With the Ledger awakened and the truth unsealed, the old gods stir in Noxvallis. Asher's name echoes like thunder through the hidden shrines, awakening something ancient and hungry. Not all prayers were meant to be answered.
Noxvallis no longer slept.
It didn't even pretend to.
Since Asher made his pact with the Ledger in the forgotten Blackwood crypt, a change had begun—not one of fire or lightning, but of recognition. As if the city had blinked, remembered something terrible, and decided it could no longer look away.
The people felt it first.
A pressure behind the eyes.
A tightening of the lungs.
A whisper in old dialects they had never spoken aloud.
And in the gutters—where prayers were left in broken bottles and carved teeth—the answers began to crawl back up.
Ira stood on a rooftop, watching as the twilight bled wrong over the skyline.
"It's not just us anymore," she muttered. "We nudged the curtain. Now the whole city's peeking through."
Behind her, Kalon loaded a cursed revolver with bullets made from shrinebone.
He looked tired.
"We always feared the Eschatologers or the Cult would be the end. Turns out, we should've been scared of the ones who stayed quiet the whole time."
Below, children cried from empty apartments as walls peeled with symbols that hadn't been painted in centuries.
The Gutter Temples—small shrines buried in the drainage systems and old catacombs—began to burn with blue fire.
The gods who once ruled from alleys and shadows were waking up.
And they remembered the Blackwoods.
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The Prayer Pit
Asher descended into one of the newly exposed Prayer Pits—those places that had once been sacrificial fonts for the old pantheon before Vel-Aira's name sundered the city's soul.
This one sat under the Ashlane Orphanage—his own childhood ward.
The pit was filled with bones.
Teeth, specifically. Thousands of them.
Offerings from believers long dead.
"They always said prayers must be chewed before being offered," Asher whispered. "Now I get it."
The prayer made of teeth began to form—its body less creature, more construct. A hunger born of unfulfilled pacts.
It rose, slow and dignified, like a god accepting an apology.
"You spoke the Blackwood's name," it said, voice like shattering porcelain. "And now you offer truth. What flavor shall it be?"
Asher didn't flinch.
"I offer the truth of why this city broke. Why the gods were forgotten. And why we failed."
For the first time, Asher spoke it all.
The full lineage.
The pact with the dying divine tongue.
The schism between Vel-Aira and her fractured selves—Ira and him.
The names erased.
The gods cheated by the Blackwoods when their language was used to overwrite reality.
The city turned itself into Velvora, forgetting it had once been Nocturne. Forgetting it had once been a place of worship.
His words carried weight.
Each truth dragged through his lungs like razors.
But he didn't stop.
When he finished, the prayer god leaned closer.
It did not devour him.
It wept.
"You remembered," it said. "And for that… you will not be eaten."
The flame around the pit changed from blue to gold.
A new shrine was born—in Asher's name.
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Meanwhile: In the Rustquarter
In the Rustquarter, forgotten symbols began to bleed out of alleyways.
Citizens began hearing voices—not madness, not hallucinations.
But memories.
Of truths they were never told.
Of names that used to be theirs.
One woman screamed as her name changed mid-sentence—from Clara to Calithra—and she remembered being the heir to a bloodline she never knew.
In the market, a merchant remembered he once worshipped a god with no face and sold fruits made of memory.
Everywhere, Noxvallis shifted.
It wasn't burning.
It was reforming.
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A Visit from a God
At the chapter's close, Asher returned aboveground only to find Ira waiting with something unexpected:
A man in rags, no face, no eyes.
Only a whispering shadow behind his steps.
"He says he's the first," Ira said.
The man nodded.
"I am the god who taught the Blackwoods how to steal names."
Asher stared.
And the god bowed.
"Now I come to learn. For you remembered. And in doing so, you've made even gods question the stories they carved in teeth."
[End of Chapter 138]
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The gods begin to gather. But not all come to kneel. Some come to collect. And one—long lost, long sealed—wakes with a grudge older than language itself.
Next Chapter:
Chapter 139 – "Those Who Sat Before"
Asher faces the council of gods once betrayed by the Blackwoods. And one chair sits empty no longer. For the first time, the original speaker of the divine tongue walks again—and their first word could shatter the city.