The descent into the mine was silent.
No wind. No echoes. Only the crunch of boots on fractured stone and the suffocating hum of soul energy pressing against their skin like a second atmosphere. Asher led, sword drawn, senses sharpened to the unnatural. Emilia followed, soullight still flickering faintly on her fingertips from the burst she'd unleashed the night before. Liaen brought up the rear, spear glowing with a faint ward-light.
Elira hovered close to the low ceiling, her form no brighter than a flickering candle.
"This place is older than the cult," she murmured. "Older than Duskvale. This was never just a mine."
They emerged into a circular antechamber deep underground. Its walls were etched with ancient carvings—depictions of things not bound by flesh. Creatures half-formed, too many eyes, too few faces. Nothing human.
Asher exhaled. "It's a temple."
Liaen frowned. "To what?"
Emilia stepped forward, pulled by something she didn't understand. Her fingers brushed one of the carvings.
"To a name that shouldn't be spoken," she whispered.
The stone trembled beneath their feet. Dust filtered down from the ceiling like ash.
Then came a voice—dry, cracked, like splintered bone dragged across stone:
"Who dares walk the hollow?"
Asher raised his blade. "Show yourself."
From the shadows stepped a figure robed in tattered obsidian thread. His face was masked in bone, eyes seeping black smoke, and his hands were inscribed with soul-script, sewn into the skin itself.
"I am Veneris," he rasped. "Keeper of the Forgotten Name. You trespass upon sacred silence."
Elira's light spasmed. "He's not alive—not truly. His soul is bound to the name."
"You seek answers?" Veneris asked. "Then speak it. Speak the name—and remember nothing else."
Emilia staggered as something stirred deep inside her. Something ancient. Watching.
"No," Asher growled, stepping between them. "She's not yours."
Veneris lifted a hand—and darkness surged forward. Not shadow, but unbeing. A void that devoured light, sound, even thought.
Asher met it with steel and soulflare, carving through the tide. Liaen hurled a spear wreathed in flame and soulstone, striking Veneris in the chest. He reeled—but did not fall.
"You cannot kill what has no name," he hissed.
"But we can bury it," Emilia said.
She stepped forward, hands igniting in silver-white, eyes aglow with defiant clarity. The soulbond between her and Elira blazed to life, forming a ward of spiraling runes around her.
"I don't need your forgotten name," she said. "I remember mine."
The battle tore through the temple.
Veneris summoned specters without memory—souls hollowed of identity, shrieking in confusion and rage. They swarmed from the walls and floors, but Emilia's light held them at bay. Elira shone brighter than she had in days, her essence intertwining with the ward encircling Emilia.
Asher and Liaen fought in seamless rhythm—steel and flame in tandem, breaking through the tide of formless attackers. But Veneris was relentless. His words fractured stone. His power fed on oblivion.
Then Emilia stepped into the center of the room and called a single name:
"Elira!"
Elira's soul surged—flaring through the runes carved into the temple floor.
The chamber quaked. Carvings split apart.
And Veneris screamed—not in agony, but in recognition.
"I remember... I remember... my name..."
And then—he crumbled into dust.
When the silence returned, Elira hovered beside Asher, her glow weak and flickering.
"You used your soul to bind his," Asher said softly.
She nodded. "One more memory chained. One less threat to her."
Emilia collapsed beside them, drained but smiling faintly.
"I didn't say the name," she whispered. "I didn't want to know it."
"You didn't have to," Asher said. "You already know who you are."
They emerged from the mine as dawn broke over Duskvale Ridge.
The name remained unspoken.
But its power had been silenced.
—for now.