Name Beneath the Name

The spiral behind them sealed with a sigh.

The child stood motionless, eyes reflecting too many skies.

Sienna approached first, not out of courage but instinct. “What do we call you?”

The child tilted their head. “Names break when repeated too often. But if you need one… call me Cero.”

Kai frowned. “Like zero?”

“No,” Cero said. “Like the space between the signal and the silence.”

They turned, gesturing toward the path ahead—narrow, unfamiliar, lined with stones etched in jagged patterns. “This place was once a cradle. A crossing. Now it’s becoming something else.”

Sienna squinted at the horizon. It pulsed, like an echo folding in on itself. “Becoming what?”

“A memory that doesn’t want to be remembered.”

Cero walked without sound, each step brushing petals that shimmered and dissolved. “You think the wells were designed to preserve. Some were. But not this one. This one was meant to contain.”

Kai stopped. “Contain what?”

Cero turned slowly. “You already heard it, didn’t you? The broken tone. The static beneath the truth. What lives here isn’t evil. It’s unsorted. Forgotten stories, discarded selves, abandoned versions.”

They stepped onto a small rise overlooking a crater of shattered glass and tangled roots. “It doesn’t want to hurt you. But it doesn’t know how to speak.”

Sienna’s voice cracked. “And what do we do?”

Cero looked up at her with something close to sorrow. “You help it remember what it meant to become.”

Then they vanished.

No flash. No sound.

Only wind.

And below them, something began to stir.

Not from malice.

But from longing.