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.
The decree came not through officials, but through dreams.
Every citizen of Noxvallis awoke to the same sentence echoing in their mind:
"To stay is to forget. To remember, you must pay."
It was called The Memory Tax.
At first, people thought it was a trick—one of the city's many curses slipping into the collective subconscious. But then the symptoms began.
The baker down by Bleeding Row couldn't remember how to make bread. A child forgot her mother's face. Entire apartments vanished from records and minds alike. Names disappeared off gravestones.
And at the center of it all—an obelisk had risen.
Black stone. Smooth as oil. Floating above Saint Orvel's cracked plaza where the sundial used to be.
It pulsed with each memory taxed, absorbing fragments of soul-stuff like glowing wisps. Above it, new symbols rotated in slow, impossible geometry. Symbols in the same script etched on Asher's own bones since Chapter 2—once invisible, now flaring with cursed light.
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The Mechanics of the Tax:
Daily Tribute:Each citizen is required to forget one memory per day. Anything from childhood games to first kisses—random or specific.
Voluntary Trade:You can choose which memory to surrender in exchange for city services—food, protection, shelter, transport.
The Lost Are Forsaken:Those who run out of memories slowly become "hollows"—living shells, eyes fogged with static, obedient to the Obelisk's will.
The Tax Collectors:Former humans called the Recallers now police the city—hooded figures with no eyes, who smell forgotten things and forcibly collect unpaid debts.
Asher stood before the obelisk, Ira beside him, her expression unreadable.
"This is the price for surviving the transformation," she murmured.
"It's parasitic," Asher growled. "The city feeds on forgetting. On loss."
"It always did," she replied. "But now it's honest about it."
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The Blackwood Dilemma:
Asher's name was no longer his alone.
Thanks to the events of Chapters 123–126, dozens of echoes, Watch remnants, and even the Unshamed had latched onto fragments of his identity. The city recognized him as a living cornerstone—a person whose memory had structural influence.
Which meant:
Every time Asher forgot something, the city changed.
When he forgot his first fight? A local guard post turned into a statue of peace.
When he forgot a promise to a dead friend? That friend's ghost faded from the old chapel's walls.
When he forgot the taste of burnt soup? The marketplace lost the scent of spice.
His mind had become part of Noxvallis' new blueprint.
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Below the streets, the Broken Line—the lineage of all Blackwoods bound to the city—began resonating.
Ancestors once believed lost reemerged in dreamspace. Ghosts of Asher's lineage whispered through his blood. Their message was singular:
"Remember us. Or we'll die again."
Ira placed her hand over Asher's heart.
"They want to tax you most," she said. "Because you remember what the city truly was. That makes you dangerous."
"And what happens when I forget everything?" he asked, half-dreading the answer.
"You become one of them."
Outside the collapsing edges of the city, a coalition began forming—refugees, memory-walkers, defectors from the Unshamed. People who still remembered what the city used to be called: Nocturne.
A woman named Remlia—once a side character from Chapter 37—returned, leading them. Her body was half mirror now, but her mind was unbroken.
Her message was simple:"Burn the Obelisk. Free the city."
But to do that, they'd need Asher to give up something even greater.
Not just a memory.
A truth.
Asher stood before the Obelisk, one hand outstretched.
A voice from within the stone called out—not in a scream, but in his own voice:
"Trade your name… and set them free."
Ira reached for his hand, trying to stop him.
But Asher didn't pull back.
[End of Chapter 129]
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Next Chapter Preview: Chapter 130 – "Ashes of the First Name"Asher sacrifices something that cannot be undone. In doing so, he unlocks a truth buried deeper than any spell, oath, or curse. The city trembles. And across the sea, another ancient name awakens.