Beneath Vellmar, deeper than sewers, deeper than tombs, the old catacombs stirred. They were carved in the age of monarchs—when kings believed even their bones deserved thrones of stone. Now the dead shared their halls with something darker, something long-forgotten and never meant to awaken.
The Chainfather descended in silence, each step measured, each breath the hush of winter wind through broken crypts. Chains coiled like roots around his ankles, dragging softly behind him with a whisper of inevitability. Two of his Voiceless followed, blind monks wrapped in gray silk, bound by silence, their bare feet bleeding on the broken steps. They made no sound. Their pain was ritual, and in the presence of the Chainfather, ritual was holy.
He did not need torches.
The dark knew him.
And it obeyed.
The walls dripped with time, moss-grown carvings spelling prayers to long-dead gods. No rats dwelled here. No worms. Only dust and echo, and the cold breath of what lay further still. The Chainfather moved as if guided by memory, or perhaps by something older than memory—an instinct that had grown roots deep within the marrow of the earth.
At the lowest vault, they came upon a sealed door, etched with the sigils of the First Empire—twelve suns arrayed in a circle, ringed by swords pointing inward. A warning, not an invitation.
He placed his hand upon it.
The stone did not groan. It did not resist. It shuddered—then split down the center like a wound re-opening after centuries.
Inside lay a sarcophagus, taller than a man, wide as a feast table, iron-clad and lined with blackened runes that pulsed faintly in the dark. The metal reeked of ash and old tears. On its surface, a single word was etched, in script so ancient even the Chainfather bowed his head to it:
Ashend.
The Chainfather stared.
"His name burns again," he whispered, voice like iron striking bone. "So I must burn his past."
He turned to the Voiceless.
"Wake it."
The monks obeyed, falling to their knees, whispering without sound. Their mouths moved in a rhythm known only to the Forgotten Orders. Their blood traced runes along the sarcophagus' base. The metal began to heat. The iron hissed. Something inside exhaled—a slow, deliberate breath. Not of life.
But of stolen names.
Meanwhile, in Highrest, dawn broke not with light, but with thunder. Storms rolled across the northern hills, and rain beat upon the keep's stones like distant drums.
Caedren stood over the forge, its fire steady despite the wind. Sparks leapt like fireflies in the gloom. Around him, scribes worked tirelessly to copy the scrolls Sorren had brought. Dozens of languages. Hundreds of hands. Truth made legible, not just for kings and scholars, but for shepherds, sailors, and survivors.
The scrolls would ride out in every direction. North to the frost-moots. South to the drowned cities. East to the dune palaces, west to the forested ruins where ash still fell like snow. Not to incite war. But to remind the world what truth once looked like.
But something in the fire disturbed Caedren.
A letter had been left on his table. No seal. No mark of passage. Just folded parchment, brittle at the edges, the ink still wet.
He opened it.
Three lines.
He remembers you.
He remembers Kael.
And he has opened the tomb beneath Vellmar.
The blood drained from Caedren's face.
He turned to Sorren, who stood nearby, arms buried in ink and scrolls. "What is Ashend?"
Sorren froze. The scroll in his hands fell, untouched.
"A weapon," he said. "Not forged of steel or fire—but of memory. The last name-eater."
Caedren frowned. "Name-eater?"
Sorren nodded slowly, face pale. "A thing bound in the age before Kael. Made by those who feared that legacy would outlive blood. It does not kill as we know it. It devours the meaning of a man. His story. His echo. It makes him never matter."
Caedren's hands clenched. "So the Chainfather won't kill me."
"No," Sorren said. "He'll make it so no one remembers why you ever stood. So that when you fall, there will be no songs. No fire. Only silence."
Far below Vellmar, the iron sarcophagus hissed louder. The runes on its sides turned red, then white, then vanished altogether. The monks screamed without sound, their skin peeling, eyes weeping ink. The chains around the sarcophagus snapped open, falling away like the rings of old crowns.
And then it opened.
Inside was no corpse.
No flesh.
Just shadow—dense, coiled like smoke that had never known light.
The Chainfather stepped forward, removed his veil. He stared into the thing that had no eyes, no voice, no shape.
"You know his name," he said. "You know what it means."
The shadow pulsed.
"Erase it."
The vault dimmed. The walls cracked. Names etched in tombs nearby crumbled into dust.
The dead moaned in their sleep.
Ashend had awakened.
And it was hungry.
That night, Caedren stood on the battlements of Highrest, watching the lightning rake the sky.
"He won't come with soldiers," he murmured to Neris, who stood at his side. "Not at first. He'll come with forgetting. With silence."
"Then we remind them," she said. "Every day. Every breath."
Below them, the courtyard bustled. Children played beside the smithy. Elders read the translated scrolls aloud. A young girl etched the circle-and-line sigil onto a stone with a bit of broken glass.
Sorren joined them. His face was grave.
"I saw it once," he said. "Years ago. A town where Ashend passed. No one knew their own names. Not their kin. Not their trade. Not even the stars. It left them breathing—but empty."
"We must anchor our names," Caedren said. "Etch them in more than memory. In stone. In song. In fire."
And that night, every person in Highrest carved their name into the walls of the keep.
Not as a record.
But as a shield.
They would remember.
Even if the dark came hungry.
Even if the sky forgot them.
They would remember.
Caedren.
Highrest.
The kingdom not of thrones.
But of truth.