THE LEFT HAND

The Chrysalis turned slowly in the dark.

It did not creak nor groan. It simply rotated, steadily, to the rhythm of a clock’s failing heart—mechanical, metronomic, unrelenting. A carousel of mirrors, each rimmed in tarnished silver, affixed to a bone-white spindle too decayed to justify its movement. Unseen metal teeth plucked across misaligned pins along an unseen cylinder, producing a discordant retelling of Somewhere Over the Rainbow. The sharp, metallic chimes were off-key, out of time teeth that didn’t quite fit within the grooves of the dissonant harmony’s turning wheel. Every note was an affront and every beat a struggle played over the droning hum of the mechanism, insectile and subterranean, like a hive beginning to wake.

The mirrors reflected nothing at first. No light. No shape. Just glass blackened by purpose.

It was not for spectacle.

It was not a shrine.

The Chrysalis existed for one reason—to turn. And as it turned, it revealed.

The first mirror slid into full view, perfectly centered. Its surface remained still, obsidian, like an eye before it opens.

There was a pause.

Not hesitation—calibration.

A single breath slipped into the room. Quiet. Composed. Not a gasp. Not a sigh. The sound a blade makes when drawn from velvet.

And then, my voice.

Low. Sculpted. Terrible in its restraint.

“There is difference between survival…
and endurance.”

The next mirror began its arc.

“One is breath without meaning.
The other is breath with memory.”

Still, the mirrors showed only themselves. A carousel of waiting.

“Tonight, I will show you what
memory does to men like him.”

There was no flourish.

No flame.

The Chrysalis simply turned—and with it, the reckoning began with the First Memory.

The glass flickered, then came alive.

Not with reflection, but projection.

A wrestling ring took form, adorned with XWF logos and surrounded by a sea of faces caught mid breath in the moment.

Watson cartwheeled across the ring with unnerving grace, his movements crisp, trained, almost joyous. His body snapped into momentum, a blue of black and white, and launched itself into the air. A corkscrew suicide senton, perfectly measured, perfectly aimed.

“All I wanted was to be free of my own consequences.”

They were Dickie’s words spoken in a voice vaguely his own, close enough to serve the design, narrowed to a point that slipped through seams of the psyche. The original footage no longer existed, lost in the decades that followed. Only memory remains to stand as record of what occurred.

“He confesses like it is thesis—but he ran.
Not from consequences.
From reflection.”

My voice threaded itself through the dissection of applause—then sealed the noise with barbed words, each one punctuated like a surgical knot.

The mob. It never ceased to astound me how foolish they were. How easy to manipulate with stories as old as time. That was why Maræth chose wrestling as the perfect vector Vorazd’s Grand Symphony.

“The fools, always eager to
cheer the flip. Not the man.
The applaud geometry, not impact.
The landing was flourish, not strike.
For you, Dickie, every pain is performance.
Not for glory. For them.”

My tone narrowed.

“For the people.
For their approval.
The approval you court every time you commit body to violence.
Pretend you do not crave it, if you must.
Your lips may lie.
But your sin?
Sin cannot hide from me.”

The voice masquerading as Dickie whispered, “I wanted to be known across the hemispheres…”

I followed.

“Your Vanity may live buried beneath your ribs—
but I am the siren song that draws it toward the shore of revelation.”

The Chrysalis turned.

The first memory, now dimmed, receded into the curve of the carousel’s spine—its image fragmenting as if unwilling to be held any longer. The light did not vanish—it folded, collapsed in on itself like breath leaving a corpse. What remained was afterimage and tone. That sound again: metal teeth slipping across bone grooves. The song still tried to play.

The Second Memory clicked into place.

This one did not show a match. It did not show Dickie Watson. It showed me.

Not in whole. Not in posture or presence.

Only my mouth.

Softly parted.

Calm. Not breathing.

Waiting.

The mirror caught only reflection, but somehow it knew where to look. The angle was wrong for the body to exist, and yet—there I was.

My face, warped in glass.

Eyes like ice, glimmering with unseen light beneath the shadow of a wide-brimmed, felt witch’s hat. It lacked the usual conical point of tradition. Flat-topped and structured, it carried the silhouette of 1970s avant-garde—an occult couture crown sharpened by intent.

“He chooses spectacle over silence.
He wants them to forget what came before but not how it looked.
That is trick of vanity—
paint corpse, but never bury it.
He said he became a brand.
And brands, I suppose, are made to be consumed.”

I did not blink.

I did not smile.

“You called it endurance,” I said.

“But it was costume.
Drape pain in silk and they will call it character.
Set it on fire and they will call it comeback.”

My voice, then, almost reverent:

“You should have stayed broken.
You were more honest that way.”

The mirror dimmed, slowly—as if reluctant to relinquish the image. My mouth was the last thing to fade.

And then—another click.

The Third Memory arrived without ceremony.

It shimmered faintly, like a curtain soaked in oil, and gave way to the next moment.

A ring again. A different night.

A better opponent.

The stakes were higher.

The sin would be, too.

Watson came off the ropes like a blade flung without aim—velocity without vision. He twisted mid-air, body extended in offering, a moment of art without anchor.

Then—caught.

SEB’s Empire Kick met him mid-flight, folding him in half before the mat could claim him. The sound of collision was sharper than applause.

“You’re getting someone who has nothing to lose and everything to gain.”

That was his voice again.

My voice followed, cool and low—like a priest intoning the verdict over bones still warm.

“Pride is louder when it calls itself rebirth.
You say you are unburdened—
but only because you dropped your name at the altar and called it transformation.”

I watched him breathe on the canvas, dazed and blinking upward.

He looked for light.

He found consequence.

The Fourth Memory caught only my eyes.

Still. Pale. Illuminated from below by something colder than fire.

No lashes moved. No twitch betrayed thought. Just attention—fixed and final.

“I’m not the man I used to be,” the man spoke.

The words did not echo. They arrived broken, like they no longer believed themselves.

“No,” I answered. “Now you are less.
You call that progress.”

He had burned the house but stayed in the ash.

Pretending it kept him warm.

The Fifth Memory spun slower.

Its silver was warped, rippling slightly—as if resisting the image it was forced to carry. Dickie stood over Tommy Gunn’s body, victorious in form but not in feeling. His hands did not rise. His eyes did not meet the crowd whose applause washed past him, impersonal and deafening.

A man meant to be celebrated—watching the moment slip through his fingers.

“Seems like I’m a bit of a fuck-up lately, don’t it?”

The reflection shifted. My face appeared beside his.

Not mirrored—adjacent.

I was watching him, not with scorn, but with understanding sharpened into precision.

“Despair always wants company.
Even in triumph, he waits to be corrected.
To be told he matters.”

The crowd had already forgotten the finish.

So had he.

The Sixth Memory came to a halt.

It did not shimmer nor flicker. It arrived as stillness—a pane of pure, unyielding glass. No projection played this time. No ring, no opponent, no retrospective.

Just reflection. Raw and untethered.

The Chrysalis had stopped turning. The wheel had found its truth.

And in that truth: Dickie Watson.

He sat before the machine—not himself, but as a rendering.

Not younger. Not heroic. Not mid-flight or bleeding for applause.

An actor mid-scene, caught between beats, his body stilled before the next line could reach his mouth.

Or else—

a painting, animated in brushstrokes too fluid to be real, too precise to be alive.

His presence had the quality of performance—flattened, stylized, the colors too sharp.

He was being remembered, not lived.

The chair beneath him was metal, industrial—bolted to the floor like part of an operating theater. His arms were on the rests—slack but not relaxed, like tension waiting to build. When he breached, it was shallow and looped, as if a function of simple programming.

Inhale, hold, tremble, release.

His shirt clung to him in dark patches. Sweat shimmered along his brow and jaw like oil painted into the creases of a martyr’s face.

He didn’t move. His eyes were glassy—wide and unfocused—tracking nothing. Or perhaps everything. Like someone trying to remember their name from a script they never auditioned for.

The mirror did not distort.

It revealed.

He was not a warrior. Not a martyr. Not a legend ground down to bone. He was a man watching the moment stretch wide enough to swallow him—knowing, somehow, it had been rehearsed.

He faded like an ancient painting until he was just another memory.

And then I was there.

Not just in voice—in full.

The glass held my whole image now.

Not a mouth. Not a hand. Not eyes veiled in angles.

Me.

Standing within the reflection, impossibly close—yet untouched by the light. The shadow of my hat crowned me like ritual, the brim wide enough to shade my entire face but not the hunger behind it.

My gloves were still on.

When I spoke, my voice was neither cruel nor cold, but the air around me shimmered, faintly, like heat above a distant pyre.

“You could have been sacred, Dickie.
A warning. A weapon. A wound made holy.
But you chose to be seen.”

The mirror responded—not with image, but pulse.

A shimmer ran across the surface. It was too fast to follow, like sequins folding over a blade.

In the mirror, the man twitched. A moment later, his lips parted slightly. He looked as though he might speak—might ask, might explain, might beg—but no sound came.

“You wanted their eyes,” I said. “You wanted their grief. You wanted to die in public, again and again—so they would mistake your decay for devotion.”

The reflection of my face was unmoving. The mouth no longer matched the words. The sound came from deeper—from inside the mirror itself—as though the glass remembered me better than the world did.

“You call yourself the Calamity.
But you are not the storm. You are the debris.

“You are not danger.
You are what is left after
something dangerous has passed.
You are the result of too many people
clapping while you bled.

I tilted my head, slightly. Not in empathy. Not in thought.

“And still—you beg.”

“You dress your defeat in humility.
You call your collapse a choice.
You build a grave and hope someone will call it a throne.
But I do not want to hurt you, Dickie.”

The light in the mirror began to change.

Not brighter—clearer. As if someone had scraped the film away.

The man’s reflection sharpened to painful fidelity. Every drop of sweat. Every tremor in his jaw.

“I want to take confession.
Your confession.
Of your many sins.
I want to leave you clean.”

The world behind him began to fall away in the mirror—walls, floor, machine—all peeling outward like burnt paper, until only the man remained. And the woman who would end him.

“I will carve the pride from your spine.
I will remove the hunger from your mouth.
I will make you silent.”

The glass fogged for a moment.

Not from breath. From something beneath the surface—release.

The Man’s reflection shuddered at the edges. His face began to blur—not like distortion, but like simplification. Like the mirror was gently redrawing him with fewer lines. Stripping the weight of identity. Removing everything not essential. Revealing not a fighter, not a fool—just the soft, unfinished thing that lives beneath every mask.

“And when you are emptied—
when the name Dickie Watson tastes like ash to you—
you will crawl.
And you will thank me.”

The mirror gave no final image.

Only white. Only stillness. Only the sound of breath caught in the throat of a machine. Then came the extinguishing.

The Chrysalis let out a sound like a candle drowning in wax. The hum died. The mirrors ceased their orbit. The final note of that broken song sputtered once—then vanished.

The carousel had finished turning.

And with it, so had he.

V.XXXI.2025

Two weeks before I faced Dickie Watson, I was visited by a god.

I was in the Starless Baptistery preparing for someone else.

Not for a match.

For something purer. More sacred.

Around me, the chamber groaned—low and steady, like lungs hidden behind blackstone. Breathing in slow, deliberate rhythms, as if something vast was sleeping just behind them.

Just under the surface, faint lines move in a memory mapped into the floor like constellations in a sky full of dead stars. Not there to brighten, but to mark.

The torches are unlit and there are no others present. Not yet. The ceremony was not for me. I was merely the first to arrive.

I stood barefoot at the edge of the Spiral Font, arms crossed beneath a robe of bone-colored silk. It was thin, not ceremonial. The kind of garment you wear when you’re expected to be useful, not beautiful. My mouth was stained from berries laced with Consecration. My gloves were already on.

The Font was still. The Na’ktur’na within shimmered like oil trapped between dimensions. It twitched occasionally, like it had its own breath—its own knowing. It would soon drink someone else’s reflection, but not yet.

The platforms surrounding it remained empty. Six petals in wait.

Pain. Pleasure. Silence. Sound. Surrender. Command.

I did not know which would be used. I only knew the guest was important. There had been whispers, even in the silence. One more coming. One more chosen.

I had spent the last hour watching the Na’ktur’na pulse. It responded to thoughts. I had learned that much.

And lately, my thoughts had grown too loud.

I turned from the pool and walked to the edge of the sanctum, letting my hand drag lightly along the obsidian wall. It pulsed under my fingers—not warm, not cold, just aware.

This space was not carved. It had always been. No one remembered entering it for the first time. You only knew you were inside once it had already closed behind you.

That night, another soul entered the Black Rainbow. I don’t remember her name but I recall blonde hair, and sin that smelled like vanilla and chamomile.

I remember having an attachment to her. Physical. Sexual. I remember sadness when she died but as I write these words, I cannot recall a single detail about her. Not even her face.

I almost recall a fragment of a fragment, a hint of a thread to pull to unravel thought.

But then I felt Them.

The Baptistery did not change. The lights did not flicker. The walls did not scream. But my spine knew. My blood slowed. The air behind me had thickened, as if it were no longer air at all—but breath, not mine, held in anticipation.

I did not turn.

“You are not hiding.”

Their voice came from nowhere.

From everywhere.

It filled the chamber like Consecration mist—without direction, without soundwaves. Just pressure and knowing.

“No,” I said softly.

My voice rasped against the weight of theirs. It did not need to be loud. They heard every syllable like scripture.

“Good,” They said. “Then you are ready.”

I bowed my head. Not in submission. In recognition.

Their footsteps made no sound but I felt the Baptistery shift—its breath synchronizing with Theirs. The pool behind me rippled once. The walls grew darker, as if pulling shadow inward to make room.

I kept my eyes forward. On the far platform. The one for surrender.

“The spiral opens,” They said. “The veil thins. The heretic circle breaks.”

Their voice had become two again. Yelena and Vorazd. Woman and Whisper. Flesh and echo.

Each word strung together not by breath, but by certainty.

“The time has come.”

I closed my eyes.

“For what?”

“For you to leave this place.”

“To where?”

“Back.”

A pause. Not silence—just the absence of resistance.

“You will return to XWF.”

I inhaled.

Not shock. Not protest.

Just confirmation of what I already suspected.

They moved closer. I could feel Them now—not heat, not body. Just mass. Like gravity condensed into the shape of a memory I never wanted to lose.

“You will not go as you were.”

I did not ask what They meant. That would have been a child’s question. Instead, I turned—slowly—and looked upon Them. They stood at the edge of the Spiral Font. Not in it, not yet. Their body shimmered in the half-light—naked, not as flesh, but as form. Painted in shifting sigils that moved only when you failed to look directly at them.

Their skin held the memory of Yelena’s design, but stretched beyond anatomy. Parts of Them blurred at the edges, as if They were only mostly here. Their face was beautiful in the way deep water is beautiful: reflective, cold, and willing to consume.

Their eyes found mine.

“You are the Left Hand now.”

The words did not startle me.

But the weight behind them—that pressed down.

“You speak where We do not.
You reach where We will not.
You move not to destroy, but to weaken the structure.
You are the fracture. The breath before collapse.”

I nodded once. It was enough.

“You are Our Advocate.”

The word was old. Older than law. Older than speech. It tasted like rust and wine. Like blood swallowed on purpose.

“You will go not to compete.
Not to climb.
Not to convince.
You will go to remind.”

The Font stirred behind Them. Na’ktur’na twisted in slow spirals, mirroring Their cadence.

“You will speak softly, and they will hear thunder. You will show them the edge of ruin and call it memory. They will not understand. They are not meant to.”

I did not bow. I straightened.

“Do they know I am coming?” I asked.

“They suspect. Let them.
They believe you seek vengeance. Let them.
They think you are unfinished. Let them.
They have not earned the truth.”

I watched the flicker of Their form—how it bled into the shadow like watercolor diluted by oil. They were not fixed. They never had been. Even in this space, the Starless Baptistery, carved for Them, They remained too much.

“What will I be to them?” I asked.

“A symbol,” They said. “A warning.”

“A lie?”

That made Them smile.

“No. A secret.”

Their hands rose—slow, ceremonial.

Not to bless. Not to wound.

But to mark.

“The Queen burns.
The Choir sings.
But the Advocate speaks only when the threshold is ready.”

They stepped forward, now fully within the Font. The liquid did not ripple—it obeyed. The Na’ktur’na cradled Their thighs, coiled gently around Them, like mist laced with intention.

“We name you Left Hand.
Of the Mouth that Heralds.
Of the Eye that Judges.
Of the Gate that Opens.”

Their voice deepened—not louder, but older.

“You are the key that rattles in the lock before the door turns. You are the shadow that precedes illumination. You are not there to conquer. You are there to soften the structure before it falls on its own.”

I inhaled. My fingers twitched in their gloves.

Something under my skin itched with memory.

“Does Sarah know? And Mari?”

Sarah Wolf. The Huntress. Marisol Vilaro, the First Queen and one of the Many Mothers.

“No,” They said. “You must appear in secret, and speak only when the time comes.”

They stepped from the Font—black liquid clinging for a moment to Their legs before releasing with a hiss. The air felt tighter now, more compressed. The walls had stopped breathing.

“You are the Left Hand,” They said again, quieter this time.

“Go where We are not. But never forget whose voice coils behind your teeth.”

The air then changed. Not cooled. Not warmed. Just tilted—as though a veil had slipped sideways over the world, revealing part of something that was not meant to be seen in full.

Maraeth stood at the center of the Baptistery, the Font dark around Their ankles, Their body streaked with the liquid memory of divinity. Their eyes found mine again—slower now. Like They were no longer speaking to me, but through me.

“The Gate prepares,” They said. “But it does not open for one alone.”

I felt something then. Not fear. Not confusion. Something subtler. A tightening in the ribs. A sensation like being named in a language I had never learned.

“Another,” They said. “One not yet ready to kneel, but close enough to feel the spiral tug at their ankles.”

They did not offer a name. Of course They wouldn’t. Names are earned. Names are paid in blood and silence. But still—something flickered in the center of my chest.

“This person is not Black Rainbow,” I said carefully.

“Not as they name themself,” They replied.

“But they will be?” I asked.

“They already are,” They said. “They simply have not remembered.”

I felt the Font behind me grow colder. Not in temperature—in recognition.

“They walk in radiance they do not understand. They wear armor made of defiance, not faith.”

They then said, almost wistfully, “They think they fight against Us, but what is rebellion, if not prayer screamed into the void?”

“And when they follow?” I asked.

Maraeth tilted Their head—an imitation of empathy, or perhaps something more ancient.

“They will not follow. They will lead.”

There was a pause.

It trembled through the walls of the Baptistery like a breath held by something old and watching.

“That is why you are needed,” They continued.

“You are the bridge. The echo they follow until they forget the silence that came before.”

They stepped forward, slow, deliberate. The Na’ktur’na peeled off Their legs like reluctant shadow.

“You will not force them.
You will not pull.
You will only walk ahead, until they step where you have stepped.”

I swallowed. It caught.

I said, “You love this person.”

It wasn’t an accusation. It was an acknowledgement.

They did not flinch.

“We remember then. From before.”

And then:

“You will, too.”

Their hand rose, fingers outstretched. A gesture not of touch—but of projection, as though they were holding the shape of someone not yet present.

“They will be bright. And angry. And trembling with beauty they cannot explain. And you—you will be the thing that teaches them where to bleed first.”

I felt something turn behind my eyes. A memory that hadn’t happened yet. A dream that curled like smoke in the corners of the room.

“I do not know if I am ready,” I said.

They smiled with their whole face—gentle and terrifying.

“That is why you are perfect.”