"What comes next?"
Kael's voice barely echoed in the stone chamber, swallowed by the air like a secret.
Thorne didn't look at him, only stared forward into the dark beyond the broken archway.
Then he spoke, and his voice was quieter than before—almost reverent.
"The Name-Eaters."
Kael felt the chill before he heard it—the shift in the air, the way it pressed down on his skin like damp cloth. The old bones of the catacombs had whispered and creaked all along their descent, but now they fell utterly still.
Even the Codex at his side tensed, as if it too were listening.
Aron unslung his blade, checking its edge by instinct. Elen muttered a quick ward beneath her breath, and Bryn pulled a strip of leather between his teeth—the one he bit whenever he was trying not to shake.
"What are they?" Kael asked Thorne.
The old man didn't answer immediately. He knelt beside the crumbled archway and brushed aside loose debris, revealing the faded remains of a glyph beneath the dust—a name carved in a language Kael couldn't read. Or maybe once could.
It was partially burned away.
"They were like you once," Thorne said softly. "Chosen. Bearers of the Thorn."
Kael stepped closer.
"And now?"
"Now," Thorne said, standing, "they are hollow things. They fed on names not their own. Power they could not hold. They remembered everything—until they remembered nothing."
He turned to Kael, his eyes reflecting the faint lamplight.
"They consumed identity," Thorne said. "Until it consumed them."
The path beyond the arch grew narrower. It wound downward, sometimes through broken tunnels, sometimes between root-choked walls. The deeper they went, the more the stone looked charred—as if burned from within. The air smelled faintly of ash.
Kael's mark pulsed.
The Codex unwrapped itself in his satchel, its thorn-thread curling loosely like breath. Pages shifted. He didn't reach for it—it moved on its own, fluttering open to a spread he'd never seen.
Symbols scrawled in fire, edges smoldering, undulating across the parchment.
They weren't letters. They were wounds, each one dripping with power.
One curled upward from the page like smoke. It lifted—just barely—and faded into the air with a hiss.
Kael staggered.
"You saw it?" Elen whispered, her eyes locked on the Codex. "It moved."
"It's warning me," Kael said hoarsely.
"No," Bryn said. "It's marking you."
Thorne only nodded.
"They will come soon," he said. "And when they do, they'll remember what they were supposed to be. Only because of you."
They reached a chamber.
It had once been something holy—Kael could feel that much. Pillars held up a sagging ceiling, but the carvings along them were blackened, melted in places. Dozens of glyphs had been scraped away, as though someone had tried to erase them with hands and stone and blood.
At the center of the floor was a circle of bones.
Clean. Arranged. Reverent.
Kael moved toward it, lantern lifted.
And then he saw them.
Figures—half hidden in the shadows. Curled along the far wall, hunched in the alcoves. Dozens. Maybe more.
They weren't dead.
They breathed in shivers—fast, shallow, like animals sensing heat for the first time.
Their skin was pale, ashen—not merely from darkness but from something deeper, something unholy. Glyphs had been carved into their flesh, but they bled in reverse—as though the symbols drained from them rather than marked them.
One raised its head.
Its face had no eyes.
Only a stretched mouth filled with cracked teeth. Its lips moved.
Kael felt it before he heard it.
"Na…me…"
It didn't speak.
It remembered the word—and released it like a cough.
Another one turned toward him. Then another. They all began to stir.
Their joints popped. Their backs arched.
And then the room filled with whispers—not language, not quite, but fragments.
"Cyndrel…"
"…ashes…"
"…I was…"
"…Thorn…"
"…please…"
Kael stumbled back.
Thorne reached to his belt and pulled a small satchel of ash. He flung it in a circle around Kael, murmuring as he did. The ash caught fire—but no flame. Just light. Like memory igniting.
"They will not step into their own past," Thorne said. "Stand still."
The Name-Eaters crawled closer, limbs trembling, some dragging themselves on broken knees.
Elen raised her hands, palms glowing, preparing a ward.
"No magic," Thorne snapped. "They smell it. They want it. Give them nothing."
Kael's chest burned.
The Codex flared to life. Pages spun. Then halted.
A single symbol lifted from the page—unreadable, furious, bright.
It hovered between him and the creatures.
One of the Name-Eaters howled.
Not in rage.
In recognition.
Then, like a disease, they began to fall upon each other—grasping, biting, clawing, ripping skin to devour names carved into their own flesh. They wanted memory. They wanted power. They wanted identity.
And they didn't know what it was anymore.
Kael collapsed to his knees.
The Codex dimmed.
The Name-Eaters thrashed against the far walls now, lost in madness, some howling his name—no, a name, not his, but close. A name he had almost become. A name someone else had died holding.
"They sense the Thorn," Thorne said. "They smell it in your blood."
Kael's breathing slowed.
"They're like me?"
Thorne nodded. "They were."
"And I'll end up like them?"
Thorne didn't answer.
But Kael saw it in his eyes.
Later, when they left the chamber, none of them spoke for a long time.
Kael walked behind the others.
The hallway curved. Just as he turned the corner, something burned behind his eyes.
A shape—massive, winged, coiled.
It was only for an instant.
But it wasn't his imagination.
The air smelled like scorched parchment.
And Kael heard, not with his ears but in the roots of his thoughts, a name with no sound, only weight.
Vael—
Then it was gone.
Kael didn't tell the others.
Not yet.
But as they walked, the Codex whispered in the dark.
And somewhere far beneath, something stirred
They left the chamber of the Name-Eaters in silence.
Not because of fear—though fear stalked each step—but because something sacred had been broken. The Name-Eaters had not attacked like beasts. They had begged, remembered, wept without faces. Their madness was too human.
And Kael could still hear them.
He walked behind the others, one hand clenched around the edge of the Codex, the other brushing against the ragged thorn-mark on his arm. It itched now. Not just physically, but deeper—like something beneath the skin twisted, listening.
Bryn glanced back at him once.
"You're pale," he muttered.
Kael didn't answer. He wasn't sure the truth could be spoken aloud without crumbling into ash.
They reached a fork in the ancient passageways—one path veering into collapse, the other stretching downward into darkness that felt older than stone. The walls here were smoother, almost polished, but worn by more than wind or time.
It felt like they had entered a memory.
Thorne held up a finger.
"Wait," he whispered.
Then he knelt at the edge of the passage and ran two fingers across the ground. Ash. Faint. Scattered in a spiral.
"What's that mean?" Elen asked.
"It means we're not alone," Thorne said. "Someone walked this way. Something."
"Another Thornbearer?"
Thorne shook his head. "No. A seeker, maybe. A fool."
Kael felt his stomach tighten.
The Codex in his satchel shifted again, pages rustling like breath. He pulled it free and flipped to the section it had opened to during the encounter with the Name-Eaters.
The burning sigils were gone.
In their place, a circle had been drawn—one he hadn't written.
It was seared onto the page, and at its center was a single symbol: a jagged spiral of ink, blacker than night. Around it, faint lettering shimmered like scars.
"He who carries fire must burn away all that clings to shadow."
Kael closed the book.
They pressed onward.
The corridor narrowed until even Bryn had to duck. Roots pressed in from the walls like ribs. Kael touched one—it was warm. Pulsing. Almost alive.
They emerged into a vaulted chamber—round, domed, with a sunken pit at its center. Around the pit, hundreds of faded names had been carved in concentric circles. Some were scratched away. Others still burned faintly.
Kael felt himself drawn to them.
"What is this place?" he asked.
"A tomb," Thorne said. "Of those who bore the Thorn and died whole."
Elen knelt beside one of the name-circles. "So many…"
"Not all Thornbearers lose themselves," Thorne said. "Some choose silence. Some burn themselves out before the Thorn does it for them."
Kael moved to the center.
The Codex pulled itself open in his hands.
This time, the ink didn't rise.
It sank—dripping down onto the stone beneath him. And when it touched the name circle, the entire pit flared to life.
Lightless fire. Memory-fire.
It licked the air like a living tongue. The pit deepened—not physically, but psychically, stretching into something older than the stones.
Kael heard whispers.
Not the frantic scratching of the Name-Eaters.
These were clean, solemn. Voices that spoke in memory, not madness.
"He bears the Thorn… but not yet the name."
"Fire stirs beneath the veil."
"The dragon sleeps."
His knees buckled.
Kael found himself in a vision.
Not a dream.
Not a thought.
A place.
He stood atop a dead mountain, the wind screaming ash across broken spires. The sky was aflame, but not with sunlight—with fire that moved like smoke and breath. And in the sky, silhouetted against the red…
Wings.
A vast shadow coiled in the clouds, slow, serpentine.
Its eyes opened—and Kael knew they were not eyes at all, but truth, staring back at him.
Then a voice—not a human one—spoke.
"You remember me."
Kael didn't answer. He couldn't. His throat was dry, burned from within.
The creature circled once more above him, then descended—never landing, never touching the earth, as if it feared its own weight.
"You carry my brand. You bear my silence."
"Who are you?" Kael whispered.
"The Cinder Crowned. The last name never spoken. The fire that burned the first Codex."
Kael opened his mouth.
And then—he screamed.
He awoke on the floor of the tomb.
Bryn was gripping his shoulders, shouting. Elen hovered nearby, her warding hands glowing faintly. Thorne stood back, watching.
Kael blinked.
The pit was gone.
No fire. No names.
Just smooth stone.
"You fell," Bryn said. "You collapsed. The Codex flared up—your mark did too. Then it all just… stopped."
Kael sat up, gasping.
"I saw it," he said.
"Who?"
"Not who." His voice trembled. "What. A dragon. A beast. Wings of fire. It spoke."
The others looked to Thorne.
The old man's eyes had gone distant.
"You heard its voice?"
Kael nodded.
"Did it name itself?"
Kael hesitated. "No. But it said… it said it burned the first Codex."
Elen's mouth opened slightly.
"There were others?"
Thorne's voice was grave. "Before the Thorn chose mortals, there were Flamebearers. Those who didn't carry symbols in ink or blood—but in soul. They spoke the old names. The first names. Names that were burned into the bones of the world."
Kael's mark throbbed. He could feel it now—something waking inside him.
"Is that what I am?" he asked. "One of them?"
"No," Thorne said. "But something inside you is."
They left the tomb soon after.
None spoke much as they climbed back toward the higher tunnels.
But Kael kept feeling it—the weight, the warmth, the pressure of a name not yet spoken pressing against the inside of his skull like a heartbeat.
It wasn't just power.
It was a presence.
The Thorn was no longer silent.
And the Codex—still warm in his arms—had started turning its own pages again, one after another.
Toward a chapter that wasn't written.
Not yet.
But Kael knew—
Fire was coming.