familiar door.
He did not remember ever opening it. But he had been here. He had watched someone enter once. Watched them scream on the other side. Watched the Choir hum their hymns until the screams became silence.
The boy placed his hand on the door. It felt cold, not in temperature but in recognition. Like touching a grave with your own name carved into the stone.
He pushed. It opened without sound.
The room inside was circular, lit by candles that gave no light. The Choir was waiting.
They stood in a ring, silent, heads bowed, hands clasped. Their robes were ink-drenched, and their masks had grown longer. Where once they resembled faces, now they resembled beaks. Ornamental. Ritualistic. Detached.
In the center stood a figure.
Ashur. But not the Ashur he knew.
This one looked tired. Older. Worn by memory.
His gaze met the boy's, and in that gaze, the boy saw pity. Not remorse. Not love. Pity.
Ashur spoke without speaking. The words entered the boy's skull like remembered lines from a forgotten play.
"You are ready."
The boy did not answer. Ashur stepped aside.
In his place stood a second figure, dressed not in robes, but in gray. Their face was obscured by cloth. In their hand, they held a shallow bowl.
The boy did not need to ask.
He had seen this ritual once, deep in the Choir's archive.
It was the Feeding of the Feather. Not symbolic. Not poetic. Literal.
To awaken the truth, the boy would have to consume it. Not as knowledge. But as confession.
He stepped forward. The bowl was raised. And inside, floating in silence-brine, was the feather.
Longer now. Sharper. Its quill glinted like bone.
He reached out, hands trembling. And took it. Not with reverence. With resignation.
He brought it to his lips. And swallowed.