The sun had not risen in two days.
Not because of storm, nor spell, but because the sky had refused to turn. The heavens above the Shattered Vale were caught in a blood-tinted dusk, as though time itself had been snagged on a splinter of fate. Shadows grew restless beneath the crimson hue, moving of their own accord, whispering prayers that even ghosts refused to hear.
Kael walked beneath the hanging silence, Nyra at his side, their boots crunching on the crystalline gravel that formed the trail toward the Garden of Last Names.
It was not a garden in any traditional sense. No blossoms, no fruit, no sun-warmed earth. The garden was a graveyard of memory, where names were not carved into stone but grown like vines—tendrils of glowing script that sprouted from bones half-buried in the ground. Each name hummed softly, vibrating with the echoes of the life it had belonged to.
"Who plants the names?" Kael asked.
Nyra didn't answer immediately. Her gaze wandered across the field of glowing sigils. "No one plants them. The world does. When a name is stripped, forgotten, or erased, it finds its way here."
Kael knelt beside a particularly large cluster of glowing vines, tracing a finger along a name so long it wrapped around a tree of petrified bone.
"Is this where mine will end up?" he murmured.
"Only if you lose it," said a voice behind them.
They turned to see a figure standing between the dead trees—a tall woman draped in thorned robes, her eyes covered with a lattice of silver thread. In her hand, she held pruning shears carved from obsidian.
"I am Shevelis," she said. "The Gardener of the Unnamed."
Kael's breath caught. "You're real?"
"Only in places that remember what's been forgotten."
Shevelis stepped forward, eyes blindfolded, yet her movements precise. The vines recoiled as she approached, whispering like reeds in the wind. She knelt beside Kael and touched the vine he had traced.
"This name," she said, "belonged to someone who tried to unmake a curse. He succeeded… and died without anyone left to remember him."
Nyra asked, "Can names be returned?"
Shevelis turned her face toward her. "Some. But not all. It depends whether the world still listens."
Kael stood. "We're looking for the name of the Forgotten Architect."
Shevelis froze. Her shears trembled slightly in her hand.
"That name is cursed thrice over," she said. "Spoken only once. Echoed in silence. Written in betrayal."
"Then help us find the echo," Kael urged.
Shevelis sighed, standing tall again. "You seek the Echo Stone. It lies beneath the Veinroot Tree, in the Hollow Between. But beware—every time a name is spoken in that place, something listening… answers."
Nyra met Kael's eyes. "We've come too far to turn back now."
And so, they walked deeper into the Garden, following the whispering glow of severed names. As the soil turned from crystal to bone-dust, the trees grew teeth along their bark, and the wind began to hum in keys unnatural to mortal ears.
At last, they reached it.
The Veinroot Tree rose like a ribcage cracked open toward the sky—its bark the color of dried blood, its branches twisted into spirals. Beneath its roots yawned a stairwell carved in silence.
Kael led the way, torchless. He no longer trusted flame in places like this.
The Hollow Between was not a place. It was a wound.
There, time lost shape. Thought unraveled. And all that remained was echo.
The Echo Stone floated in the center of a shallow chamber, carved with languages long extinct, pulsing with memory. Kael approached, heart pounding, Nyra's fingers clutching his sleeve.
"What do I say?" he asked.
Nyra answered, "Only the truth."
Kael placed his palm upon the stone.
"I seek the name that made the Spiral."
Silence. Then: a sound like thousands of raindrops falling at once—no water, no storm, only the sensation of something vast weeping. The runes upon the stone twisted, and Kael felt them carving letters behind his eyes.
Then came the voice.
"You seek the Architect. You wear his cinders."
Kael staggered. "What does that mean?"
"You are his consequence."
Suddenly, the Hollow groaned. The roots above them trembled. From the walls, figures emerged—name-eaters, specters of those who had given up their true selves to escape fate. Their mouths were sewn shut with vines of memory.
Nyra drew her voice into her throat, singing a barrier of sound. Kael gritted his teeth, the Echo Stone glowing brighter in his hand.
He whispered the name the stone had given him.
The Hollow screamed.
The name unmade the name-eaters, tore their stolen masks apart, and cracked the world above. For one moment, Kael felt as though he had become the Architect himself—grief-stricken, infinite, alone.
When the light faded, only Nyra remained beside him.
The stone whispered one last phrase before turning to dust:
"Remember, Kael. You are not cursed. You are the curse."