They briefed him in silence.
No paper. No names.
Just a Warden with her hair wrapped in black silk, standing before an old map of the Shroudline.
"Your target does not exist. That's not poetry. That's cursecraft."
She tapped a name that wasn't there.
Just a blank stretch between two decaying towns, both long-evacuated.
"His name was stricken three years ago. Soul-severed. Any who hear it forget. Any who meet him forget. Even he forgets—until he speaks."
Keiran frowned.
"Then how do I find him?"
She handed him a stone.
Polished. Hollow.
"This will remember for you. Once."
They called him The Unspoken.
He had once been an Archivist of the Concordium.
Brilliant. Dangerous.
He'd tried to catalog erased names—those cast out of history, those who "should not" be remembered.
But some names fight back.
Some names burn backwards.
Keiran left at dusk.
He took only the memory stone, the broken wand-hilt, and the mask from the Vault—though he didn't wear it yet.
The mark on his wrist had quieted slightly.
As if curious.
As if watching.
The town was worse than abandoned.
It was erased.
No signs.
No streets.
Just outlines of houses in the dirt, like bones beneath skin.
And then—
A whisper.
"Who sent you?"
Keiran spun.
No one there.
Then—footsteps. Not loud. Not soft. Just… forgotten as soon as they happened.
He held the memory stone tight.
"I'm here for the Unspoken."
No answer.
Only wind.
Until—
A man stepped from the fog.
Middle-aged. Eyes hollowed by years of mental decay. He wore six layers of patched robes. All stitched with names that weren't his.
He looked at Keiran.
"Don't let me speak too long," he said. "Or I'll vanish again."
They sat beneath what was once a well.
Keiran said nothing.
He just listened.
"I tried to write the names they erased," the man whispered. "The ones they burned out of books. Of people. Of gods."
"What happened?"
"They erased me instead."
The man pulled back his sleeve.
His arm was covered in unfinished sentences.
Carved into skin. Always interrupted.
"They come undone when I forget," he said. "The names. The meanings. Sometimes I think I dreamed myself."
He touched Keiran's mark.
Just barely.
And something rushed inward.
For a second—
Keiran forgot his own name.
Not just the alias.
Not just "Keiran."
Everything.
No self. No time. No center.
Just raw memory unraveling.
Then—
the memory stone pulsed.
The moment shattered.
He gasped.
And the mark on his wrist flared.
The man clutched his head.
"It's hungry," he whispered. "It wants the names I buried."
Keiran looked down.
A new name was scrawled into his wrist. Faint. But real.
Kaedros.
"What's that?"
The man blinked.
"My first name," he said. "Before I joined the Concordium. Before they took it."
Tears slid down his cheek.
"You remembered it."
"It's on me now," Keiran said.
"Then it's safe."
The man smiled. Once.
Then—
He faded.
Not into dust. Not into fog.
Just into absence.
As if he'd never sat there.
Never spoken.
Never existed.
Keiran returned at dawn.
The memory stone cracked in his palm.
The mark still pulsed.
And the name Kaedros glowed faintly beneath the skin.
The Warden met him outside the gates.
"Did you find him?"
Keiran looked at her.
Blankly.
"Who?"
She hesitated.
"Never mind."
She walked away.
But Keiran stayed still.
And whispered to the air—
"Kaedros."
The name flickered in his mark.
Still there.
Still alive.
That night, Keiran sat alone.
He stared into an unlit candle.
And for the first time, felt guilt in his hunger.
Not because he fed.
But because he kept what others had to lose.