Now... let's speak of Milo.
The brother. The beast. The one who never bowed — not to memory, not to magic, and not even to himself.
Some men carry weapons. Others carry the graveyard that raised them.
"You don't forget pain.
Pain forgets you — if it knows you're willing to feed it back to the world."
— Milo the Bloodhowl Beast
I.
While others forgot their names…
Milo remembered too much.
The spell of the Silent Circle skittered off him like arrows off dragonbone — not because he resisted, but because something older than magic already lived inside him.
II.
When he was a child, he bit a priest.
Not out of rage.
But because the priest lied about the afterlife.
The boy Milo knew the truth:
"There's no heaven," he said.
"Just a black gate. And I saw something watching me through it."
III.
That thing never left.
It visited in dreams.
Not as a monster, but a shadow shaped like a crown.
It never gave its name.
It never spoke.
But it made a pact with the boy:
"When the world tries to erase you… let me wake."
Milo never said yes.
He never had to.
Because every time he fought —
every time he bled —
every time he refused to die —
it stirred.
IV.
During the siege of the Unwritten, when the spell tried to unname him…
Milo laughed.
He remembered everything:
Eating spoiled rice with Reginal under a broken roof.
Training under the streetlight while others slept.
Every punch he ever threw at life, and every time it hit back.
But more than that…
He remembered a word.
One whispered only once.
And when he said it — under his breath, behind gritted teeth — the shadow in his blood grinned.
V.
The glyphs on his skin burst into flame.
But the flame was black.
Fire… that feeds on forgotten things.
Soulfire.
Milo was no mage.
But the thing inside him —
The Warden of the Black Gate —
was a memory eater.
And now?
It walked beside him.
No longer caged.
END SIDE CHAPTER.
Next: Chapter XVIII – Fire Against the Forgotten
Reginal vs. Vessira.
Myth vs. Silence.
But even flame has a limit — and Reginal will have to choose: reclaim his humanity… or burn the last of it away to save what's left of the world.