The Rotforge Tavern was a carcass of its former self. What had once been a smithy-turned-alehouse now served as a haven for the damned—mercenaries without flags, arcanists too broken for guilds, and cultists too quiet to notice.
Its roof sagged under years of acid rain, and the hearth bled rust instead of warmth. The stench of mildew and old blood hung thick in the air. Behind the bar, a barkeep missing his tongue poured drinks with trembling hands.
Zevrak Kain sat in the corner booth, cloaked in shadow, surrounded by silence. His black-gloved fingers tapped rhythmically on the ironwood table—three taps, then two, then one. A cadence. A memory.
Serana stood across from him, face unreadable.
"You said there'd be answers," she said.
"There are. But you'll bleed for each one."
"I'm used to bleeding."
Zevrak gestured to the opposite seat. "Then sit. And listen."
She hesitated, then sat. Her sword never left her lap.
"You are broken," he began. "Not just in body, but in soul. I can feel it."
Serana's eyes narrowed. "You think you're whole?"
"No," Zevrak said. "But I remember the shape of who I was."
He leaned forward. "You were once a general. A tactician who broke holy battalions with shadowplay and mirror steel. You commanded legions of memory-eaters. I know because I watched you die in the Shatterfields. You died well."
Silence stretched between them.
Serana didn't speak. Didn't deny it.
"You want to be strong again," he said.
"I want purpose."
"Then serve me. Bind your blade to my cause. Not as a slave, but as an oathkeeper."
She scoffed. "And what's your cause, Zevrak Kain? The whispers? The plague? The madness?"
His gaze cut through her. "I am rebuilding the one weapon that all gods feared. My mind. My palace of iron thought. My seat of strategy and death. And I need pieces of myself I once placed in others. Like you."
That made her still.
"You're saying," she said slowly, "part of your mind is inside me?"
"A fragment. Buried. Cracked, maybe. But still useful."
She stared at him. "And if I say no?"
Zevrak didn't blink. "You'll wander this city until something hungrier than me finds you."
"And if I say yes?"
"Then I will awaken the part of you that the divine tried to bury. And together, we'll unmake everything they built."
She looked at him for a long time.
Then—quietly—Serana unsheathed her blade, set it on the table, and pressed her palm to its edge. Blood welled. She held it toward him.
"Then let it be forged in iron and ash. I serve you—until the end."
Zevrak accepted her blood, dipped a silver ring into it, and slipped it onto his finger.
The tavern trembled.
Somewhere distant, chains snapped.
That night, Zevrak retreated into himself.
Not to sleep.
To rebuild.
He sat in the upstairs room—windows boarded, walls etched with anti-divine wards, candles burning cold violet. He bit his thumb, let blood drip into a circle of bone dust and ink.
Then he closed his eyes.
And opened his mind palace.
He stood at the gate of a city that was not a city.
Towers of glass and bone spiraled into an endless void. Bridges of memory linked hallways that burned with forgotten languages. The sky was a fractal of all the faces he'd worn across lifetimes. And beneath it all, his throne—shattered, rusted, empty.
"Time to remember," he whispered.
Zevrak walked the corridors, touching runes, activating symbols. Each one a locked door. Each door, a lifetime.
The memories came in waves:
—A prince who murdered his twin for prophecy.
—A warlord who fed gods to their own idols.
—A child who died smiling as he burned an empire.
One by one, he reconstructed the rooms of his mind: Strategy, Alchemy, Dream-Warfare, Soul-Bartering, The Doctrine of Hollow Kings. Each memory fed the next.
But one room remained sealed.
The room of Names.
He pressed his hand to the iron door. It hissed, resisting.
"No more hiding," he growled. "I am Zevrak Kain. The name you tried to erase."
The door cracked.
From behind it came a whisper: "One name is still missing."
"The first."
Zevrak's eyes snapped open.
The candles had gone out. The room was dark.
Serana stood in the doorway, watching.
"You stopped breathing," she said.
"I was busy being alive."
She stepped inside. "What did you see?"
"Another piece of the weapon."
"And?"
"I need more. More memory. More soul. More truth."
"You sound mad."
Zevrak turned to her. "Then walk away."
Serana hesitated. Then crossed the room and sat beside him.
"I said I'd follow. I didn't say I'd like it."
"You don't have to like me," he said. "You just have to survive."
Outside, thunder cracked. A scream echoed through the streets. The city trembled with unseen storms.
And in the black heart of Blackreach, the forgotten began to stir.
Somewhere far below, deep within plague-clogged catacombs, a Watcher turned its eyeless gaze toward the tavern. The whisper chains rattled.
A servant spoke:
"He rebuilds it. The palace. The throne of sin."
"Then we must send the Broken Choir," replied the thing made of tongues and scripture.
"Before he remembers the true name."
To be continued…