The mark hadn't stopped pulsing.
Not since the Cursemade fell.
It beat like a second heart now—one that didn't obey time, or body, or breath.
Rell didn't walk beside him on the way back. She kept her distance, as if afraid his name might leap off his skin and cut her open.
When they returned to the Concordium's east compound, no one spoke.
But they watched.
They always watched.
Keiran didn't sleep.
Instead, he followed the rhythm of the mark.
It throbbed at strange intervals, like a code he couldn't yet read.
At the third hour past midnight, it pulled.
Downward.
The Concordium's lower archives weren't guarded.
They didn't need to be.
Most Wardens refused to go below Level 4—not out of protocol, but fear.
They called the deeper levels Echo Cages—places where memory went to decay.
Keiran passed each threshold with no resistance.
Level 5. Then 6. Then—
He felt it.
A cold draft.
Not air.
Memory.
There, at the bottom of a stairwell shaped like a helix, he found it:
A door.
No handle. No lock. Just smooth obsidian carved with rings of symbols, none of which he could read.
Except one.
At the center.
The one his mark now mirrored.
The moment he stepped close, the mark burned.
The door opened inward.
The chamber beyond was circular.
Dead silent.
Dust spun in the air like waiting thoughts. The walls were lined with names—none written in ink. They were cut into the stone. Thousands of them. Faint. Fragile. Some half-erased.
And in the center:
A plinth.
On it, a mask.
Stone. Weathered. Cracked.
But unmistakably—
His face.
He didn't know how he knew.
But it was the face he would wear when this body broke.
The face buried in memory.
The mask was smooth, except for two words etched at the crown:
Keiran Solace.
His breath caught.
Solace.
That wasn't his last name. Was it?
He didn't remember ever having one.
The mark on his wrist pulsed again—
And this time, the glyph shifted.
Into a name.
SOLITUDO.
Behind him, the door closed.
Memory pressed inward like water behind glass.
He fell to one knee, the plinth's edge cold against his palm.
Images surged:
A cloaked figure burning in a circle of salt.
A field of candles, all turned to watch the moon.
A voice saying "We remembered too much. So they made us forget everything."
Lys, screaming his name—Keiran—before vanishing into smoke.
Then—
The room breathed.
Once.
Then all the names on the wall flared briefly.
And one faded out entirely.
Erased.
He turned.
The stone where that name had been now glowed with the same glyph on his wrist.
As if his arrival had devoured it.
The mark feeds on names.
Keiran stood slowly.
The mask remained on the plinth.
Waiting.
Daring him.
He reached toward it—
But stopped an inch away.
Instead, he spoke.
"Who gave me this name?"
The mask didn't answer.
But behind him, a voice did.
Soft. Cracked. Familiar.
"I did."
He turned.
No one there.
Just a candle.
Burning blue.
Flickering like a voice nearly forgotten.
He left the chamber with the name Solace ringing in his ears.
He didn't take the mask.
Not yet.
But the door didn't close behind him.
It stayed open.
Watching.
Outside, the moons had moved.
Almost aligned.
Almost ready