The whispering doors fell silent.
Nameless stood alone in the corridor of names. His breath misted before him, though the air wasn't cold. It was old—a stagnant atmosphere filled with the weight of things long sealed, unspoken, and deliberately forgotten.
Behind him, his plaque still glowed:
Nameless – Becoming / Unfixed
And though he had only just forged it, the brass was already beginning to tarnish—as if the world resisted its permanence.
He reached out to touch the letters again.
The surface was soft. Breathing.
The plaque pulsed once beneath his palm… and then vanished.
Erased?
No.
Reclaimed.
The Synapse's corridor trembled, doors shuttering shut like tombs. The floor rippled beneath his feet, and a chime—a clear, deliberate note—sounded through the air.
Not the nameless bell.
Something older.
A judgment bell.
And it rang only once.
Elsewhere in Vinterra
Deep below the Guild, below even the Hollow Halls where apprentices practiced dream-forging, a round table of cracked marble lay beneath a shroud of chained curtains.
Around it sat seven figures.
Only three were real.
The rest were phantoms—echoes seated where the dead still had influence.
Their robes were threadbare. Their eyes veiled. Their faces hidden beneath ivory masks carved with silent glyphs—one for each of the old archetypes: The Clock-Drowned, the Woundbearer, the Book That Spoke, the Mirrorborn, the Threadweaver, the Flamekeeper, and the Unseeing Star.
Tonight, the seventh mask sat in shadow.
Vacant.
Until a voice emerged from nowhere.
"He has stepped into the Echo fully."
"Not aligned," rasped a second voice. "But forged. Worse."
"We sealed that path. Buried it."
"You sealed hers. Not his."
"There is no difference."
A pause.
"There will be," said a woman's voice. "If we let it grow."
The air above the table shimmered.
And a projection formed.
Nameless—mid step, eyes silver, brand gleaming.
The tribunal went still.
"He touched the Synapse."
"He spoke with her."
"He constructed a crucible."
Silence.
Then the bell rang again, faintly, inside their minds.
The eldest of them leaned forward.
The mask of the Unseeing Star opened its mouth, though it had no lips.
"Then the tribunal must reconvene. And we must send for The Severed Choir."
Back in the Synapse
Nameless was walking again.
But the corridor no longer had doors.
Just mirrors.
Dozens. Hundreds. Each taller than a man, narrow and curved inward like they'd been carved by a soft scream. Each reflected him—but differently.
One showed him laughing, dressed in feathers.
Another showed him dead, gun to his temple.
A third showed him weeping over a body he didn't recognize, muttering a name he had never spoken.
He passed them all without flinching.
Until he reached one that didn't reflect him at all.
It reflected her.
The dream-woman.
Sitting at a table, pen in hand, scribbling names onto a tattered journal.
He watched her write:
Lucien Grahme
Emilia Blanctear
Elira Thorne
Nameless (Echo-Path, Unfixed)
—
She stopped before the final name.
The page bled.
And she looked up.
Eyes locking with his through the mirror.
Then—
She whispered:
"They're coming for you. Not to end you. To split you."
The mirror shattered inward.
Nameless stepped back.
The pieces didn't fall.
They hovered.
Suspended like dying stars, each shard holding a fraction of memory, frozen mid-echo. He saw moments—real, imagined, inherited:
A blade at his throat.
A child calling him "Father."
A temple made of ribs and song.
A mirror that smiled before he did.
The pieces twisted—and formed a door.
Etched with three letters.
TCQ
Nameless narrowed his eyes.
Elira had whispered that term once.
"The Severed Choir," she'd said. "When the Guild can't kill something, they call them."
"What do they do?"
"They unmake songs. And you, Nameless, are becoming one."
He stepped through the mirror-door.
The Choir's Threshold
No city. No world.
Just a place.
A chamber of black fog and silver pillars that hummed faintly with voices—not speaking, but humming in unison, wordless and awful. At its center floated a heart made of light, chained to six glyphs rotating in the void.
And standing before it—
A figure.
Not masked.
Blindfolded.
Mouth sewn shut.
And humming.
It turned toward Nameless.
Its skin bore inscriptions, words carved into flesh and sealed with wax: Names. Places. Possibilities.
It raised a hand.
And a pulse of un-sound struck Nameless in the chest.
He stumbled.
The brand on his arm burned black.
"They want to silence the Echo," he muttered.
He straightened.
"Let them try."
He clenched his fist, summoning the mirage crucible—his new power—and unlocked it.
The air warped.
The heart of the Choir's domain began to tremble.
And from behind him, in the fog, hundreds of eyes opened.
Not hostile.
Witnesses.
Dreams. Fears. Forgotten selves.
They had followed him here.
And they began to sing.
A song with no melody.
Just remembrance.