He did not remember the sound of his name.
Only the sound of chains, groaning like old bones against iron. The sound of heat — yes, heat had a sound here — rising from the slag pits and hissing through the vents like breath from a dying god.
They had given him a number.
Branded into his skin with a rod that glowed red at the tip and stank of burning will.
Eighty-Eight.
It wasn't shouted. It wasn't even spoken like a name. It was spat — like a curse, or worse, an afterthought. A mark of property. Of submission.
Of forgetting.
And she — the white-haired one — she was Eighty-Nine.
They hadn't spoken since the wagons. Not truly. But he always knew where she was.
Just beyond the corner of his sight.
The slag pits had no hours. No bells. Only shifts measured by suffering. He shoveled ash until the skin of his hands cracked and peeled like old parchment. Hauled barrels until his shoulders felt like stone barely held together by meat. His breath turned to dust. His thoughts bled away with his sweat.
But the thing beneath his chest never stopped whispering.
It pulsed in the dark. Not light. Not fire. Not even pain.
A hunger.
It stirred when he faltered. When the guards jeered. When the branding iron hissed.
It stirred that first night when he lay curled on a straw mat that smelled of rot and defeat, and she sat across the cell — still as carved ivory, watching him through lashes of frost.
She never asked him his name.
Perhaps she already knew he didn't remember.
They didn't speak in words. Not yet. There was only the language of silence. Of watching. Of endurance.
Of surviving.
He dreamt of other things. Things he should not remember, and yet could not forget.
Tokyo. A train platform. A boy in a cheap suit, his shoes still wet from the rain. A Lawson store, bright and humming. Curry bread — steaming, golden, torn in half with bare fingers. Laughter — not his — but near him. Female. Familiar.
Then pain.
Not from the dream.
From the waking.
A guard's boot to the ribs. A shout in a tongue he didn't know. Orders. Chains rattling. He stood, as they all did, when told. But inside — something resisted.
The third night, it happened.
He had collapsed mid-shift — knees giving out beneath the burden of a slag barrel half-filled with molten ash and stone. His vision swam with heat. A crack opened in his mind. And the thing beneath his chest… awakened.
A ripple.
Not seen. Not heard.
Felt.
Like a still lake quivering before a storm.
The whip came down — but never landed.
The air warped.
The chain froze in midair.
Not stopped. Not broken.
Unmade.
It unraveled — thread by thread — as if reality itself forgot how to hold it together.
The guard staggered, pale. Eyes wide. He screamed something — not at Eighty-Eight — but at the silence that had replaced the world.
And then they came for him.
Not with rage. But fear.
They dragged him from the pits — six men to one body — as if his weight had tripled.
He did not fight.
But the mark on his chest pulsed again.
And somewhere in the distance, a voice laughed.
Not a voice made of breath and tongue.
But a pressure — slithering behind his thoughts.
"Still dreaming, Riftborn?"
The words didn't echo. They crawled.
Inside. Deep.
Like fingers trailing across the walls of a soul he no longer remembered owning.
They locked him in a lower cell.
Alone.
Stone walls weeping heat. Iron too hot to touch. He lay curled, back against the floor, shirt torn open, the sigil beneath his sternum glowing faint violet — like a star half-swallowed by dusk.
He didn't scream.
He didn't weep.
But his breath shook.
He had dreamed of trains.
Now he dreamed of fire.
And in the fire… something waited.
Not salvation.
A voice.
Ancient. Cold. Hungry.
"You do not belong to them. You belong to the wound."
He clutched his chest, but there was no wound to hold. Only heat.
Only memory.
Somewhere above, the sound of footsteps. A door opening. A voice. Female. Sharp.
"Why isolate him?"
"You saw it, didn't you?" the other replied. Male. Faintly trembling.
"That wasn't magic. That wasn't even soulfire. That was… wrong."
"He didn't cast it."
"Exactly."
They argued. Then silence.
Then the cell door opened.
A plate of gruel. A bowl of water.
No faces.
Just hands. Trembling. Afraid.
And then — later — when the shadows were long and the corridor silent…
She came.
Eighty-Nine.
No guards. No keys.
Only eyes — gold like fire under snow — watching from beyond the bars.
"You're not from here," she said softly.
He didn't answer.
"You're not one of us."
Still, no answer.
Then: "That thing inside you. It eats your pain."
He looked up.
Saw her face. Not kind. Not cruel. Measured.
"You don't remember your name."
He shook his head.
"I don't think it matters anymore."
She watched him for a long time.
Then: "It does. To me."
He furrowed his brow.
"Why?"
"Because I need to know if you're the end of us…"
A pause.
"…or our last chance."
Then she was gone.
The mark pulsed once.
The voice laughed again.
And far above, beyond the pits, beyond the cells, beyond the branded skin and the broken names—
Blackstone Keep watched.
And something far older than the world stirred in its sleep.