[POV: Ilhera – Descending into Below]
She was sweating.
Not from heat. Not from exhaustion.
From something else.
The stairs beneath her feet had stopped glowing. They now breathed. Each step didn't just react—it waited.
Waited for him.
Ezekiel.
His footsteps weren't loud, but each one felt like a chisel tapping against the foundation of the world.
They had stopped trying to name him.
Now the stairs whispered.
> He is the one who will unname what the Law remembers.
Ilhera turned to look back. He was only a few steps behind her now. Still silent. Still unreadable.
But something in his shadow had changed. It bent forward now, toward the path ahead. As if it knew where it was going.
> "Zeke?" she asked, hesitating.
He looked up.
> "There's something under your skin," she whispered. "It's moving."
Ezekiel blinked once. Then again.
He touched his chest.
He could feel it too.
> Something waking inside his name.
---
[POV: ??? – Watcher Command Hall, Upper Tier 3]
> "We've detected it."
> "The blood-seal pulse?"
> "No. Worse."
The Commander turned toward the center display, where lines of reality-folded glyphs played across concentric rings of logic.
> "A pre-named structure is forming below."
> "Impossible. The Archive denies pre-named formation."
> "It was bypassed. Someone walked in without a name… and didn't receive one."
> "That violates three Law Protocols."
> "Four. If you include the Forgotten Glyph."
The Commander sighed.
> "Activate the Silence Tether. Prepare the Enactors."
> "We can't let him reach the Worldroot."
---
[POV: Ezekiel – Base of the Stairs]
The final step dropped off into a shelf of white sand and black water.
Ezekiel stood at the edge.
Behind him, Ilhera kept her blade drawn but lowered.
> "This place… it doesn't know where it is."
Ezekiel nodded slowly.
> "It's a page that no one wrote on."
He stepped forward. The black water did not ripple. The sand did not shift. But something above did.
A shadow curled overhead like an unseen eyelid.
And from nowhere, a voice:
> Do not speak your name.
> For it is already a command.
Ilhera's eyes widened.
> "Zeke—"
But he had already frozen.
Because he knew.
He knew now what the Archive had tried to erase. What the blood-seal had protected.
And what the Nexus had just remembered.
> His name was once written in the same script as the world's original sentence.
And if he spoke it aloud...
Even once...
The world would bend.
Or break.