The morning broke like rusted glass—dull light through a colorless sky, casting pale streaks across the twisted forest floor. Kael had not slept. Neither had the Codex, which pulsed faintly beneath his cloak like a second heartbeat. Or a wound.
He stood at the edge of their warding circle, watching where the Name-Eater had vanished hours before. No footprints. No broken twigs. Just stillness, as if the woods had swallowed the moment like a breath they dared not release.
"You saw one," Thorne said behind him, voice low and certain.
Kael didn't turn. "It wore my mark. Twisted."
Thorne stepped beside him, his weathered face unreadable. "They do that. Memory is what they hunger for—but it's not enough to take. They reshape it. Wear it like a mask."
Elen stirred near the campfire, groggy but alert. "It came close?"
Kael nodded. "It didn't attack."
"They don't always. Sometimes they just… watch." Thorne's eyes narrowed. "Sometimes, they remember pieces of us better than we do."
"That doesn't make sense," Kael muttered.
Thorne looked at him. "What in this forest has, boy?"
The group moved quickly that morning. Their path wound deeper into the Vale's outer reaches—an old hunting trail once used by Thornbearer scouts before the Sundering. The forest grew stranger the farther they walked. Trees twisted into unnatural arches. Moss shaped like symbols clung to the rocks. The silence was thick, but not empty—it was the silence of something listening.
At midday, they came to a clearing where five trees stood in a perfect circle. Beneath them, a stone tablet lay cracked and moss-covered. Thorne approached cautiously.
"This is a Name Vault," he said.
Kael blinked. "What's that?"
"A place where Thornbearers hid parts of themselves," Thorne answered. "Names too dangerous to be spoken. Truths they couldn't bear to carry."
Elen glanced around. "Like a grave?"
"Like a confession sealed in stone," Thorne murmured. "Some of us needed to forget in order to survive."
Kael stepped forward. "Can they be opened?"
"They can," Thorne said slowly. "But names don't like being buried. And they hate being unearthed."
Despite Thorne's warning, Kael felt the Codex shift as they drew near the vault. The air grew denser, charged. He knelt beside the tablet. Strange symbols spiraled across the stone—familiar yet impossible to decipher.
The Codex unlatched itself. Pages turned.
Kael didn't touch it. It moved on its own, guided by something older than thought. A thin sliver of ink lifted from one of the pages and drifted down to the vault like smoke. As it touched the stone, the ground trembled.
A seam split across the tablet. Air exhaled from beneath it—dry and stale, like breath held too long.
"Step back!" Thorne barked, drawing steel.
But Kael couldn't move. The vault had opened, and within it burned a flickering glyph—one that pulsed with the same energy as his Thornmark. A name, not spoken, but felt.
Kael reached out.
Kaelarion.
The name rang in his bones, not like a memory—but like a future spoken into the past. The glyph surged—and in that instant, Kael saw visions. A tower of roots and flame. A circle of masked figures chanting in ash. A crown of thorns wrapped around a dragon's skull.
Then darkness.
Kael fell backward, gasping. The Codex snapped shut.
Thorne helped him up. "You spoke a buried name."
"I didn't speak anything," Kael muttered. "It spoke me."
Thorne looked grim. "Then it knows you now."
Elen crouched near the vault. "What did you see?"
Kael hesitated. "A place. A tower. A dragon."
Thorne swore under his breath. "We need to move. Quickly."
"Why?" Kael asked. "What did I unlock?"
Thorne sheathed his blade. "Not a thing. A path. And now it's looking back."
They left the vault behind by dusk, following a stream that carved through a thicket of whispering trees. The sky had gone bruise-purple, and the wind now carried sounds that weren't just imagined—soft chimes, clinking like bones on glass.
By the time they made camp, Elen looked shaken. She hadn't spoken for hours.
Kael sat beside her as she cleaned her sword. "You alright?"
She looked up. "When you touched the vault… I saw something."
"What?"
"A field of swords. Names etched into every blade. But mine—" she paused, swallowing—"mine was broken."
Kael didn't know what to say.
Elen gave him a bitter smile. "You think we're all just following you because of prophecy? We each have a reason. A name we don't want to carry anymore."
Later that night, as Thorne took second watch, Kael dreamed again.
This time he stood at the edge of a black lake. Across it, a colossal shape coiled beneath the surface—scales the size of rooftops, wings folded like drowned cloth. Smoke rose from the water.
Vaelarith.
The dragon lifted her head, eyes like molten mirrors. When she spoke, the lake rippled with each word.
You reach into names you do not own. Their weight is not yours to bear.
Kael stepped forward. "Then why do they come to me?"
Because you are hollow. Because you burn.
She opened her mouth—not to roar, but to exhale. Flame poured from her jaws, not fire but memory—scenes from Kael's life flashing in reverse. His mother's face. A child's cry. A sword raised. Blood.
Then darkness again.
Kael awoke coughing smoke.
Thorne was already there, watching him closely. "Another dream?"
Kael nodded. "She's watching."
"Good," Thorne said. "Let her. Maybe she'll remember what she gave up."
Kael narrowed his eyes. "You know more than you let on."
Thorne didn't deny it. "You're not the first to bear a dragon's mark."
Kael's blood ran cold. "Then what happened to the others?"
Thorne stared into the fire.
"They forgot who they were."
The fire had long burned down to embers. Only the sound of wind stirring dead leaves and Thorne's slow breathing marked the edge between night and morning.
Kael sat on a stone, cloak tight around his shoulders, staring into nothing. The dream still clung to him like smoke. Vaelarith's voice hadn't faded—it echoed through his ribs like a second heartbeat.
You burn.
He clenched his fists. The Codex was still warm beneath his shirt, its pulse quiet but present, like a beast pretending sleep.
Thorne sat across from him, sharpening his blade. Not once had he asked what Kael had seen. He didn't need to.
"You said I'm not the first," Kael said softly.
Thorne's whetstone slowed. "No."
"What happened to the others?"
"They tried to be more than they were. Some failed. Others… forgot what they were becoming."
Kael frowned. "And what am I becoming?"
Thorne looked up. His eyes, usually as lifeless as carved bark, flickered with something almost like sorrow.
"A crucible."
They broke camp at dawn. The path ahead led them into a hollow known as Whispermere—a stretch of ravine where the trees grew pale, and the ground was littered with half-buried statues, broken armor, and thorns the size of swords.
Elen had gone silent again. She moved like a shadow, hand never leaving the hilt of her blade. Kael noticed her knuckles were bloodless.
The deeper they went, the more wrong the world felt.
The statues didn't sit or stand—they knelt. Every single one, in a circle that expanded the further they traveled. Some were human. Others… less so. One bore the features of a stag. Another, scales like overlapping obsidian leaves.
"What is this place?" Kael asked, voice low.
Thorne didn't answer at first.
Then: "A trial ground. A shrine. Maybe a prison."
Kael raised a brow. "That clears everything up."
Thorne scowled, but there was no venom in it. "No one knows. This was a place of remembering—and forgetting. The Thornbearers called it the Hall of Ash and Echo."
Kael paused at one of the statues, brushing dirt from its face. It was cracked down the middle, features eroded. But what struck him wasn't the expression—it was the chain wrapped around its throat.
"Why the chains?" he asked.
Thorne knelt beside him. "These were not statues. They were people."
Kael felt a chill settle deep into his bones.
Elen murmured behind them, "Name-Eaters?"
"No," Thorne said, rising. "Name-Guardians."
Further in, they came to the center of the hollow. A circular depression in the ground lay open, surrounded by rusted spires carved from black thornwood. At its heart, a pool shimmered—not with water, but with memory.
Images danced on its surface: faces, battles, voices too distant to hear. The pool rippled as Kael approached.
"It's calling you," Elen said.
Kael looked at her. "How do you know?"
"Because it stopped calling me the moment you stepped near."
Kael knelt by the edge. The Codex stirred again, its pages fluttering soundlessly. He placed his hand over the pool.
A shock raced up his arm.
Not pain—recognition.
Suddenly he was standing not in the hollow, but on a battlefield that stretched for miles. Ash fell like snow. The sun was red and bleeding.
Before him stood a figure clad in bark and chainmail, a long black sword in one hand, a crown of roots on their head.
They turned.
Kael gasped.
It was… him.
Not exactly. Older. Weathered. Eyes ringed with fire. But it was undeniably Kael.
The figure spoke, voice hollow with power.
"You are not ready to carry what must be burned."
Kael reached for the Codex.
"Then teach me."
The figure raised their sword. Fire poured from it.
Then—
Kael staggered back from the pool, gasping.
The images were gone. The water stilled.
Thorne caught him. "What did you see?"
"Myself," Kael said, heart pounding. "And something else."
Elen drew her sword. "Something's coming."
They all turned.
From between the spires, figures emerged—silent and slow. Half-faded bodies, dressed in patchwork Thornbearer armor. Their faces were smeared with ink.
Name-Eaters.
But these did not attack.
They knelt.
Kael's mark blazed white-hot.
One of the Name-Eaters stepped forward. She had no eyes—only hollow pits of flame—and in her hands she carried a book.
Not a Codex, but something older. Wrapped in vines, bleeding sap.
She held it out.
Kael didn't reach for it.
Thorne spoke, firm. "This is a test."
"What kind?"
"The kind that leaves you changed, or leaves you behind."
The book opened itself.
A voice—not the woman's, but something buried within the pages—whispered:
"One name must be surrendered, and one reclaimed. Choose."
Kael's head throbbed.
He saw flickers—his mother's voice. His childhood name. The day he was given the Thornmark. His old self. The self that feared. That obeyed. That hid.
And another name. Not Kael. Not Kaelarion.
A word burned in ink and flame: Ashwrought.
"What does it mean?" he asked aloud.
Thorne looked grim. "It means you're no longer who you were. But not yet who you'll be."
The book began to close.
Kael reached forward.
"I give up the name I wore."
The flame in the woman's eyes pulsed.
"And I claim the one that waits."
He touched the page.
Fire raced up his arm, into his chest. His Thornmark changed. The roots shifted. New glyphs bloomed—curved, jagged, spiraled.
The Name-Eaters howled—not in pain, but in reverence.
Then they vanished.
Only the book remained. Closed. Silent.
Kael stood, heart still hammering. His mouth tasted of ash.
"I am… Ashwrought."
Elen touched his arm. "Kael—"
"No," he said. "Still Kael. But more."
As they left the hollow, Thorne gave him a long look.
"You're changing."
"So you keep saying."
"This path has teeth."
Kael looked up at the trees, now distant and quiet.
"So do I."