The name was no longer quiet.
It didn't shout.Didn't thunder.But it moved—through the leylines, through the dreams of mortals, through cracks in memory that had no right to remain open.
And it found Dain first.
He woke gasping.
Not from a nightmare.
From a voice.
"You were born to end him."
He sat up, sweat soaking his shirt. His sword lay beside his bed, humming with a low, angry pulse.
It had been doing that since the forest.
Since Kael.
He touched the hilt.It was cold.Too cold.
And in the reflection on the blade—
He saw a glyph.
Namefire.Flickering. Incomplete.
But growing.
Elyra noticed the change, too.
Not in dreams. Not in blades.
In Kael.
She passed him in the corridor that morning. Their shoulders brushed. His hand grazed hers.
And for a moment—just a moment—light shimmered beneath his skin.
Not fire. Not magic.
A glyph, pulsing faintly at the base of his throat.
She said nothing.
But her light flared briefly in reaction—uncontrolled.
And Kael flinched.
Later, outside the training hall, she found him alone.
"Your glyph is showing."
Kael turned.
"I know."
"Why?"
"Because the world's trying to remember. And I'm trying to forget."
"You can't hold this in forever," she said.
"I have for centuries."
"But you're not alone now."
Kael looked at her, long and silent.
And for once, didn't argue.
Meanwhile, Lira stood in the upper library, watching.
Not reading.
Watching everything.
Students passing. Instructors whispering. The strange pulse in her chest each time Kael walked by.
She didn't trust it.Didn't trust him.Didn't trust herself.
But she knew one thing:
The glyph burned brighter now.
And when she reached into her pouch that night, the scroll was gone.
In its place:A feather.
Silver.Warm.Faintly smoking.
Far beneath Aegisspire, in a place without name, the chained figure from the vault opened its mouth and began to speak.
Not to anyone.
To the world.
To the name.
"You are not forgotten.""You are not alone.""You are not safe."
The chains trembled.
The wardlights flickered.
And from deep within the leyline fractures…something answered.