The first signal goes out from Velvora. In distant cities, rulers stir. And one of them just remembered Asher's name... from the day they died.
The Vault was still breathing.
Dust spiraled lazily from the shattered Fifth Throne, but no one dared to speak. Asher stood with his hand half-curled in the air, as if the scroll were still burning between his fingers. Sweat clung to his temples. His lips moved—mouthing words no one else could hear.
Lucien didn't release him. Rosa and Danya held their positions like statues carved from disbelief. Even Hark, always on the edge of bravado or panic, had backed up until his boots hit the wall.
A silence like ash after fire. Heavy. Waiting.
Asher's chest rose slowly. Then again. And again. His eyes met Lucien's—then darted across the others.
"It's not over," he whispered.
Rosa blinked. "What?"
Asher staggered forward. "It wasn't just a vision. The thrones—those people—they were real. They ruled cities like ours. Each one a piece of something older. Something we never learned."
He gestured vaguely to the air, where the memory of the spinning thrones still burned behind his eyelids.
"The Fifth Throne chose me because it was waiting," he said. "But now that I've seen… I've answered something. That signal—it wasn't just for me."
Lucien's gaze sharpened. "You think it went out."
Asher didn't need to nod.
Rosa crossed her arms tightly, watching him like he might shatter again. "To who?"
Far from Velvora—across a range of jagged cliffs that split the sky like fangs—City 2 began to stir.
Its name, lost to ancient war and buried beneath ten thousand bones, was whispered only by those who feared becoming part of its soil: Ildreth.
A crimson cathedral shaped like a dying star pulsed once in the center of the ruined city.
Inside, a man slept.
Or had.
His body was wrapped in threads of silver iron, cocooned upright against a blackened obelisk. Veins of forgotten runes crawled over his skin like cracks in marble. A mask—half-melted, fused to his skull—hid what remained of his face.
Then, his fingers twitched.
One word ignited across the runes. Not in a tongue from this age.
But a name.
"Asher Blackwood."
His eyes burst open, and the cathedral screamed.
Back in the Vault, Asher dropped to his knees.
His soul still burned with the echoes of Vey L'vora—what Velvora had once been. The real name was seared into him now, and with it, the truth of the pacts made in blood and desperation. Names held power here. But his name? It had become a beacon.
Lucien knelt beside him. "We need to leave."
Asher clenched his fists. "We can't. Not yet. This place… it isn't done."
As if to answer, the Vault rumbled beneath them. One of the great walls cracked—not from force, but from release. The metal that formed the chamber's structure hissed as symbols crawled along it in burning lines.
Danya stepped forward. "It's giving us something."
A section of the wall peeled open.
Inside, a sarcophagus. Simple. Ebony and bone. No sigils. No locks. Just one phrase scrawled across its lid in a scrawl that hurt to look at:
"He who rewrote the first name."
Rosa flinched. "The founder."
Asher stepped closer. The air grew thick, heavy. Inside the sarcophagus wasn't a body—it was a mask.
Porcelain white. Cracked down the center. The same one worn by the man at the Fifth Throne.
The others looked to him, but Asher didn't explain.
He simply reached out—just like before.
This time, the Vault did not resist.
Elsewhere.
A long-dead sorceress blinked awake inside a tower sealed beneath an eternal eclipse.
A man with fire for blood stumbled from a pit of living shadows, clutching his throat.
A bell rang in a city that had no people.
And in the endless dark between places, something with too many mouths smiled.
Back in Velvora, a scream tore through the air—not from the Vault, but above it.
Rosa ran for the exit.
They emerged into the moonless night to find the Watchtower in flames. Smoke bled up into the sky—and from its highest point, a shape leapt.
Not a demon. Not a man.
Something in between, its skin slick with names tattooed in blood.
Lucien's sword was already drawn. "Asher…"
But Asher didn't move.
The thing was looking straight at him.
It spoke without lips.
"I remember you."
[End of Chapter 121]
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Next Chapter: Chapter 122 – "The Watchtower's Wake"Asher faces the first of many echoes stirred awake by the Fifth Throne's call. But this one is personal. And it remembers the night it died—wearing Asher's name on its tongue.