: A Lie Told Loud Enough

: A Lie Told Loud Enough

The sky hadn't moved in days.

Not the clouds. Not the color. Not even the sun. It simply hovered—pale, sickly, unchanging—like a memory someone forgot to forget. Wale and Chris walked beneath it in silence, their footsteps too soft for the stone path beneath them, as though they weren't entirely present in the world anymore.

They had fled the monastery just before it collapsed. Or perhaps it had never existed. Wale wasn't sure anymore. Time felt thinner. His thoughts less linear. Every step forward felt like it pulled from a dozen different possible versions of himself.

Chris noticed it too. She kept touching her fingers together, as if trying to remind herself she still existed in one body. "We have days," she said, "before even we forget."

Wale nodded grimly. "And if we forget... it wins."

Not the monster. Not even Xar'nen.

But what was underneath.

The truth.

Or the absence of it.

They reached a town—or something that remembered being a town. The signs above doors had been smeared into gibberish. The people there moved in jerks, like puppets with too few strings. Some had no mouths. Some had too many.

But they smiled.

And that terrified Wale most of all.

Chris stepped into the center square and spoke clearly, loudly, like a knife tearing through fabric.

"We bring stories."

The townsfolk froze. Heads tilted. Mouths twitched.

Wale stepped beside her, raising his voice too. "Real stories. With beginnings. With ends. Stories that matter."

A child stepped forward. Or perhaps just something shaped like one.

"You remember?"

Chris knelt. "Yes."

The child's eyes twitched as if trying to focus. "They took our names."

Wale crouched. "We'll give them back."

The child smiled, a tear of ink slipping down their cheek.

"They'll come for you."

Chris answered, "Let them try."

And so they began.

Night after night, Wale and Chris stood before the broken people of forgotten towns, telling stories. Some true. Some lies. Some both. Tales of Grey's heroism. Of battles no one remembered. Of names that held power again.

It was risky.

Every tale was a step closer to the thing beneath the name—drawing its attention. But it was the only way to resist. To remind the world how memory worked. How narrative bound reality.

Soon, other towns listened.

Then travelers.

Then scribes.

People began writing again—not just surviving, but remembering. Carving names into stone, etching truths into cloth. For every name the creature stole, ten more bloomed in defiance.

Wale called it The Inkfire Rebellion.

Chris called it Hope.

But then came the Corrections.

One morning, a storyteller was found dead. Mouth open. Pages stuffed into his throat—his own journal torn and mangled. Words burned from his skin like ash. His name gone from every record.

They buried him without a marker.

The next night, another fell.

Then another.

Some by sickness. Others by silence.

But all with the same curse: their names could not be spoken anymore.

Chris grew quieter.

Wale grew colder.

"We need to move faster," he said. "Before it adapts."

She pointed out, "It already has. It's killing in reverse. Erasing them before they can speak."

Wale stared at the stars—unchanging and wrong. "Then we rewrite history louder."

They reached the place called The Blank Vale—a land so rewritten, even death didn't stay consistent. Here, Wale intended to try something forbidden.

To speak his own name in a ritual circle of reversed glyphs.

If it worked, he would become an anchor—a fixed point in reality. The first truly remembered person in a world unraveling from within. If it failed, the creature would find him. Instantly.

Chris tried to talk him down.

"You don't have to be the linchpin."

Wale smiled, tired but resolute. "I already am. I just haven't accepted it yet."

The ritual took hours.

Circles carved with teeth.

Ashes from names already lost.

And silence—enforced by Chris, who guarded the perimeter with steel and flame.

At midnight, Wale stepped into the center.

He spoke his name.

Not the one he gave to others.

Not the one legends used.

His true name.

The one he was born with.

The one he had hidden from himself.

And the world paused.

Not just around him. But everywhere.

Clouds stopped. Winds ceased. Hearts skipped.

And then—

It screamed.

A noise so ancient it bypassed hearing and sliced directly into existence.

The creature knew.

And it was coming.

Chris hauled him up from the ritual circle as the wind tore across the vale, ripping memories from trees, from stone, from flesh.

"Wale!" she shouted. "Tell me who you are!"

He looked at her, bleeding from the mouth, and smiled. "I am the story they couldn't erase."

She grabbed his hand and ran.

The sky broke open behind them.

Not in lightning.

But in narrative.

The creature no longer hid.

It walked now, fully formed.

And it had a face.

His.