He didn't know his name.
It should have frightened him by now the blankness where a lifetime ought to be. But in the quiet of the morning, lying on a mat that smelled of old grain and lavender smoke, all he felt was a dull, steady ache. Not pain. Not peace. Just the hum of something missing.
Zooni was gone.
She had shattered in a way that didn't make sense, not even in a world where memories screamed and rivers remembered your sins. He still saw her face when he closed his eyes. Not screaming. Just wide eyed. As if she had finally remembered too much.
The woman who tended him was old and kind, though her eyes held the emptiness of someone who'd long since stopped expecting answers. Her name was Baaji Maal. She said he had been found by the edge of the wheatfields three days ago, face down in the mud, clutching a broken memory bead.
"Zareel is quiet," she said, placing a bowl of warm water and bread beside him. "We don't bury here. Not anymore."
He sat up slowly. "Why not?"
She smiled, sad. "Because we forget too quickly. We lost a boy last winter. Slipped in the stream. By spring, no one remembered his face. Not even his mother. So we stopped digging graves. Seemed cruel to plant what we wouldn't remember."
Zareel was a village of faded red brick, soft hills, and windmills that groaned in the evening like tired ghosts. The people smiled easily, but their eyes were wary as if bracing for a question they didn't want to answer.
He wandered the narrow lanes, listening. Watching.
Lanterns hung above every door, not for light, but for memory. Inside each, a piece of a name burned not a full one, just a syllable. A whisper. A clue. They were meant to keep the forgetting at bay. Baaji Maal said lighting them was law, even if no one remembered why.
One evening, he heard someone humming the tune Zooni used to hum when she cooked beside their tiny campfires. It came from a weaver's hut. He paused, drawn toward the sound like a moth to memory.
Inside, a girl sat by the loom, spinning wool dyed the color of stormlight. She couldn't have been more than seventeen. Her fingers moved with the rhythm of someone half-asleep, but her voice was clear, even in the hush of twilight.
He lingered at the threshold. She looked up.
"You're the nameless one," she said. Not a question.
He nodded. "Seems to be."
She smiled faintly. "I'm Afaara. I think I knew your name. Once."
He stepped inside.
Afaara was strange in a way he recognized. Like Zooni, she didn't flinch from silence. She didn't ask him where he came from or why his eyes looked older than his face. Instead, she told him stories about Zareel.
About the bell that no one heard anymore.
About the crows that came only at midnight.
About the boy who carved names into stones and buried them beneath the wheat.
She spoke like someone unafraid of forgetting.
That night, he sat with her beneath the windmill hill. The stars above Zareel didn't twinkle; they pulsed. Like veins. Like something living.
"I think I used to love you," she said.
He looked at her, startled.
She didn't blush. "Not here. Somewhere else. Before. I don't remember the shape of it. Just the echo. But when I saw you, something inside me ached."
He reached for her hand.
She took it.
It happened the next morning.
Smoke in the east. A figure on horseback. Not a rider from Zareel too tall, too still. They watched as the rider paused at the edge of the wheatfields, then dismounted and walked toward the village.
He felt it in his gut before he saw the mask.
Ashwright.
Afaara ran.
He drew the blade the Vanthaal warrior had given him. Not for glory. For memory.
The Ashwright moved with silence that scraped the soul. Its mouth was stitched shut. Its robes wept ash. And in its hand was a jar.
Afaara reached him, breathless. "It's me it wants. I touched your name. I shouldn't have."
"You remember it?" he asked.
She nodded. Tears on her cheeks. "I do. I swear I do. But if I say it, it'll hear. It'll bind you again."
He stepped in front of her. "Then don't say it. Just run."
But she didn't run.
The Ashwright opened the jar.
The air twisted. A scream without sound. A memory unleashed.
Afaara staggered.
He lunged. Steel flashed.
Too slow.
The Ashwright pointed. A beam of dark light lanced through the air.
Afaara crumpled.
He reached her, hands trembling.
She smiled faintly. Blood at the corner of her lips.
"Your name," she whispered. "I remember. But... it's so beautiful... it hurts."
And then she died.
The Ashwright turned.
He didn't wait.
The blade struck true, slicing through the mask, the bone, the grief.
The Ashwright fell.
The jar shattered.
And in the silence that followed, only one sound remained:
The distant toll of a bell.
A name, waiting to be spoken.