They stepped across the threshold.
The Vale of Names was not a place. It was a decision made manifest.
The air shimmered like a mirror broken into a thousand realities, each shard showing a different version of themselves—some triumphant, some monstrous, some dead. The sky above was woven thread: gold, silver, crimson, black. Each one pulsed with a memory that hadn't happened yet.
Rin reached for one instinctively.
It burned her fingertips.
Kael caught her wrist. "Don't touch them. They're not meant for now."
She pulled back, shaking her hand. "Then what is this place for?"
Juno stepped lightly, like the very ground might vanish. "This is where names are weighed. The throne doesn't rule through power alone—it rules through identity. What you are defines what you're allowed to do. The Vale decides whether your name belongs in the next world."
Mace huffed. "So it's judgment?"
Kael shook his head slowly. "No. It's choice. Judgment is final. This place just...shows you what it costs."
The path shifted as they walked, folding under their feet like a living thing. Sometimes it was stone. Sometimes glass. Sometimes bone.
Each of them walked slightly apart, the Vale pulling at their thoughts like a gentle tide.
Rin heard laughter—not hers. A version of herself, older, cloaked in black and power, ruling from a shadowed court. The wind whispered, "You could be her."
Mace saw a war. A great one. His hands soaked in blood, his eyes empty. The wind told him, "You never left the battlefield."
Juno saw fire. And a crown. On his own head.
The wind said nothing to him.
But Kael? He didn't see anything.
Because the Vale already knew him.
It didn't need to show him who he could be. It waited to see who he would choose to become.
Midway through, they reached a platform. A dais suspended over nothing, tethered only by strands of light.
On it: a circle of five pillars.
Four were marked.
Kael. Rin. Juno. Mace.
Each with their sigils glowing faintly above—symbols of pain, potential, and promise.
The fifth pillar stood dim. Unclaimed.
Rin squinted at it. "So this is it. The marked ones. The prophecy that the old priests kept babbling about. Why us?"
Kael stepped forward. Threadcutter shimmered on his back, responding.
Juno spoke first. "Because we all touched something we weren't supposed to."
Rin turned. "Excuse me?"
He pointed. "Kael was chosen by the thread not because he was worthy—but because he broke the chain in Ji'an. Rejected the binding. The throne marked him as dangerous."
He looked at her. "You lit your first rune spell in a cursed temple. One that didn't survive the fire. You reached into a tether before you knew what it was. That rune on your back? That's not a birthmark. That's the mark you stole."
Rin's eyes widened.
Mace cursed under his breath. "And me?"
Juno nodded solemnly. "You fought in the war of the South. You remember it, don't you? That moment in the rain. When your whole squad fell. You didn't just survive. You stepped into something you shouldn't have. When you crawled from that crater... the mark was already burned into your spine."
Rin looked shaken. Mace too.
Kael tilted his head. "And you, Juno?"
Juno hesitated. Then: "I was born with mine."
Silence.
Rin whispered, "So you're the original?"
Juno nodded. "The first mark was given to my family. We were supposed to guide the next four. Keep the balance."
Kael turned to the fifth pillar. "Then where is the last one?"
The platform trembled.
And something stepped into existence.
Not walked. Not appeared.
Stepped.
Out of nothing.
A figure.
Shrouded in white thread. Eyes hidden beneath a porcelain mask. Voice like wind against glass.
> "The fifth has always been here. Watching. Waiting."
Kael stepped forward. "Who are you?"
The figure lifted its head.
> "I am the promise the throne forgot."
The fifth pillar lit. And the mark blazed across the figure's chest.
The same symbol Kael saw in his dream.
The one that bled from Zeyrox.
The platform cracked.
And the voice whispered:
> "Now the threads are aligned. And the weaving begins."