The road east of Eltherra was no road at all.
Just broken grasslands where gods had once bled.
Each step crunched over bone hidden beneath soil, the sky overhead stretched taut with a pale red hue that never quite brightened into true morning.
Valen led in silence, his coat dusted with rust and dried blood. His sword, Sorrowfang, remained strapped to his back, heavier now than before—as if memory had weight.
Behind him, Dhera and Lyra followed with hushed voices, speaking only when needed.
No fire.
No tracks.
No names.
Especially no names.
It had started the night before.
After Lyra whispered the forbidden name—Arienna—into the wind, something inside her shifted.
Her eyes shimmered with silver when she blinked.
And her reflection in the creek didn't quite follow her movements.
Dhera noticed it first. "You haven't spoken since the tunnels."
Lyra shrugged. "I don't trust my voice right now."
Valen looked back. "Is it the name?"
She hesitated. "It… wasn't just a name. It was a link. A woman's life. Her death. Her war. Her betrayal. Her rage."
"Do you know who she was?"
"No," Lyra whispered. "But I think she remembers me."
By nightfall, they reached the edge of the Ghast Fen—a wide marsh that marked the threshold to the Mirror Sea.
Kaelruhm lay beneath that black water, a ruin so deep that not even the Hollow Kings dared retrieve what was buried there.
Dhera unfolded the map. "There's an isthmus ahead. Old temple stones still form a kind of path across the mire. It won't last long. Flood tides come every fourth dusk."
Valen nodded. "Then we run across it."
But as they rested under a twisted ash tree that bled amber sap, Lyra had another vision.
A dream. A memory.
She stood at the edge of a shattered city.
Fire everywhere.
Bodies made of glass.
At the heart of it, a woman stood alone in crimson armor. Her face—half-burned. Her voice—clear.
"We forgot their names. That's how they won."
"Now, you will remember me."
The woman turned.
And Lyra saw her own face beneath the helm.
Not similar.
Identical.
She awoke screaming.
Valen gripped her arms. "What did you see?"
Lyra trembled. "A city. Burning. My face… on someone else."
Dhera crouched beside them. "The forbidden name is doing more than connecting you. It's restoring her memory inside you. Like a graft."
Lyra shook her head. "She's not a ghost."
"No," Valen said. "She's a lost self."
They sat in silence for a while, the only sound the wind moaning through hollow branches.
Then Valen asked, "What was the city called?"
Lyra blinked.
The answer came like blood from a wound.
"Ashreah."
Dhera gasped. "That city was erased five hundred years ago. No records. Not even ruins."
Valen looked into the sky. "Until now."
At dawn, they entered the marsh.
The path was almost gone—half-swallowed by black water and moss. Strange birds circled overhead with too many wings, and trees moved when not watched.
Every few steps, Dhera marked their path with drops of memory-ink—stolen from the Dreamkeeper's journal. Just enough to guide them back.
Maybe.
By midday, they saw the first stone.
Carved from sea-glass, shaped like an open mouth.
"Welcome to the Drowned City," Valen muttered.
They had reached Kaelruhm.
It wasn't a city anymore.
Just jagged teeth poking from the sea.
Domes cracked open like skulls. Obelisks half-swallowed in brine. Shadows moved beneath the waves—not fish, not men.
And in the center of it all, a tower still stood.
Crooked.
Leaning.
But alive.
Dhera stepped closer. "The final Throne."
Valen reached out.
But Lyra stopped him.
"Wait."
The water rippled.
From its depths rose a figure.
Clad in barnacle-covered armor, helm shaped like a broken crown, eyes gleaming white with no pupils.
Its voice echoed not in the air—but in their bones.
"Who remembers the name that was paid?"
No one answered.
It stepped forward.
Each footfall turned water to ash.
Valen unsheathed his blade.
Dhera whispered, "That's a King."
Lyra took a slow breath.
And stepped forward.
"I do," she said.
"Then speak it."
"I will not."
The King paused.
"Then you deny her?"
"I become her," Lyra replied.
And the water exploded.
The battle began without warning.
The water boiled as shadows leapt up—soldiers of drowned memory, armored in regret, wielding blades shaped like sorrow.
Valen met them mid-leap.
His sword howled.
Each strike erased not just body, but history—he cleaved through enemies whose names vanished as they died.
Dhera chanted sigils, hurling orbs of silence that exploded in void, disrupting the rhythm of the spectral warriors.
And Lyra…
Lyra did not fight.
She remembered.
Each enemy that struck her found themselves paralyzed.
She whispered names into their ears.
Names they had forgotten.
And they crumbled into dust.
Only the King remained.
He raised one hand.
The sea recoiled.
The ruins trembled.
"You carry the Unnamed. She is a traitor. A flame that forgot her fuel. I killed her once."
Lyra's eyes burned.
"You didn't kill her. You buried her."
She stepped into the sea.
Toward him.
"I will do it again."
"No," she said. "You'll give it back."
She raised her left hand—Crimson Mark flaring.
Then her right—spiral of memory pulsing.
And with both, she tore the King open.
Not with blade.
With remembrance.
A scream echoed across the marsh—the scream of a soul being unbound from centuries of denial. The King's armor shattered. His crown dissolved.
And beneath the helm…
A boy.
No older than sixteen.
Eyes filled with sorrow.
He whispered, "Arienna… I didn't want to forget you."
Then vanished into mist.
The sea fell silent.
Kaelruhm groaned and shifted, as if the city itself had exhaled.
The tower cracked down the middle.
And inside it, glowing faintly…
Was a book.
Bound in glass and blood.
Dhera gasped. "That's a Chronicle."
Valen lifted it.
The sigil on its cover matched the Mark on Lyra's palm.
And inside?
The names of the Kings.
Every one of them.
And how they died.