The Name That Eats Itself
The first memory wasn't his.
He was just walking.
No destination. No thought. Just the hollow quiet of post-Council silence humming in his bones.
And then—
It struck.
A girl's laugh. Brief. Echoing. Full of salt and wind.
And an image:
A swing tied between two leaning trees.
Sea air. Bare feet. A mother humming off-key.
A name carved into bark—Nari—next to a second.
Keiran.
His vision blurred.
The memory was too warm. Too clean. Too… not his.
He staggered against the stone wall of the corridor and gasped.
And the mark on his wrist shone like a wound.
When he came to, a Concordium clerk was kneeling beside him.
Wide-eyed. Pale.
"You—what did you—?"
Keiran blinked.
"What?"
The clerk trembled. "That was my sister's name."
Keiran froze.
"You never met her. No one here knew her name. But you said it. You—"
His voice cracked.
"She died six years ago. Drowned."
Keiran looked down.
His palm still glowed faintly.
And deep beneath the runework of his mark…
Nari was now etched like a scar.
He didn't report it.
He didn't sleep.
He stared into the cracked mirror in the Concordium dorms, tracing the shape of the newest glyph.
Names weren't just feeding the mark.
They were being consumed.
It happened again the next day.
A Warden-in-training bumped into him during sparring drills.
Just contact.
A flash.
A hidden book. Locked beneath floorboards. A forbidden Crest. A forbidden thought:
"What if memory is the prison?"
Keiran muttered the quote aloud.
The trainee dropped their staff in horror.
"You shouldn't know that."
The mark pulsed.
By dusk, three more names had written themselves into his flesh.
All without consent.
All ripped from minds that hadn't offered.
He went to the Warden.
Alone.
No knock. No waiting.
She saw his wrist before he even spoke.
"You're unraveling," she said softly. "Or maybe stitching yourself together."
"I didn't choose this."
"No. But it chose you."
He leaned forward.
"What happens when there are too many names?"
She looked tired.
"That's how the first Solituded One died."
He sat in her chair.
Trembling.
"He fed too long. Took too much. And eventually... he forgot which memories were his."
"And then?"
"He tried to erase himself."
"Did it work?"
She gave him a long, hollow look.
"No."
That night, Keiran stood on the roof of the east compound.
The twin moons hung higher than before.
Almost aligned.
Ashrah bleeding into Vaelen.
Their light pooled silver on his skin.
His mark ached now. Not with pain.
With hunger.
He whispered a name.
Any name.
One that came unbidden.
"Lys."
The mark shuddered.
And a memory came. Not his.
A corridor of mirrors.
A girl, bound in rune-thread.
Her voice, cracking as she whispered: "Don't let it eat me."
He fell to his knees.
Not because he was weak.
But because he understood.
The mark wasn't just a brand.
It was a vault.
A vault that had lost its lock.
And somewhere far away—
In a sealed chamber beneath the Shattered Isles—
A candle lit backwards.
And whispered a single, forbidden word:
"Solace."