When a man becomes a myth, he no longer knocks on the gates of history. He kicks them in.
"There is no record of this siege.
Not because it failed.
But because what came through those gates… erased the quills of the gods."
— Testimony of the Last Inkkeeper, now blind
I.
The Unwritten Citadel rose like a scar on the sky — a tower of pure silence, surrounded by walls that bled ink and sobbed in forgotten dialects.
It floated above the Ashglass Sea, tethered only by memory and guilt.
Here, the Silent Circle had no guards.
They didn't need any.
Because to even speak within a league of its shadow meant death.
II.
But Reginal no longer spoke.
Not with lips.
Not with names.
He was now the Ashborne Writ — and fire didn't need permission to exist.
The Emberborn army arrived on black ships whose sails whispered the oaths of fallen kings.
Behind Reginal stood:
Kammy, her voice sealed by Dream-Thread, sword gleaming with the hunger of lost lullabies.
Milo, cloaked in silence but eyes howling with fury.
Ma'karash, the last dragon, flying above them like the soul of vengeance wearing wings.
They did not shout.
They did not rally.
They remembered.
And memory… marched.
III.
As they approached the gates, the tower responded.
The walls screamed.
Ink began to pour — not from cracks, but from wounds in language itself.
Sentences bled. Meanings twisted.
The runes etched in every soldier's armor caught fire.
One by one, their names tried to leave them.
"Don't resist!" Kammy cried. "Let go of your names — not your purpose!"
Milo stood firm.
Silent.
Something in him… refused to forget.
(But that tale is for another chapter.)
IV.
Reginal raised Mournshard — no longer a blade of metal, but a sigil in motion, glowing with grief so deep it bent reality.
He did not strike the gate.
He remembered it open.
And so it did.
V.
Inside, the tower was worse.
No stairs.
Only floating thoughts.
Concepts of betrayal.
Shapes of lies.
Doors that led to moments you hadn't lived yet.
One soldier opened a door labeled "Tomorrow."
He aged into dust.
Another opened "Forgiveness."
She screamed until her voice peeled off her skin.
VI.
Reginal walked unscathed.
The Unwritten could not trap one who had no name to claim.
And at the center of the Citadel, on a throne made of dead tongues, sat Vessira the Hollow-Womb.
Unblinking.
Unmoved.
Unterrified.
"You have no name," she said.
"You have no place in the world."
"I am the place," Reginal replied.
"And your silence is about to get very loud."
Mournshard ignited.
And the final war of memory began.
TO BE CONTINUED…
Next: Chapter XVIII – "Fire Against the Forgotten"
Reginal battles Vessira in a war not of steel, but of stories. Every strike erases or rewrites the very truths of the world. Kammy and Milo must anchor him — or he'll burn even himself into myth.