"You cannot carry what you will not name."
Kaien dreamed of ash.
Not the memory of ash. The taste of it. Coarse and heated, bitter like remorse turned to smoke. It adhered to his teeth and lined the back of his throat, even in sleep.
In the dream, he stood beneath a sky composed of scarred glass. No stars. Just reflections of things he'd never seen, and yet knew by name. Vael. Thornwake. Sovereign. Ash.
And one more.
A term he had not yet pronounced out.
The new name.
It surged beneath his skin like a second heartbeat, carved below VAEL, buzzing not with power, but with pressure. As if it needed to be released before it broke him.
When he woke, the air smelled like rust and remembrance.
Eira sat nearby, sharpening her knife. Her face unreadable, her hands steady. She hadn't asked him about the dream. Not yet.
But she would.
"We need to move," she replied instead.
Kaien sat up slowly, his joints stiff with sleep. Mourncaller rested next him, swaddled in ashcloth. Still silence. Still waiting.
"Where are we going?"
"Down," Eira responded, without looking up. "The only place that might remember you now."
The descent carried them through a valley of spires – half-melted towers fashioned of boneglass and royal writing. The walls murmured, not in voices, but in impulses: impressions of places he had been but did not recollect.
Kaien walked silently. His thoughts were louder than any step.
The girl in the shrine. The relic in her chest. The name on his palm.
He'd seen too many versions of himself now. Some brutal. Some type. All broken.
Which was the genuine one?
He wasn't sure anymore if the name Vael was redemption, curse, or something more profound. He simply knew that it ached. To wear it. To carry it.
And now there was another name beneath it, clawing upward.
Waiting.
By dusk, they reached the Threshold.
Not a city. Not even a ruin.
A memory-place.
It stretched out before them like a scar in the earth—not a crater, but an absence. A spot the world refused to build on again.
Eira halted at the edge.
"This is where names go when they're not allowed to die," she replied softly.
Kaien stepped forward. The dirt broke beneath his feet like glass. His hand ached.
And then he heard it.
His own voice.
Not speaking. Screaming.
He turned. No one was there.
But the wind bore his words anyhow.
"I am not your recollection. I am the one who endured it."
Kaien knelt. The ground pulsed beneath his fingers.
The new glyph under VAEL shimmered, then twisted. It wasn't just a name. It was a title.
No. Not a title.
A verdict.
They camped in the basin that night.
Kaien didn't sleep.
He remembered.
But not in flashes. Not in dreams.
The monolith, the statue, the train song—they all circled him now, piling into a single, dreadful comprehension.
He had whispered the name that unmade Thornwake.
But he hadn't created it.
He had inherited it.
The woman in the shrine—the one with the relic in her chest—she had forged it. And he had weaponized it.
You said we would name it together, she'd informed him in the vision.
But he hadn't waited.
And now she was stone.
Eira stirred in her sleep, whispering again. This time, not a word.
A melody.
The train song.
Kaien turned to the fire. Mourncaller lay beside it.
He unsheathed the blade. Slowly.
It did not hum.
It whispered.
"Say it."
Kaien closed his eyes.
The glyph beneath VAEL blazed like a sun under his skin.
And then he spoke the name.
A word not suited for this earth. Not a word, really.
A wound.
LYREN.
The name left his lips like a confession.
And the globe shuddered.
Eira woke screaming.
Kaien pivoted, eyes wide.
"What did you do?" she wailed.
He held out his palm. The name blazed there now.
VAEL
LYREN
She staggered back. Her knife slid from her fingers.
"That's the name of the city that was never built," she whispered. "The name that makes memory bleed."
Kaien stood.
The air around them twisted. Thunder swept across the heavens.
And from the blackness above, a sound began to ascend.
Not rain.
Not wind.
Singing.
The Iron Sky was waking.
And it remembered him.
The sky had stopped pretending.
Kaien stood at the edge of the windhall ruin, his breath caught between his ribs as the universe held itself in stillness. Above him, the Iron Sky churned like an old god waking. Not clouds. Not stars. Just motion. Purpose. A steady, harmonic resonance growing in the depths of the world's throat.
Behind him, Eira stood rigid. She had not spoken since the moment he named it—Lyren. That name still shimmered on his palm, hidden beneath Vael, two brands now instead of one. One memory he was trying to regain. The other, the world was attempting to forget.
He could still feel the echo of the word in his blood. Not like a recollection. More like an oath finally accepted.
Mourncaller trembled at his back. Not in hunger. Not in sadness. In acknowledgement.
"You did it," Eira whispered. Her voice was strained. Afraid. "You said it."
Kaien turned, slowly. "It wasn't just a name. It was a gate."
She stepped forward, gaze flickering toward the sky. The hum had gotten louder—low and sluggish, like a storm that didn't want to come, only to be heard.
"What gate did you open?"
Kaien didn't answer. Not right away.
Because a part of him already knew the answer. But he didn't want to say it aloud.
Not here. Not in front of her.
The windhall fell behind them as they moved.
Not from weight.
From memory.
It simply ceased to exist. One instant there. The next: gone. Like the globe had decided it no longer needed to bear that piece of history.
Eira didn't glance back. Neither did Kaien.
They travelled east. Past the broken obsidian where reflection lied. Past the glass dunes that spoke truths in broken voices. Toward a group of ridged hills known in the old tongue as The Shatterspires.
Each step forward, Kaien felt the name Lyren twist a little tighter around his spine.
It wasn't a place. It wasn't a person but a promise.
They stopped at a cliff's edge by lunchtime. Below, a devastated valley lay open, coiled with shattered train tracks and rusted Citadel husks. The air above it shimmered faintly, throbbing in tune with Kaien's palm.
Eira crouched, her gaze examining the wreckage. "Is that... a battlefield?"
Kaien shook his head. "No. It's what's left of one."
He stepped forward. The breeze carried static now. Not sound, exactly—but the absence of it. Like noise had been peeled from the soil.
"Do you remember this place?" she enquired.
"Not yet," Kaien whispered. "But it remembers me."
They plunged into the basin.
Kaien walked like a man being drawn. Not leading. Not following. Pulled.
Every relic they passed vibrated slightly in his wake. Some whispered. Some wept.
One spoke:
"Lyren... You unburied us."
Kaien froze.
Eira went still.
From the skeleton of a Citadel walker, a person developed. No face. Just a shroud of bone-thread. No weapon. Just a scroll hanging from its back like a shattered spine.
"Memory-bound," Eira growled. "A tethered ghost."
The figure didn't attack. It talked.
"You carry the name that broke the pact."
Kaien clutched Mourncaller. "I didn't know what it meant."
"You remembered it anyway," the ghost responded. "And now... we remember you."
It knelt.
Kaien blinked.
Not submission.
Recognition.
The ghost extended its arm. A sword rested across its palm. Old. Cracked. Made of folded memoryglass and tied in whisper-runes.
Eira gasped.
"That's one of the Twelve."
Kaien seized the blade. It didn't hum.
It sighed.
A ripple spread outward.
Every damaged Citadel machine in the basin groaned.
And then sung.
The same tune Calla had sung. The same melody the Iron Sky murmured. The sound of names returning to a world that had forgotten them.
Kaien sank to one knee.
He couldn't breathe.
The blade—no, the name inside it—was awakening.
And so was he.
When Kaien opened his eyes again, he wasn't in the valley.
He was in a memory.
Not his.
Lyren's.
He stood in a cathedral of glass and smoke, surrounded by people without faces, all shouting a name that wasn't his and yet belonged to him.
A figure stood at the altar. A woman. The same woman from the shrine. The same one he had once called a city with.
"You should not be here," she said.
"I remembered you," Kaien said.
She looked away. "Then you've doomed us both."
He stepped forward. "What is Lyren?"
"A consequence," she murmured softly. "The last one."
He woke gasping.
Eira grasped him before he collapsed.
"You're bleeding," she remarked, eyes wide. "Your hand."
Kaien gazed.
The name LYREN has vanished.
In its stead, a new word was formed.
SINGE.
Eira stared at it. "That's... a fate name."
Kaien nodded slowly.
"Not a name I carry," he muttered.
"A name that carries me."
Above them, the Iron Sky trembled.
And began to sing in full.
Not melody.
Judgment.
The past was returning.
And Kaien was its herald.