The town sat in a crater where the map said nothing should be.
Wooden scaffolds clung to the walls, strung together by bridges made of light-cable and bone.
At its center, a tall tower pulsed faintly with symbols—every flicker was a name flashing and vanishing like heartbeat Morse.
Rae whispered, "This is where echoes come to die."
Mira cracked her neck. "Charming. Who builds a city out of ghosts?"
Kael squinted. "People who ran out of neighbors."
---
They descended into the crater, passing stalls carved from concrete.
Merchants called out—selling words, not things.
> "Fresh names! Only two trades!"
"Need a new memory? We got clean ones, no guilt residue!"
"Lost your reflection? Rent one!"
Kael stopped. "Okay, I officially hate capitalism."
Ashveil chuckled. "This is capitalism perfected. You sell what you forget."
---
Rae guided them toward the tower. "Stay close. The Name-Eaters smell ignorance."
"Explain," Mira said.
"They collect the unanchored. If you enter without a name strong enough to echo, they eat the silence you leave behind."
Kael muttered, "Fantastic. I'm already half silence."
---
The ground trembled before Rae could answer.
From beneath the bridge, a low, wet sound crawled up the wood—like bones dragging across metal.
People screamed.
Then the floorboards split open, and something rose.
It looked like a man who had been peeled and refolded wrong: dozens of names carved across his skin, glowing faintly red. His mouth hung open, words dripping out like smoke.
A Name-Eater.
Mira raised her rifle. "Back!"
She fired—rounds of condensed light that shredded through the creature's chest. It staggered, but didn't fall; each wound just filled with more names, each scar pulsing as if feeding.
> "They burn meaning," Ashveil hissed. "They eat what's remembered."
Kael felt the shard pulse in his pocket. His blood went cold.
"Rae!" he shouted. "Can it be killed?"
Rae's face was pale. "Not killed. Rewritten!"
---
The Name-Eater lunged. Kael moved without thinking. The shard burned in his hand, light spilling out like black fire.
The creature's arm swept across the bridge—too wide, too fast. Kael ducked, rolled, the world slowing in his resonance field. Every sound stretched thin like pulled silk.
Ashveil's voice sharpened.
> "Resonance line one: remember its shape."
Kael focused—and the creature's outline burned in his vision, thousands of small cracks moving independently, like the lines of broken glass trying to reassemble.
> "Now," Ashveil hissed, "resonate."
Kael exhaled. The shard screamed.
A pulse tore outward—a wave of inverted light that bent shadows backward.
Every name carved on the creature's body flared white—then shattered.
The beast howled as the words bled from it, glowing symbols fluttering into the air like fireflies. It staggered, dropping to its knees.
Kael didn't stop moving. He reached out and grabbed its face—felt the raw, vibrating memory underneath.
> "I remember you," he said, voice cracking. "You were a man once."
The Name-Eater froze. Its mouth trembled.
For a split second, a voice came out—human, terrified.
> "I was— I was called—"
Then it exploded in a silent bloom of light.
The impact flung Kael backward, slamming him into the railing. Mira was there, dragging him up, shouting his name. Rae was on the other side, eyes wide with something like awe and fear.
When the dust cleared, the bridge was gone, the crater floor below scorched in spirals of names that no one could read.
---
Mira stared at him. "What did you just do?"
Kael wiped blood from his lip. "No idea. Improvised."
Ashveil hummed in his skull, pleased. "You reminded the eater of its meal. It remembered too much. Memory is poison to those who thrive on forgetting."
Kael groaned. "So my power is weaponized nostalgia? Great. I'm unbeatable at high school reunions."
Mira barked a laugh despite herself. "You're impossible."
---
As they climbed down to regroup, Rae watched Kael's hand still glowing faintly around the shard.
"You changed the names," they said quietly. "You didn't just erase them—you rewrote them into silence."
Kael frowned. "That bad?"
Rae shook their head. "That means the world remembers differently now. The Name-Eaters will smell that. And they will come."
Ashveil chuckled. "Let them. We feed well on the hungry."
Kael stared at the crater's center, at the tower pulsing faster now—as if the fight had woken something deep within.
He didn't know if that was victory or warning.
He just knew one thing for certain:
This world didn't forget easily.
And now it was remembering him.
---