The valley of graves did not fade behind them—it clung to the air like soot.
Even hours after they'd passed through it, Kael felt its weight behind his eyes. The Codex was colder now, as if the names it absorbed had not been consumed but imprisoned. His mark crawled past his collarbone, reaching toward his throat like creeping vines.
By midday, the trees vanished altogether.
In their place: ash.
Gray dunes. Cracked stone. Rivers of glass. The sky lost its color here. The wind was hot, but carried no scent. No sound but footfalls.
They had entered the Ash Wastes.
Thorne muttered an old warding prayer under his breath. "Fire without flame. Smoke without source. Ash without end."
Kael glanced sideways. "You've been here before."
"Once," Thorne said, jaw tight. "I followed a fallen Seeker beyond the Pale Scar. He burned alive from the inside. Smiling the whole time."
Kael said nothing.
The wastes stretched wide, horizonless. But soon, something interrupted it—an arch of bone.
Massive. At least thirty feet high. Scorched. Hollow. Whatever creature it had belonged to had died long ago, but its shape still bore the twisted script of the Veil.
Kael passed beneath it.
The Codex pulsed.
And the world changed.
Not all at once. Slowly.
A tremor beneath his feet. A shimmer in the air. Then—
The sound of breathing. Not his own. Not Thorne's.
Heavy. Labored. Ragged.
Kael turned.
Behind them, the arch had vanished.
The sky had darkened, but not with clouds. With wings.
Dozens. Hundreds. Great, slow-moving silhouettes far above, as if circling something fallen.
Then the ground cracked.
Veins of black light rippled outward.
Kael grabbed Thorne's shoulder. "Something's coming."
But Thorne wasn't looking ahead.
He was looking behind Kael. Eyes wide.
"Not something," he whispered. "Someone."
Kael turned.
A figure walked toward them through the dunes.
Alone.
Barefoot.
Unscarred.
Wrapped in a cloak made of ash and silk.
Kael could not see the figure's face—only that the air shimmered around them.
And then—
Thorne stepped forward.
Voice trembling.
"…Elias?"
The figure stopped.
Slowly pulled back its hood.
And Kael saw what broke Thorne.
A man. Mid-thirties. Same eyes as Thorne. Same jawline.
But different.
Older by pain, not time.
Eyes hollow.
"I died, brother," Elias said softly. "Why didn't you?"
Kael stood frozen.
Thorne moved as if underwater, each step toward Elias slower than the last.
"I buried you," Thorne whispered. "I held your hand. I wept—"
Elias smiled, and it was not kind.
"You buried ashes. You wept for a husk. You never found the real me."
Kael felt the Codex hum—violently.
This was no memory.
No illusion.
A binding.
The Ash Wastes remembered every soul who passed.
And sometimes, they kept one.
"Thorne," Kael warned. "That's not your brother. Not anymore."
But Thorne was crying now. Not loudly. Silently. One hand at his belt—but not for his blade.
For a coin.
A silver one, old and worn.
He flipped it toward Elias.
It passed through him like smoke.
And Elias screamed.
A sound not of pain, but fury.
Wings beat overhead.
The dunes shifted—rising into shapes.
Arms. Faces. Bodies of ash, tall and lithe.
Kael drew his sword.
Too late.
The first ash-form struck, its limb like powdered stone. He blocked, barely, and was driven back into the sand.
Another surged at Thorne.
But Thorne wasn't fighting.
He was praying.
"Rites of Return," he whispered. "Old tongue. True name."
He raised his blade—but didn't strike Elias.
He stabbed into the earth.
And from the sand, fire erupted.
Not red.
White.
Ash screamed.
The shapes dissolved.
Kael shielded his eyes.
When he looked again, only the real remained.
Elias was gone.
So was the arch.
They stood alone again in the Wastes, wind howling with the memory of what had passed.
Thorne collapsed to his knees.
Kael helped him up.
"Was it him?" he asked.
Thorne's voice cracked. "A piece of him. Trapped here. I set it free."
Kael said nothing more.
They walked on.
That night, Kael did not sleep.
He read the Codex.
Or rather—let it read him.
The pages no longer resisted his touch.
They unfolded—not flat, but outward. Shapes of paper and light, revealing diagrams. Names. Glyphs.
Each with a cost.
He chose one.
Not a spell. Not even a phrase.
Just a letter.
A symbol so old it had been forgotten before language began.
He traced it in the dirt.
And watched it bloom.
A flower of shadow and flame, petals opening without sound.
He did not speak it aloud.
Not yet.
But the Codex throbbed with approval.
And the mark on his skin answered.
His blood sang.
His bones whispered.
And for the first time, Kael understood—
Power didn't come from speaking the names of things.
It came from becoming the name.
By morning, the ash had lightened.
They walked through scattered pillars of black stone, half-buried in dust. Some bore carvings. Others bore wounds.
Kael touched one.
It burned his fingers.
Thorne read the inscription beneath it.
"In the tongue of the First Kings," he murmured. "It says: 'Here knelt the one who asked for death—and was given breath instead.'"
Kael shivered.
They reached the summit of a long, low hill.
And saw it.
The Hollow Cathedral.
Far in the distance, carved into the cliffside like a wound in the earth.
Black spires. No doors. Only an archway of bones and symbols.
The Codex pulsed.
Kael felt his heart slow.
"We've arrived," Thorne said.
"No," Kael whispered. "We're only at the threshold."
The Hollow Cathedral loomed before them like a memory no one wanted to recall.
It was not built. It had grown—out of the cliff, into the sky, like bone forced through skin. Its spires were crooked and sharp, black as obsidian, and they hummed with something deeper than wind. No doors. Only an arch gaping like a wound, the same shape Kael had seen burned into his skin when the Codex first opened.
They approached slowly.
The closer they got, the quieter the world became.
Even the wind avoided this place.
Kael stopped at the edge of the threshold.
Thorne did not.
"Come," he said. "This is the place where the Thorn first cut."
Kael stepped beneath the arch.
The world bent.
For one heartbeat, the air folded around him—not space, not distance, but truth. His name trembled in his chest like it no longer belonged to him.
Then the pressure passed.
They were inside.
And the Hollow Cathedral revealed itself.
It was vast.
And alive.
The walls pulsed faintly with a heartbeat Kael couldn't hear but felt. Not stone, but marrow. Veins of black iron ran like roots through the structure, and the ceiling arched far above into darkness, crawling with shifting script that rearranged itself when he tried to read it.
"Who built this?" Kael asked.
"No one," Thorne said. "It was born."
Kael's voice echoed strangely here, folding back on itself.
There were no pews. No altars. Just a single stairway ahead, winding up through the spires.
"The Thorn left its mark here," Thorne whispered. "This is where the Sealed Name was spoken. Where the world cracked."
Kael turned. "Who spoke it?"
Thorne looked up the stairs.
Kael followed his gaze.
Someone stood there.
Still as stone.
Wrapped in robes of gold and blood.
Eyes covered.
Mouth sewn shut.
Yet Kael heard her voice, deep in his spine.
"You carry the Codex. You carry the Wound."
Kael's throat was dry. "Who are you?"
She did not answer.
But a shape unfurled behind her.
Wings—not of feather, but language. Scripts written in fire, bending around her like a halo.
A Thornbound.
Kael reached for his blade.
Thorne stopped him. "Don't."
Kael's breath quickened. "Is she real?"
Thorne nodded slowly. "She is what's left when someone speaks too many Names."
The Thornbound stepped forward.
Kael took a step back.
She didn't draw a weapon.
She didn't raise a hand.
She only breathed.
And the cathedral responded.
Walls trembled. Veins of iron glowed. The Codex flared open of its own will.
A page turned.
Then another.
Then stopped.
Kael looked down.
The page was blank.
But his mark burned.
He fell to one knee.
The Thornbound lifted her hand—not toward him, but toward the book.
And a Name burned into the page.
Not a word. Not a sound.
A presence.
Kael screamed.
Thorne tried to reach him, but the floor between them shattered, becoming a mirror. Not of glass, but memory.
Kael was alone.
The Thornbound stepped into the mirror with him.
The reflection wasn't his.
It was the world.
Twisted.
The sky was black with wings. The seas ran gold. Cities walked like beasts. Mountains bled. And in the center of it all stood a tree.
Dead.
Burned.
Crowned with thorns.
Beneath it: Kael.
Older.
Colder.
Holding the Codex with hands made of light.
"You are not yet shaped," the Thornbound whispered.
"Shaped into what?"
She stepped close.
"You ask the wrong question."
"Then give me the right one."
She tilted her head.
"Do you wish to remain Kael?"
He didn't answer.
Couldn't.
The reflection cracked.
They were back in the cathedral.
Kael gasped, collapsing. His mark burned across his neck and shoulder now, spiraling toward his heart.
The Codex shut.
And the Thornbound was gone.
Thorne knelt beside him. "What happened?"
Kael couldn't speak for a moment.
Then: "She gave me a Name. I think… I think it's mine."
"You mean your true name?"
"No," Kael said. "I mean the name I haven't earned yet."
They camped that night beneath the spires, outside the cathedral's reach.
The stars above the Ash Wastes were dull, blurred by thin clouds of silver dust.
Kael did not sleep.
Instead, he read the new page.
It still bore no letters.
But the shape of the name was there. He could feel it.
A truth not spoken, but lived.
He drew it into the dirt again.
This time, it did not bloom.
It bled.
Dark petals. Not shadow—ink. The language of thorns.
Thorne stirred in his sleep.
The Codex turned a second page.
This one bore writing.
A single phrase:
"To wield the Thorn is not to command—it is to bleed in rhythm with the world."
Kael exhaled.
He understood now.
Not fully.
But enough to take one more step.
In the morning, they left the cathedral behind.
Kael walked straighter.
Slower.
Each footstep a word.
Each breath, a letter.
He had spoken nothing aloud—but he carried the Name now.
It coiled behind his ribs.
Waiting to be unleashed.
Thorne said little, but he watched Kael differently.
Less like a student.
More like a storm gathering shape.
By noon, the ash had thinned into stone.
They reached a river of glass.
It had once flowed. Now it lay frozen, flat, and black. Beneath its surface were bones—hundreds, maybe thousands.
Kael looked at them, heart still.
"So many died here."
Thorne nodded. "Most never made it past the Reflection Tower. Fewer still survived the Hollow Cathedral."
Kael turned to him.
"Then what comes next?"
Thorne's eyes were grim.
"The Name-Eaters."