Hole Beneath The World

The collapse had no epicenter.

It spread like a thought, subtle, viral, recursive. Not explosion but erosion. Not destruction but redefinition. Every breath the Proxy took seemed to rewrite the second that followed. The world resisted, briefly, like skin recoiling from heat, but it lacked the strength to deny what had already begun.

He walked through a corridor that had not existed minutes before. Its walls bent slightly inward, paper-thin, pulsing in and out of synchronicity with time. The floor was memory, not stone, but something softer, something that flexed underfoot with the faintest whisper of footsteps taken long ago. Words were carved into the ceiling, upside down, in a language he almost understood.

They said: He was always already here.

A wind moved through the corridor.

Not air. Presence. A shift in weight. A signal that something, or someone, had entered the scene without crossing any known boundary.

The Proxy turned.

And saw them.

The Audient. It was the figure he saw in the mirror, inside the chamber at Undervault, but his presence felt different this time. 

They stood at the end of the corridor, hooded, faceless, hands folded in a gesture not quite prayer. They had no eyes, but they were looking at him. Watching in a way that made time hesitate.

The Proxy stepped forward.

So did the Audient.

Reality flickered.

The floor split. A spiral bled outward from beneath the Proxy's feet, etched not in stone but in recall. The Spiral Mark on his wrist pulsed, unstable. Every breath was a risk. Every step forward threatened to erase what lay behind.

The Audient raised one hand.

The world steadied.

Only slightly. Only for a moment.

But enough.

The corridor aligned.

Time slowed.

The Audient spoke, not aloud, but into the fold between moments.

"Listen."

The Proxy did.

He heard not a voice, but the sound of absence reversed. The place where memory forms just before it collapses. A sound that resembled the wind through dying leaves, the hush before confession, the breath someone takes just before saying a name.

"You must not…"

The sentence failed.

The world surged.

A rupture split the air beside them. Not a crack, a wound. Through it, another version of the corridor could be seen. Twisted. Empty. Flooded with silence.

The Audient turned to face it.

Their form shivered.

Their presence frayed at the edges.

They looked back once.

And the Proxy saw their face.

Just for an instant.

His own.

Older.

Burned.

Hollowed.

Then the Audient collapsed inward.

Not screamed. Not dissolved. Just folded. Like a page being erased from a book halfway through reading.

The rupture closed.

Silence rushed back.

The Proxy stood alone.

No corridor. No wind.

Just an echo of the words: You must not…

He waited.

No continuation came.

No meaning. No directive. Just the absence of an ending.

He stepped forward. The world hesitated. But did not resist.

He understood something now.

Not clearly.

Not yet.

But something vital had attempted to reach him, and failed.

And whatever was coming, he would meet it without the guidance that had once been meant for him.

Whatever the Audient had been, it had known him.

And now it was gone.

The Echo Collapse deepened.

And the Proxy walked onward.

Toward the spiral.

Toward the name no one could remember.