The world reeled.
The Guardian Spirit's body writhed in the dying embers of Raen's final strike, a grotesque silhouette unraveling into ash and echoes. Lyra slumped beside him, blood crusting her lips, her spell-drained fingers twitching as if still binding phantom chains.
But Raen didn't move.
Not for a long time.
He stood still, blade lowered, eyes unfocused as if staring past the world itself. Not at the crumbled temple. Not at the corpse of a god-bound spirit. But into something deeper—something beneath reality.
The voices were louder now.
Not screams. Not whispers.
Names.
All the names he had taken. All the souls he had devoured. All the truths that once belonged to gods now begging to be remembered.
"Raen?" Lyra's voice came gently, as though afraid she might shatter him with sound. "Are you—?"
"I'm fine." His voice was hoarse. But it wasn't a lie.
Because in the stillness after the battle, a new understanding had begun to crystallize—faint but solid. Every name he devoured wasn't just power. It was identity. History. Laws written into the fabric of creation.
And now, they were his to rewrite.
---
They camped in the ruins that night, under a moon that bled silver tears onto the ancient stones. Lyra, despite her wounds, studied the stolen tome with feverish intensity. The blood-chains had evolved, reacting to her will faster than before, pulsing with what she suspected was not just magic, but intent—sentience.
Raen watched her from across the fire, silent.
"You're thinking too much," she said without looking up.
"I have to," he replied. "Something's changing."
"You're not losing yourself?"
Raen shook his head. "I'm remembering them. The gods I've taken. Their memories. Their regrets. Their mistakes. And I think…" He paused, staring into the fire. "I think I finally understand what this power is."
She closed the tome and looked up. "Tell me."
---
The Power System – Naethryn: The Law of Names
In the world of Artherion, power is not drawn from the physical, the elemental, or the arcane—it is drawn from Names.
A Name is not simply a word. It is a Truth. A fundamental law that defines existence.
Every living being, every god, every blade of grass, every concept—has a True Name buried within the folds of the world's memory.
To wield true power is to know a Name.
To speak it is to bind it.
To devour it is to own it.
Those who hunt and steal Names are called Thronedead—souls who have forsaken their mortal truth to ascend the ladder of divinity, one stolen identity at a time.
Each Name grants not only knowledge or magic, but lawful dominion—the right to impose that truth upon the world.
Raen was not just killing gods.
He was rewriting reality.
---
"The Guardian," Raen muttered aloud. "It wasn't guarding knowledge. It was knowledge. A memory fragment of the last god who tried to unwrite the Throne."
Lyra nodded. "And the monolith?"
"A cipher. A container for forbidden Names. I think it's older than the gods themselves."
He stood, his shadow stretching across the cracked stones like a blade.
"There are more like it," he said. "More pieces of the world that remember what the gods buried. And I'm going to find them."
She stood too. "Even if it kills you?"
He smiled—but there was no joy in it.
"If I die before I break the Throne, then every life I stole meant nothing."
---
They left the ruins at dawn.
The world beyond was cold and wild—forests steeped in mist, rivers flowing with lightless water, skyless stretches of land where stars flickered beneath your feet instead of above.
This was the Sundered Vale, a realm between worlds—where reality thinned, and the Laws of Names grew unstable.
Here, Raen would be hunted not just by beasts or gods, but by the Nameless—souls who had lost all identity in their hunger for power. Remnants of failed Thronedead, their bodies warped by half-devoured truths.
Lyra spotted the first one near a weeping tree—a humanoid figure made of broken mirrors, its face a shifting mosaic of other people's memories.
It didn't speak.
It just screamed.
---
The fight was quick but harrowing.
Every time Raen struck, the Nameless mimicked his form, his technique—even his voice.
He had to unmake it, piece by piece, striking not with his blade, but with Names.
The Name of Fire.
The Name of Silence.
The Name of Mercy.
Each time he spoke a word he had claimed, the Nameless crumbled further—unable to contain a truth it did not own.
Finally, with the whisper of a Name no mortal should have ever known—Velroth, He Who Was Forgotten—Raen silenced the creature forever.
---
They rested by a stream of glass-like water. Lyra looked shaken.
"Raen," she said quietly, "how long until you forget who you were? Until the Names take everything?"
He didn't answer right away.
Instead, he pulled something from his satchel. A scrap of parchment. A torn page from a children's storybook. It was the only thing he had kept from his old life—before the pact, before the killing, before the power.
A name was written on it.
Raen Valor.
He handed it to her.
"If I ever forget," he said, "read this to me."
Lyra clutched it tight. "You won't forget."
But her voice trembled.
Because they both knew.
Every Name had a cost.
And some names were heavier than others.
---
To Be Continued…