The air tasted of iron and salt.
Solan stood barefoot before the breach, where the stones of the Veiled Labyrinth ended in curling black roots and glasslike soil. The threshold shimmered, not with light, but with the absence of it—a tear in space that hissed with silence. Behind him, the girl swayed, still humming that fractured lullaby.
She had no name yet. Not truly. Not one the system recognized.
But the threads of the Nameless Core pulsed from her like the veins of a god-blooded heir. Her breath coiled frost onto his skin, though the air held no chill. Her eyes glimmered with echo-light, reflecting things not yet born.
The Hollow Choir had marked her.
Solan watched her silently, remembering how she had emerged from the oracle's pool with bloodless feet and a voice that spoke truths even Wyrm would not translate. She was not entirely child, nor entirely wraith.
The system had not registered her as hostile. Nor alive. Simply:
[Entity: Null-Class Anomaly]
Observation Status: Passive Tier Estimation: Unknown
Solan stepped forward. Each movement pressed his consciousness against a tide of unreal pressure—like pushing into a dream that didn't want him. The soil beneath his toes pulsed once, as if breathing.
Wyrm stirred. "This place remembers what the world wants to forget."
Before them stretched what might once have been a garden.
Thorned trees grew inverted, roots clawing the fog-choked sky. Flowers of flayed color pulsed open in rhythms timed to distant heartbeats. Statues lined the path ahead, faceless and kneeling, each clutching mirrors that showed not reflection but hunger.
The girl walked ahead of him, unafraid.
Everywhere she stepped, the Labyrinth recoiled.
"You knew this place," Solan whispered. He didn't know if he was asking or stating. The girl turned, slightly. Her head tilted. Then she pointed upward.
A shard of broken moonlight bled through the clouds, illuminating the gate ahead.
It was no ordinary gate. No door or arch. It resembled the inside of an opened ribcage, bones towering and interlocked, grown not built. Upon its crown burned the symbol etched into Solan's soul after the Trial of the Oracle:
Vareth'alun.
The True Name he had not yet dared to speak.
The system remained quiet, watching, perhaps unwilling to interfere.
As he passed beneath the ribbed arch, the sensation struck him—his name, his identity, his very self twisted. The Mask of the Forsaken Tongue heated across his jawbone, scarring his skin anew. Soulchains buckled.
Wyrm hissed. "We are seen. Not by one. By all."
The Garden of Unmaking stretched wide. In the center of its unnatural geometry, a pool of mirrored blood shimmered. Petals fell upward. Runes hovered in the air like ash from a fire that hadn't happened yet.
The girl stood at the pool's edge.
Solan reached her.
She looked up at him and, for the first time, spoke in a voice not her own. It was layered—a mother, a god, a scream.
"Do you remember what was taken from you?"
The words hit him like a curse.
A memory forced itself into his mind: a woman's touch, warm and calloused. A song hummed under breath. A knife. Screams. Silence.
He staggered.
The blood-mirror twisted.
[System Notification: Reckoning Triggered]
Domain: Memory Unmaking Outcome: Unstable
The girl touched the surface. Her form wavered.
For a heartbeat, Solan saw through her.
A throne carved of bone and root. A sea, black and endless. A figure standing with a crown of ash.
Her.
Not as she was now, but as she would become.
Wyrm screamed inside his mind. Not with words, but fear.
"Who are you?" Solan asked.
The girl turned. Her lips moved.
No sound.
The system flickered.
[Conceptual Compression Detected]
Unsealed Keyword: "She is the Mouth that Remembers Names."
The garden began to collapse. Roots trembled. Statues cracked. The blood-mirror boiled.
The girl stepped forward and pressed her forehead against Solan's. A whisper tunneled into his skull:
"You must not wake the Deep One yet."
Then she was gone.
Vanished.
Solan was left alone in the Garden of Unmaking as it dissolved into fragments of light, leaving only the gate, the symbol, and the scream of something rising beneath the Veil.
He turned to run.
But the garden would not let him go without a price.
The Labyrinth shifted.
The next Tier waited.
And the name in his soul burned anew.