Ira and Asher's past begins to bloom beneath the layers of false memory. Meanwhile, Noxvallis moves to intercept. And deep underground, the Broken Line stirs again—for the first time since the Blackwood Oath was shattered.
Noxvallis was still not used to breathing.
The city exhaled fog like lungs unused to air—old systems purging themselves of corrupted rituals, cursed districts collapsing inward like peeling scabs. Streetlamps flickered with unfamiliar symbols. Some doors that led to familiar shops now opened into blank stone. Even memories—shared between neighbors, friends, even families—began to differ.
But none of that compared to the way the sky kept blinking.
And beneath that sky, Asher Blackwood stood still in the square once called Saint Orvel's Mouth, where the old gallows had been replaced with a crown-shaped sundial. He hadn't moved for hours. Not since Ira arrived.
She didn't speak at first.
She stood across from him in silence, barefoot, wearing a coat far too large for her frame—frayed at the edges, but familiar. It used to be his.
"I told you I'd return when the names broke," she said, voice steady but strained.
Asher blinked. "You were real?"
"I am real," she corrected. "You just don't remember the version of me they buried."
-----------------------------
The Broken Line:
Deep beneath Noxvallis, in the catacombs that once held the Mask Cult's lower sanctum, something stirred.
The Broken Line—the ancient Blackwood bloodline—sealed after the original oath was betrayed—was awakening.
A circle of names etched into obsidian. A forgotten blood-oath anchored to the foundations of the city. It had been fractured when Asher's father tried to change their fate.
But Ira had been the final witness.
"You were supposed to inherit more than a cursed name," she said, tears running down one cheek. "But they burned it out of you. They burned me out of you. I've held the truth ever since. And now the city is listening again."
-----------------------------
What happened to the citizens?
Noxvallis had overwritten Velvora. But not like a fresh coat of paint—more like an infection.
Names changed first.People began forgetting surnames they'd carried for generations. A man known as Jareth Blex now signed himself as Jareth Coil.
Buildings shifted their identities.Old hospitals became temples. Police stations renamed themselves as "Memory Posts."
The Church lost grip.Their influence collapsed overnight. Their books turned to blank pages or burned themselves.
Children spoke in tongues they weren't taught.Some repeated names no one remembered. Some no longer answered to their birth names.
But most disturbingly, mirrors began refusing to reflect certain individuals.
---------------------------------
What exactly changed in Noxvallis?
Memory = Currency:You can now barter memory for goods and services—but you lose the memory you give.
Name-Locked Zones:Some places are inaccessible unless you know a specific forgotten name. Asher now knows over a hundred.
False Echoes:People occasionally meet themselves—versions that recall a life never lived.
The Law of Witnesses:A new magical law—if someone witnesses you commit an act, it can be etched into the city's memory permanently, unable to be erased even by name manipulation.
---------------------------------
Asher finally looked Ira in the eye.
"You're telling me… I was never meant to be this?"
"You were meant to be more," she whispered. "But they needed a Blackwood to carry the cage. You were the strongest they had left."
"And you?" he asked.
"I was the one they deemed too dangerous to keep alive."
A silence passed between them. Then the sundial cracked behind them, marking the moment.
Far below the ground, the Blackwood seal broke.
And somewhere in the western reaches of the world, another city trembled—its true name threatened to be revealed.
A man in crimson robes stepped out from the Catacombs below Noxvallis, wearing a crown of copper nails and carrying a dagger carved with Asher's original birth name.
"The heir remembers," he said to no one. "Begin the burial of the city."
[End of Chapter 128]
-------------------------------------
Next Chapter Preview: Chapter 129 – "The Memory Tax"Noxvallis tightens its grip—introducing a new law that forces every citizen to pay with forgotten memories. Asher must intervene, but every choice he makes burns away part of who he used to be.