Chapter 101 — The Weight of Forgotten Names
Frosthold was silent.
Not in the way of peace, but in the way of judgment. Every breath seemed to echo off the cold stone like an accusation. Each step Lysa took deeper into the monastery felt less like movement and more like penance. The air hung dense, not with dust, but with the condensation of countless unspoken truths. These halls had once housed monks and scholars, thinkers and firekeepers, the last holdouts of Ivan's failing dream. Now, it held only memory—and the weight of names no one dared speak aloud.
The stone table in the scriptorium was wide, scored with marks of time and use, the grain of its surface as furrowed as a dying man's face. Upon it lay Ivan's journals, spread open like wounds still weeping after centuries. The script was precise, etched with a care that bordered on obsession, every line pressed so deeply into the page it seemed to hold weight not just of ink but of intent. Wax from the low-burning candles had dripped across the margins, making islands of light in a sea of revelation. Lysa's fingers traced the edge of the paper, reluctant to touch the words, as if doing so would invite the ghosts behind them to speak.
Caedren stood behind her. Silent. Watching. The once-gleaming armor he wore was dulled with ash and dried blood, its once-proud sigils now lost beneath scratches and dents. He looked older than he had weeks before. Not in body, but in bearing. The crown he had worn was gone, left behind in the burning heart of Ashmere. But the weight of it still bent his shoulders.
"He knew," Lysa said finally, voice barely more than breath. It didn't rise—it fell, like a stone dropped into the abyss of the past.
Caedren didn't respond at first. His gaze remained fixed on the open pages, his hands clenched into fists by his sides. The flickering candlelight gave his face the look of a man caught between flames and frost.
"Then why didn't he finish it?" Caedren's voice was low, hoarse from smoke, from grief, from doubt.
Lysa turned to him, eyes glassy with fatigue and something sharper—anger. "Because the world he helped build after Kael's war—after you—was already cracked. He sealed one wound only to open a dozen more. He tried to bury it. The Hollowborn. The first war. The truth. But the Hollowborn don't die. They feed. And suffering is endless."
Caedren stepped forward and laid a gauntlet across the spine of the journal. The steel-on-leather sound was quiet, but it resounded with finality. "Then we finish what he started."
Lysa looked at him, exhausted. Bitter. Unflinching. "You think it's that simple?"
"No. But it's necessary."
Far beneath them, beyond the ice-bitten roots of the mountain, the Hollowborn stirred.
In the heart of the southern wastes, where the sun no longer dared linger, the air grew thick with rot and ritual. Maros, First of the Nine Hollowed, crouched beside a pool of blood that refused to dry. His body shimmered like smoke trapped in skin, and where his eyes should have been were hollow sockets that pulsed with memory.
Around him knelt others—bodies long since given to the Hollow, twisted into forms no longer human. Flesh made of ash and bark. Bones like iron. Mouths sewn shut to keep their secrets safe.
Maros leaned close to the blood. Watched it ripple.
"It has begun," he hissed. His voice sounded like breath dragged through stone. "Ivan's heirs crack the seals. They reach into shadows they do not understand. Let them. The crown will fail them again."
From the walls came a voice. No mouth. No figure. Just the living shadow that danced with hunger. It spoke not in sound, but in conviction.
"Then go. Remind them what we are."
Maros rose. Smoke dripped from his shoulders. "And if they remember?"
The shadows pulsed.
"Then make them forget again."
Back in Frosthold, silence returned.
Caedren walked alone now through the lower halls of the monastery. The cold here was not physical. It was deeper, rooted in the very walls, in the silence between stone breaths. Every torch burned low, as if frightened to reveal too much. The lower chambers were places untouched even by monks. These were rooms of exile, of reckoning, carved in the final days of Kael's reign.
He passed an antechamber carved with warnings in three languages: Old Kaelic, Ivanni script, and something older still—jagged spirals of the Hollowborn tongue. He paused before a sealed archway, the door carved with the symbol of a broken flame within a closed eye. The runes glowed faintly, responding to his presence. They knew him. As if they'd waited for his blood to return.
He reached for the lock.
"Don't," Lysa's voice cut through the cold like a blade. She stood behind him, journal in hand, her cloak dusted with frost. "Not alone."
Caedren didn't turn. His hand remained on the stone. "We don't have time."
"We don't have certainty. Whatever's behind that door—it was sealed for a reason."
"Ivan wrote this was where it began. The First Truth."
Lysa stepped forward. Her voice was quiet. "And the first truth is always the one that hurts most."
He opened the door anyway.
The room beyond was circular. Carved not by hand, but by force—by something that melted memory into stone. It smelled not of age, or dust, but of blooded remembrance.
At its center floated a mirror. Not of silver. Not of glass. Of shadow. A portal to something that was not past, present, or future. A shape suspended in unreality, humming with the broken notes of forgotten songs.
And upon the walls—names.
Thousands of them.
Tens of thousands.
Written not in ink. Not in chalk.
Burned.
Etched in flames that gave no light.
Caedren stepped forward.
His foot crossed the threshold.
And the names ignited.
All of them.
At once.
His scream echoed through the chamber. Through the halls. Through Frosthold.
Lysa ran, heart in her throat. She saw him caught in the lightless fire, body rigid, bleeding from nose, ears, and eyes. She dragged him back, the door slamming shut behind them with a sound that felt like a final breath.
Caedren collapsed, gasping.
She knelt. Grabbed his shoulders.
"What did you see?"
He blinked. Tears streaked with blood. "Names. All of them. Every soul the Hollowborn ever consumed. Every life they bargained for."
His voice cracked. "My father's name was there."
Lysa recoiled. "Your father died in the Red Plague. There were records."
"No." Caedren shook his head slowly, numbly. "He didn't die from sickness. He was given."
The words sat between them like a grave.
Outside, wind howled across the mountain like the voices of the buried.
The fire in Frosthold burned low.
And neither of them spoke again that night.
Because now they knew.
The Hollowborn had not simply killed.
They had bargained.
And the kingdoms had paid.
Willingly.
The crown had never been clean.
The oaths had never been pure.
And Caedren's war was not just against monsters.
It was against the legacy that birthed them.
Tomorrow, they would ride. With journals wrapped in wool. With truths heavier than steel. With names in their mouths that the world had chosen to forget.
And far behind them, deep beneath Frosthold, the mirror would continue to burn.
Whispering.
Waiting.
Reminding.
That the dead do not rest.
Not until the past is paid in full.
Not until the king who wears no crown bears every name that was taken.
Every.
Single.
One.