Chapter 8 – The Man Who Named the Dead

"You cannot bury what remembers its own name."

The town didn't have a name.

Or rather—it had one once, but forgot it.

Every night, when the sun set behind the spines of the northern cliffs, the name was swallowed by shadow. And every morning, when the people woke, they remembered everything—

Except what to call themselves.

Their signs were blank. Their books unwritten. The town's records rewritten daily in chalk that vanished come dusk. The people whispered that names were dangerous. That if one said the wrong name at the wrong time, the dead would come.

Aren didn't believe in curses anymore.

He believed in memory.

And memory was worse.

The scroll had led him here.

The Tenth's sigil burned bright the moment Aren stepped past the town's invisible threshold. It thrummed under his skin like an infection—one of recognition.

He had been here before.

But not as himself.

As someone else.

Yin walked beside him in silence, her hand never straying far from her blade. The town unnerved her. No guards. No gossip. No vendors shouting prices. Just people… going through the motions, blank-faced, like actors stuck in an endless rehearsal of a forgotten script.

When they passed, no one looked up.

When they spoke, it was in hushed tones with no inflection.

And every time Aren asked someone what the town was called, they blinked like it was the first time anyone had ever spoken to them.

"You mustn't name things," one old man finally said.

"Why not?" Yin asked.

"Because names are doors," he whispered. "And doors open."

They found the graveyard on the hill at sunset.

Aren didn't need to look for it. His body remembered the way.

Each step closer, and his skin grew colder.

Each grave was marked with a stone.But the stones had no writing.Just blood-red handprints.

Thirteen rows.

Twelve stones per row.

And one stone—at the very end—smeared in fresh crimson.

Yin's breath caught. "There's something alive here."

"No," Aren said.

He stepped toward the final stone.

"It's something that's been awake too long."

The moment his hand touched the stone, the world broke.

Not shattered. Not twisted.

Broken.

Like a mirror dropped.

One moment he stood beside Yin.

The next—

He was someone else.

A boy. Fifteen, maybe sixteen. Eyes filled with flame. Hands covered in calligraphy ink. Standing at the edge of a pyre made from books, scrolls, and names.

Dozens of townspeople surrounded him, chanting.

Not with hate.

But worship.

He was the one who had taught them to forget.

He had told them names were chains. That to unshackle the soul, they must burn every memory.

He was the Tenth.

And he had failed.

Aren came back gasping.

The grave beneath the blood-hand stone was open.

Inside it—*

Not bones. Not a body.

But a single slip of paper.

A name.

Aren reached in and took it.

His heart stopped.

The name on the slip was his own.

"Yu. Aren."

The world shook.

Yin fell to her knees, clutching her head.

The town screamed in unison.

Not in pain.

In recognition.

They remembered.

They remembered his name.

They remembered the boy who bled ink and taught them to forget.

And the moment they did, the fog lifted from their eyes.

And their mouths began to move again.

Chanting.

Over and over.

"Yu Aren. Yu Aren. Yu Aren."

It wasn't prayer.

It was binding.

Yin shouted his name. Ran to pull him away from the grave.

But it was too late.

The ground beneath Aren cracked.

And a hand reached up from beneath the grave.

Not rotting.

Not alive.

Just… ink-stained.

It grabbed Aren's ankle.

And he fell.

Down.

Down.

Down.

Into the Tenth's memory.

There was a library without walls.

Floating scrolls spun endlessly in the dark.

Each one written in blood and fire and grief.

And in the center of it all, seated in a throne made from names stripped from corpses—

The Tenth.

He had no face.

Just calligraphy painted where features should be.

His voice echoed from parchment itself.

"You took my name."

Aren spoke. "It was mine."

"It was ours."

The Tenth stood.

And Aren saw—he was not a man.

Not anymore.

He was every person who had ever spoken Aren's name in death.

"You were the one who tried to erase yourself," Aren said.

"I succeeded," the Tenth replied.

"Then why do you still exist?"

"Because you remembered."

And the Tenth raised a brush like a blade.

Ink began to fall from the air.

"Name yourself," the Tenth said. "Or I will name you again."

Aren's jaw clenched.

He could feel the scroll pulsing in his robe.But it wouldn't open.Not here.

This was his death.

The one he didn't remember.

"I don't want your name," Aren whispered. "I want the truth."

The Tenth laughed. A sound of paper tearing.

"There is no truth," he said.

"Only stories too old to forget."

And he lunged.

The brush sliced through the dark.

Not physical.

Symbolic.

Each stroke rewrote the world around Aren.

Mountains became ink blots.

Skies became pages.

Even his own body began to blur.

But Aren refused.

He closed his eyes and spoke.

Spoke the only name he had left.

"Yu Aren."

The world convulsed.

The Tenth screamed.

Because now the name had power.

Clarity.

It was not shame.

Not failure.

It was his.

And the Tenth shattered.

When Aren opened his eyes, he was back in the graveyard.

The slip of paper burned away.

The townspeople had collapsed, asleep.

Yin stood over him, sword drawn, shaking.

"You stopped breathing," she whispered.

"I remembered," he said.

"What?"

"My Tenth Death."

He stood. Looked at the empty grave.

"At fifteen," he had said quietly, "I made a town forget itself to protect them from what was coming. I erased their names. Even mine."

Yin frowned.

"From what?"

Aren looked up at the blood-red moon that had risen during the ritual.

Then down at the eleven scars along his ribs.

And finally, at the scroll, which had opened again.

A new page had formed.

A vow.

[🩸 The Tenth Vow

I name the dead, and I will not let them be forgotten.

Not by the heavens. Not by the earth. Not by myself.

Even if it breaks me, I will remember. ]

And beside the vow, written in black-red blood:

"Next: The Fifth — The Mirror That Screams."

🩸End of Chapter 8 – "The Man Who Named the Dead"