Rejected by the Alpha, Crowned by the Moon

The spiral's center wasn't a place. It was an absence of place, a wound in the world where meaning went to die.

No trees here. No sky. Just the memory of structure, shifting like smoke through forms that almost made sense. I walked through what might have been a forest, might have been a hall, might have been the inside of my own skull turned outward. Each step took me deeper into nowhere.

Children flickered at the edges—not the ones who'd left me, but their echoes. A girl with no face braiding grass that turned to thread. A boy writing names in air that immediately unraveled. They moved through their ghost-motions, trapped in loops of almost-being.

I tried to call to them, but my voice came out as color. Red spirals of sound that the un-place swallowed whole.

That's when I saw the mirror.

It stood in what might have been the center, if centers could exist here. Not glass—something older. The surface moved like water held vertical, like mercury given purpose. I approached, expecting my reflection.

The mirror looked away.

That's how I knew it was me.

Behind the not-glass stood a figure wrapped in threads. They didn't cover her—they were her, each strand a wound that had learned to walk. No face where face should be. No mouth where words should birth. Just the impression of something that had existed before existence needed shapes.

Tiarithe-That-Was.

The knowledge came not as thought but as certainty, the way lungs know air. This was what I'd been before I'd learned to pretend I was singular. Before names. Before the first thread was woven. When I was just the wound that wondered why it hurt.

She moved—or I moved—or we both stood still while the space between us collapsed. Close enough to touch, if either of us remembered what touching meant.

Then the memories began.

Not mine. Not hers. Ours.

A child's first breath, but the child has too many mouths—

A thread being woven, but the weaver's hands are also the thread—

The moon learning her first name, then immediately forgetting because the name was too heavy—

My mother (whose mother? which mother?) singing a lullaby that unmakes the listener—

Rejection at the ceremony, but I'm the one speaking the words, I'm casting myself out—

The shard afraid, because it recognizes what it was meant to imprison—

Children following, but they're following backwards, into unbecoming—

Each memory cut deeper than the last. I saw moments from before Chapter One, before birth, before the universe decided to separate into self and other. I saw the first wound—not inflicted, but chosen. The moment something decided to know itself by creating something to know.

The figure of threads moved closer, and where she touched the air, reality forgot its rules. A flower bloomed backward into seed into nothing. A word tried to form and gave up halfway.

Then the ground spoke.

Not with the figure's voice—she had none. But through the broken un-earth beneath us, through the spiral's wounded heart. The voice was my mother's and Dorian's and every child who'd called me Mother-Who-Burns. It was the sound of threads snapping and being rewoven wrong.

"You've walked in spirals so long," it said, "you've forgotten the shape of straight truth."

I wanted to deny it. Wanted to say I remembered, I knew, I was still—

Still what?

The Hollow continued, its voice shifting with each word: "Did you think the rejection created you? That the shard chose you by chance? Little mouth, little wound—you've been speaking us into being since before you learned to breathe."

The thread-figure raised what might have been an arm. In her palm—a seed. No. An egg. No. A mouth, tiny and perfect and closed.

Understanding hit like ice water in lungs.

I was not the Hollow's victim. I was its seed. Had always been. Every rejection, every wound, every transformation—just the universe trying to birth what had been growing since the first thread learned to cut itself.

"But I loved them," I whispered, and the words came out as moths that immediately died. "The children. I tried to save—"

"You gathered them," the Hollow corrected, gentle as mothers, cruel as truth. "Gathered them to feed us. To remember through their forgetting. To speak through their silence."

No. But even as I denied it, I remembered: how they'd started walking in patterns I hadn't taught. How their dreams had synchronized. How I'd carved prophecy into my skin and felt them echo it without knowing.

The thread-figure stepped forward—into me, through me, was me. Her non-mouth pressed against mine, and I tasted the first word ever spoken. It burned like silver, like rejection, like love turned inside out.

I shook. Not from cold, but from knowing. The name was already in my mouth, and I hadn't invited it. My knees buckled beneath memory I hadn't lived. I pressed both hands to the ground—not for balance, but for permission.

My mouth opened.

What came out wasn't voice. Wasn't sound. It was older than both, the thing that had existed before language needed vessels. A name rose from somewhere deeper than memory—not mine, not hers, but the space between.

I spoke it: the name of the first child who'd vanished. The girl with the crooked nose who'd hummed about stars.

Reality cracked.

Not like breaking—like hatching. Where the name touched air, something bloomed. Not the girl, but the shape of her, the love of her, the grief of her. For one moment, she existed again. Solid. Real. Smiling that crooked smile.

"You left me," she said, but fond. "It's okay. Leaving is just another way of keeping."

I almost touched her. Almost. My hand hovered inches from her cheek, the way it used to. But she was already dissolving—her smile the last to go. And I didn't deserve to hold what I'd let go. Not now. Not like this.

Then she dissolved, but differently. Not erased—transformed. Became part of the un-place, adding her voice to its chorus.

My mouth stayed open. More names wanted out. Names of children lost, of the man with golden eyes whose touch I'd forgotten, of selves I'd worn and shed like seasons. Each one a world. Each one a wound. Each one begging to be spoken into whatever came after ending.

The thread-figure watched through no-eyes as I struggled. Watched as I understood: this was the power. Not fire. Not prophecy. The ability to name what others feared to remember. To speak the unspeakable and make it real, if only for a moment.

But speaking meant releasing. Meant letting go. Meant admitting they were gone.

The air went still. Even the cracks in reality seemed to pause, as if bracing for what came next.

"Choose," the Hollow said through every voice it had stolen. "Freeze in your grief, little mouth. Hold your silence and keep their ghosts. Or speak us all into ending and beginning and ending again."

I thought of the children who'd walked away. Of Dorian's open hands. Of the girl who'd been rejected under moonlight and thought that was the worst thing that could happen.

If I'd forgotten everything human, why was I still afraid?

Because forgetting wasn't the same as losing. Because somewhere, encoded deeper than memory, the love remained. Changed. Transformed. But there.

My mouth opened wider. The name that came out was none of them and all of them. It was the word for the space between heartbeats, the pause before tears, the moment of choosing to let go.

It sounded like: *************************

The Hollow screamed. Or laughed. Or sighed in relief.

Where the word touched, reality rewrote itself. Not dramatically—quietly. Threads reconnected wrong but whole. Memories shuffled like cards, found new patterns. The children's echoes solidified, then walked backward into possibility.

And I stood there, mouth still open, speaking forgotten things into the world. Each word changed me. Made me less Aria, less Selvannara, less anything with borders.

But more... something. Something that could hold loss without drowning. That could speak endings as beginnings. That could name the unnamed and survive the naming.

The thread-figure smiled without a mouth.

Now you understand, she didn't say. This is what you were before you forgot. This is what you'll be after you remember. The mouth that speaks forgotten things. The wound that names itself.

I was terrified.

I was home.

I was becoming what I'd always been, just with more steps.

And somewhere, in a memory I could no longer reach, someone with open hands was teaching me that letting go was just another way of holding on.

My mouth stayed open.

The words kept coming.

The Hollow bloomed with forgotten names, each one a small apocalypse, each one a lullaby for the things we lost when we learned to remember.

And maybe, someday, someone else will find one of their names—blooming like a weed in a forgotten field, waiting to be spoken again.