The bridge of broken name

The bridge looked like it had been cleaved in half by a forgotten god.

Its obsidian bones jutted from the chasm walls like black ribs, cracked and veined with silver lines of age. Mist drifted beneath it in slow, curling tendrils but Calyx knew the truth: it wasn't mist. It was memory, fragmented and raw, seeping from whatever slept beneath the Skar.

They crossed single file.

Serah led, her sword drawn but low, the blade humming faintly in her grip.

Bast followed, footsteps loud on the dead stone, eyes scanning the shadows that curled like vipers along the rail-less path.

Wren moved like a ghost behind them, muttering prayers that sounded more like accusations.

Calyx came last.

With every step, the bridge spoke.

Not in words. Not aloud. But deep within him. Like someone was pressing memories into his spine, trying to make him remember lives that weren't his.

"You were once a king."

"You held your mother's hand as she died in the frost."

"You failed to save the city of black glass."

He clenched his fists. Not mine. Not mine. Not mine. The spiral burned cold.

"Do you feel that?" Wren asked ahead of him.

"Yes," Calyx said, voice tight. "It's like the bridge is remembering for me."

"It's older than the moon's first lie," Wren muttered. "They say it was built by those who tried to escape fate. And those who cross it leave part of themselves behind."

Bast snorted. "Good. I've been meaning to shed some weight."

But no one laughed. About halfway across, Serah halted. She knelt, fingers brushing the stone.

"It's cracked here," she said. "Something fell through."

Calyx approached. The fracture was jagged, shaped like a sigil though not one he recognized. Dark ichor stained the edge, as if the stone itself had bled.

"Something fell?" he asked.

"No," Wren said grimly, kneeling beside her. "Something was pulled."

They kept moving.

The air grew heavier as they neared the bridge's midpoint. A strange pressure settled in Calyx's chest, like a weight pushing inward. Not suffocating but folding.

He stopped and turned. Behind him, the path they had crossed shimmered and vanished. Only mist. Only darkness.

"Don't look back," Wren said sharply. "It's a rule for a reason."

"I didn't mean to—"

"Intent doesn't matter. The Skar feeds on hesitation. Doubt gives it form."

They reached the center. There, etched into the stone, was a name. But it had been burned out.

The space where the name had once lived was hollow, as though the letters had been seared from reality itself. Not scratched. Not erased.

Scorched from memory.

Serah reached out but Bast caught her wrist.

"Don't," he growled. "It remembers touch."

Wren knelt again, whispering to himself. "Someone died here. Not a person. A memory."

Calyx felt his spiral throb again.

He couldn't help himself he leaned down and touched the name.

Suddenly he was falling.

Through ash, through light, through faces that screamed and turned to sand.

His body remained kneeling but his mind plummeted into a sea of fractured recollections. He saw glimpses of things too vast to comprehend,

A tower of bone reaching beyond the stars.

A woman with seven voices weeping into the moon. A blade that carved names from time itself. A child without a face standing in a field of thorns. His own hand reaching toward the sun and turning to fire.

And then, A voice. Not his. Not human. But familiar.

"You will be the wound. The mouth through which the forgotten scream. Bear it well, Ashwrought. For the silence to come is older than light."

He gasped and returned.

Serah had drawn her blade. Wren had backed away, face pale. Bast stood still, as if carved from obsidian.

"You touched it," Serah said coldly.

"I had to," Calyx breathed.

"No, you didn't."

He stood. "It told me something."

"What did it say?" Wren asked.

"That I'm the wound."

A silence followed.

"Wounds don't heal," Serah said after a moment.

"Some do," Bast rumbled. "But they leave scars. Sometimes that's what the world needs to remember it was cut."

Wren stared at the burned-out name. "That belonged to a Thornbearer," he said. "Long before the Sundering."

Serah's gaze was ice. "Then this bridge isn't just for crossing. It's a tomb."

They pressed on. The far side of the bridge ended in a stone arch the remnants of a forgotten gate. Beyond it, the land warped.

Trees bent in impossible directions. The moonlight twisted, reflecting colors that didn't exist. The path ahead wasn't straight but spiraled.

"This is it," Wren whispered. "The edge of the world."

"No," Bast said. "It's the beginning of a deeper one."

Calyx paused beneath the arch and turned back once more. But there was no bridge now. Only mist. Only memory.

And the faint sound of a name one he didn't recognize weeping from the chasm below.

The land beyond the bridge didn't obey reason.

Colors moved where shadows should have been. Trees bled black sap that shimmered with light. The ground pulsed faintly beneath Calyx's boots, like the heartbeat of something immense buried deep below.

The others felt it too.

Bast's hand never left the hilt of his cleaver.

Wren walked with slow reverence, like a penitent in a haunted temple.

And Serah's sword arm was taut, her steps precise.

"Where are we now?" Calyx asked.

Wren didn't answer at first. Then, softly

"The Hollow Marches. The veil-thin border between the Skar and the Sanctum. If you listen too long here, the land will start to listen back."

They followed the spiral path deeper. The forest around them changed with each step. One moment it was charred and skeletal. The next, it was overgrown with bioluminescent vines that whispered in rustling tongues. Here, time forgot itself.

Calyx touched a tree. It breathed, exhaled his own voice back at him.

"Ashwrought." 

The spiral on his palm flared. He pulled his hand back, heart pounding. Serah was at his side in a moment.

"What did it do?"

"It knew me. Called me that… again."

Wren stared at the tree. "This place was once part of the Thorned Expanse. Before it was swallowed by the Sanctum. The name remembers."

"But how?" Calyx asked.

Wren gave him a grim smile. "Because the trees here are grown from old names. Forgotten ones. The roots feed on memory."

They came to a clearing where the path split into three.

Each way looked the same spiraling outward in different directions, each shrouded in flickering moonlight and strange, shifting fog.

"Well," Bast said, "which hell do we walk into first?"

Calyx stepped forward. The spiral on his palm pulsed once, twice then turned faintly toward the path on the left.

"That one," he said.

"You sure?" Serah asked.

"No," he replied. "But it's the one that's… calling."

Wren nodded. "Then that's the path the Skar wants you to take."

They walked.

Not far along the path, they found the remains of a camp. Tattered tents, long-since rotted through. A circle of stones, blackened from fire. Scattered bones. But no blood.

"Abandoned?" Serah asked.

"No," Wren said. "Devoured."

"By what?"

"Not what. When."

Calyx knelt near the ashes of the firepit. There, etched faintly into the stone, was a symbol. A spiral like his own, but incomplete.

"Another Thornbearer?" he whispered.

"Perhaps," Wren said. "Or a fragment of one."

Suddenly the fog shifted. From between the trees stepped a figure. It was human-shaped, but wrong.

Its limbs were too long. Its skin stretched like parchment, marked with writhing glyphs. Where its eyes should have been, only deep, shadowed pits as if sight had been stolen.

And in its chest, where a heart should have been, there pulsed a glowing spiral.

It spoke with a voice made of too many voices,

"You bear the wound. You are the echo. Come… let us remember."

It lunged.

Serah was faster. Her blade met its claws mid-swipe, sparks singing through the air. Bast moved beside her, his cleaver slamming down where the thing's shoulder had been a second before it bent around the blow, bones creaking like timber under strain.

Wren flung powder into the air. "Close your eyes!"

Calyx obeyed and felt something pull at his mind, a pressure behind his eyes trying to peel back memory.

"You are not real."

"You are the memory of a child who never died."

"You forgot your first name when you crossed the bridge."

He roared and shoved the spiral forward. Flame. Not fire. Not light. But burning truth.

It seared the air and struck the thing dead-center. The creature screamed, a dozen mouths opening across its face and melted into fog. Gone.

"What in the seven veils was that?" Bast hissed.

"A Hollowborn," Wren said, voice low. "A failed Thornbearer. One who bore the spiral, but forgot their name before it could root."

"How do you fail a name?" Calyx asked.

"You let the world rewrite you."

The clearing had gone deathly silent again. Calyx looked down at his hand. The spiral was still burning faintly. Still alive.

He remembered what the creature had said: You forgot your first name.

"Is that true?" he whispered. "Have I forgotten who I was?"

Wren nodded slowly. "You were never given the chance to remember."

Serah stepped close. "Then we find it. Piece by piece. If the Hollowborn are what happen to those who lose themselves…"

She didn't finish the sentence. She didn't have to. They kept moving.

The trees gave way to a valley of shattered stone and broken statues monuments half-buried in moss, faces weathered into strangers. At the far end, a ruin stood: a temple of black crystal and rusted iron, its doorway agape like a wound.

And above it hovered a glyph carved into the sky. A spiral. Open. Waiting.

"This is it," Wren said. "The Place of Naming."

Calyx stepped forward, drawn toward it like a tide drawn to the moon. The spiral in his palm pulsed once. And the temple opened its eyes.