The Chain of Names

They waited in silence after the horn.

Dareth pressed his back to the cold stone wall, heart hammering. He could feel the Sigil's pulse like a second heartbeat, slower, deeper. The moss-light flickered faintly above them, casting green shadows across Erren's face.

She stood still, head tilted, listening. Not like someone afraid, like someone confirming something.

Dareth tried to steady his breathing. "What do we do?"

Erren didn't answer.

He pushed off the wall, voice low. "Erren?"

She finally looked at him. Her face was unreadable, but her hand was already resting lightly on the strap of her pack.

"I'm sorry," she said.

His stomach dropped. "What?"

"They offered a clean slate," she said, eyes narrowing. "Cred, transport, permanent name seal. I've been surviving in this pit for nine years, Dareth. And you? You're just a fresh mark."

He backed a step away from her, jaw tight. "You said you'd help."

"I helped," she snapped. "I kept you breathing long enough to get bought by someone who doesn't shoot first. That's more than most would've done."

Footsteps echoed above.

Dareth turned, eyes wide. "You told them where I was."

"They already knew someone lit up the Hollow with fossil light. It was only a matter of time. Better me than someone who'd carve the mark out of you."

The stairwell lit with lanternlight, white and sharp. Shadows of figures in polished bone-plate spread along the walls.

Dareth's body tensed. The mark on his chest burned.

"You said they dissect people like me," he hissed.

Erren shrugged. "Not my problem."

The first of the Vireth scouts descended, white armor inlaid with black fossil patterns, visors down, weapons ready but not drawn. One held a sealed canister marked with a strange crest.

The leader stepped forward. "Dareth, Sigil-bearer of unrecorded Pulse origin. You are under provisional claim by House Vireth. Do not resist."

Erren stepped aside.

Dareth stared at her. "Why even save me in the first place?"

She didn't look away. "Because you hadn't done anything stupid yet. Now you're just a weight with a glow."

The soldiers approached.

The air buzzed with the pressure of the Sigil inside him, ready to uncoil. But he had no control. No strength. Just a burn in his chest and a shaking in his limbs. The Vireth soldiers advanced with practiced ease, one raised a slender, rune-etched baton and stepped in close.

There was no warning.

The baton discharged with a sharp snap. Pain lanced through Dareth's spine. He collapsed before he could scream, vision gone white, muscles locking.

They moved fast.

In seconds, his arms were bound behind him in relic-woven cable, the Sigil beneath his skin wrapped in damp cloth. Two scouts hoisted him to his knees, another affixed a steel collar around his neck, etched with House Vireth's crest: a spiral fang within a closed eye.

Erren watched it happen.

She stood at the edge of the chamber, arms crossed, her face unreadable. But her eyes flicked from Dareth's convulsing form to the officer.

"Where's my seal?" she asked. "You promised me payment and a new—"

The officer didn't answer.

Instead, without a word, the nearest scout moved.

The blade was thin, fast, and silent. It passed through the air like a whisper. One moment, Erren was standing. The next, her head rolled from her shoulders and struck the ground with a dull thud.

Her body remained upright for a heartbeat, then collapsed beside Dareth.

Blood pooled quickly.

"Dirty bitch," the scout muttered loud enough for those around him to hear. The lead officer then turned to the remaining scouts.

They nodded and began sweeping the chamber for additional witnesses or signs of relic bleed. One of them kicked the shattered remains of the speaking mask into a sack and sealed it.

Dareth couldn't speak. Couldn't breathe.

He wanted to scream, to run, to fight, but nothing in him answered. The mark under his skin was still under the dampened cloth.

They dragged him up the stairs. The light above burned white and cold.

--------

The world came back in pieces.

Dareth blinked. His head throbbed. His mouth tasted of copper and cloth. When he tried to move, something tugged sharply at the base of his neck.

He froze.

A band of cold steel wrapped snug around his throat. He tried to raise his hands. They barely lifted before resistance met his wrists.

Chains ran from his collar to his wrists, and from there to the bench beneath him. His ankles were bound as well, loose enough to shift, tight enough to bite if he moved too fast. Everything was engineered not to stop movement, but to punish it.

He sat in a long, narrow cage bolted into the center of a transport chamber. Bars above, below, around, no corners. No shadows. Even the floor beneath him was mesh steel. He wasn't alone.

Five others occupied the same cage, spaced evenly along the walls. All collared. All silent.

The transport's walls rattled faintly. Outside, through the narrow viewing slot, there was only endless gray. Flat stone, dust, and skeletal silhouettes of distant trees long dead. Somewhere far behind them, Vell's Hollow was gone. Buried, or erased.

One of the others shifted, a lean, dark-skinned man whose arms were scarred with surgical seams. His collar had additional rings along the spine. He didn't look up.

Dareth tried to speak, but the moment he flexed his throat, the collar sparked.

Not pain, more like pressure. A warning. Like a hand tightening around his windpipe just enough to say: Not unless spoken to.

He swallowed the instinct.

The girl beside him looked no older than seventeen. Her jaw was wired shut. Not with cloth or tape, with actual metal pins and a locking brace. Her eyes flicked to his, then away.

The metal seat under him vibrated as the vehicle turned. Somewhere beneath them, a heavier engine rumbled into life.

Then he saw it: on the far end of the cage, between two older prisoners, sat a boy.

Small. Pale. Blonde so light it looked white. His hands rested calmly on his knees. He didn't twitch or flinch. Just sat, perfectly still.

And he was staring at Dareth.

Not like the others.

This boy watched him like he'd been waiting.

Dareth felt the hairs on his neck rise.

The boy smiled.

And said, in a voice too calm for the cage, "Hello, Dareth."

Dareth didn't answer.

He couldn't.

The collar tightened the moment he tried. He felt the way his tongue turned heavy and his throat locked tight. The message was clear: no speech without permission.

The pale boy across from him didn't seem bothered by the silence. He just kept watching.

The transport rolled on, steady and slow. The other prisoners avoided looking at either of them now. One of the older men, a gaunt figure with burn scars across half his face, tapped his fingers rhythmically against his thigh. The girl with the wired jaw kept her eyes down. No one dared speak. Even breath felt rationed.

But the boy? He leaned back against the bars like he was riding in a carriage.

"I didn't mean to scare you," he said softly, almost kindly. "I just thought it would be rude not to greet you."

The boy smiled wider. "You're wondering how I know it. Or maybe you're thinking I'm lying." He tilted his head. "I'm not."

He reached up and tapped the side of his own collar. "These things don't block everything. You can still feel the pulse. The current. The heat of a memory if it's strong enough."

Dareth watched him, unsure if the boy was talking to him, or just thinking out loud.

"I heard you before you were brought in," he continued. "Dreamed of you, actually. Weird thing. A hollow place, full of teeth and fire, and someone standing in the center of it all."

The others shifted slightly.

The burned man stopped tapping.

"I don't think it likes being quiet," the boy added. "And neither do you."

Before Dareth could so much as blink, the floor shifted. The transport slowed. A series of mechanical clunks echoed through the chamber.

The boy looked up, unfazed. "We're here."

Dareth glanced toward the viewing slot.

Gray stone walls stretched ahead. Towers of blackened iron. Strange silhouettes moved behind glass. The sky looked thinner here, like the world above had been carved out.

Dareth didn't feel like a survivor.

He felt like a specimen.

Soon the convoy hissed to a halt.

Outside the metal carriage, heavy mechanisms clanked into place. The sound of sliding gates and magnetic locks reverberated through the walls. The cage lights overhead flickered once, then dimmed to a low amber.

No one moved.

The pale boy still sat perfectly still, arms resting on his knees, posture loose but deliberate. The hum beneath the floor shifted pitch as the chamber pressurized, and somewhere deeper in the structure, a horn sounded, long, low, and mechanical.

"Checkpoint Ash," the boy said, as if reciting a lesson. "First tier processing."

Dareth turned his head slightly, watching him through the side of his eye. The others did the same.

"They'll come in soon," the boy went on. "One at a time. You'll be unshackled, marched through a corridor lined with fossil sensors. The gate is designed to interrupt your Sigil's breath, force it still."

He looked at Dareth directly again.

"But yours isn't breathing like it should. Not yet. Which is why it's going to hurt."

A metal clank announced the outer doors opening. Voices filtered in, sharp and orderly.

The boy didn't flinch. "You should try to stay conscious. They're recording reactions. Auditors don't like it when subjects pass out early. Makes them think the mark's unstable."

Dareth managed to keep his expression blank, but his pulse spiked. He wasn't afraid of pain. Not exactly. But the idea of someone measuring his pain, treating his panic as data, made something cold turn over in his gut.

"Why are you telling me this?" he whispered, forcing his voice out despite the resistance form the collar.

The boy's grin returned. "Because you're interesting. And I don't get to talk to many interesting people."

Before Dareth could ask what that meant, a pair of guards stepped into the cage space. They wore bone-plated armor, smooth, seamless, marked only with House Vireth's sigil: a spiral fang within a closed eye. One carried a dataplate. The other carried restraints and a syringe.

"017, Stand."

The burn-scarred man rose without hesitation.

The boy leaned back again, hands behind his head. "Watch carefully. That part comes for all of us."

Dareth did.

Because no matter how fast the man moved, no matter how straight his spine, when the guards injected him—

—he screamed like something ancient had been pulled from his bones.