The trees loomed taller now. Dark, skeletal things, twisted as if caught mid-scream. Their bark was pale and gnarled, like bone run through with veins of silver. No wind stirred their branches, and yet they creaked slow, rhythmic, as though breathing. Or listening.
Calyx stepped carefully. The air in the Edgewood Verge was thick, warmer than it should've been, heavy with a scent like dried blood and old ink. His boots crushed soft moss underfoot, and every step seemed to echo farther than the last.
He paused beside a tree whose roots curved like claws.
"You don't belong here," a voice said, not from above, but beside him.
Calyx turned sharply.
A girl leaned against the trunk, half-shrouded in shadow. Her skin was the color of deep ash, her eyes wide and clouded like milkglass. She wore a coat patched together from strips of different cloths—none of them hers, if he had to guess. A strange little lantern hung from her belt, filled not with fire, but glowing threads of pale memory.
He didn't reach for his shard-blade.
She didn't seem threatening. But nothing in Veyrnas ever seemed threatening until it already had your throat.
"Didn't mean to come here," Calyx said carefully. "Just following the path west."
"You followed no path," the girl said. Her voice was sharp but tired, like someone who didn't get much sleep. "The Verge isn't part of the spiral. It's what's left of it. You stepped off the edge."
"I didn't see a sign."
"That's because the Verge doesn't need signs. It feeds on wanderers."
She stepped forward, brushing moss off her hands.
"You carry something old," she said, eyeing the spot where his shard-blade rested. "Shard of a moon-thread, right?"
He didn't answer.
The girl tilted her head. "Don't worry. I'm not after it. I've seen what those do. Melt the mind if you don't hold it right."
"Then why are you talking to me?"
"Because you looked like someone who needed help. Or a warning. Or maybe just… someone to talk to."
There was a pause.
Calyx let out a slow breath. "Name's Calyx."
The girl blinked slowly. "That your real name? Or just the one you remember?"
He didn't answer that either.
She smiled, not unkindly. "Mine's Vei. Short for something I forgot."
They stood in silence for a few seconds, the forest whispering around them.
Calyx shifted his weight. "You live out here?"
Vei nodded. "Been in the Verge my whole life. My parents were Mapbinders. They tried to chart the woods. Lost their names in the process. Trees don't like being mapped."
"What happened to them?"
She gave a small shrug. "They forgot they had a daughter."
That shut him up for a while.
Vei didn't seem sad, just matter-of-fact, like someone talking about the weather. But that's how grief worked in Veyrnas. Everything was slow. Worn down. Forgotten, and then remembered too late.
"Look," she said finally. "I don't know what you're looking for. But the Verge doesn't care. It'll twist your path. Make you see things that aren't there. Hear things that shouldn't be real. You'll start walking in circles before you notice."
"I don't plan to stay," Calyx replied.
"No one ever does."
He glanced ahead. The forest was darker now. The trees closer together. The spiral path he thought he'd been following had completely vanished.
"Is there a way out?"
Vei smirked. "Maybe. But it's not straight."
She turned, started walking into the woods.
"Come on. I'll show you something. Might help."
Calyx hesitated only a moment, then followed. The deeper they went, the stranger it became.
The trees whispered in tongues neither of them understood. Sometimes, the branches seemed to form words names, mostly Kavrin, Eluth, Sarn the Waker. Calyx couldn't tell if they were names from the past or things yet to come. Some of them made his spine tingle in the wrong way.
"Don't say the names out loud," Vei warned without looking back. "Not unless you want them to hear you."
"They?"
"The Woken Roots. Old things. Dead gods, maybe. They sleep until someone remembers them."
"Sounds like everything in this place."
Vei laughed. "You're not wrong."
Eventually, they reached a hollow glade, where the trees bent outward in a perfect circle. In the center stood a stone arch, broken at the top, with vines crawling across its face. Symbols were etched along the curve—spirals, moons, teardrops, and the same interlocked crescents he'd seen earlier.
"What is this place?" Calyx asked.
Vei stopped in front of it. "A door."
"To where?"
"Don't know. It doesn't open anymore. Not since the Last Naming."
"The what?"
She turned. "Back when the world still had a Name. Before it broke into echoes. Some say the Moon itself sang the world into being. Others say it was stolen. Either way, the Name was lost, and doors like this stopped opening."
Calyx stared at the arch.
Something inside him shifted. A weight pressed against his chest not heavy, but hollow. Like a space where something used to be. A memory maybe. A promise.
He stepped toward it.
"Careful," Vei warned, a bit more serious now. "The arch might be dead, but it still remembers. If you touch it, it might remember you back."
He laid a hand on the cold stone anyway.
For a brief moment, the symbols flared faintly just enough to shimmer.
Then something moved on the other side.
Not behind the arch. Through it.
Like a reflection in water. A shadow walking where there was no floor. A version of himself but older. Bloodied. A scar across one eye. Holding a weapon too bright to be real.
Calyx stepped back, heart pounding.
"What did you see?" Vei asked quietly.
"I don't know," he said. "But it looked like me."
She nodded. "Yeah. They always do."
They left the glade in silence.
As they walked, Vei spoke again slower this time, softer.
"Not many people survive the Verge. Most get swallowed. Some become trees. Others get tied into the roots. Like threads in a loom that never stops weaving."
"Then why help me?" he asked.
She shrugged. "You didn't try to hurt me. You listened when I talked. That's rare enough out here."
"And if I'd attacked you?"
She smiled. "You'd be a tree by now."
Calyx looked at her. He couldn't tell if she was joking.
They reached a place where the trees began to thin again. The mist lightened slightly, and he could see a broken bridge in the distance, leading westward across a pale riverbed filled with ash.
"This is as far as I go," Vei said. "Beyond here is the Spiral's Edge. Past that… the Waneholds."
"You won't come with me?"
She shook her head. "Too loud out there. Too many people trying to remember things they should've let go."
Calyx nodded slowly.
"Will I see you again?" he asked.
"If the forest lets you."
He smiled, just a little.
"Thank you."
Vei hesitated, then reached into her coat and pulled out a small strip of cloth. She handed it to him. "Take this. If you ever get lost again, tie it around your wrist. The Verge might remember me. And maybe… it'll guide you back."
He took it gently.
Then she turned and disappeared into the trees, without another word.
Calyx stood there a while, the cloth in his hand. Then he tied it around his wrist, just above the moon-thread he already bore.
He turned toward the bridge. And walked on. Calyx stepped onto the bridge.
Its bones were cracked, moss-covered, and bleeding ash through its seams. Beneath it ran a dry river of memory-dust, shifting in the breeze like restless ghosts. The mist thinned here, though it never disappeared entirely. This was the outer edge of the Edgewood Verge, the boundary between the forest that listened and the world that judged.
Ahead, through the veil of ash and half-light, the land opened.
Jagged hills rose and fell like broken teeth. Shapes of stone stood upright, each one carved with names long worn down. Not tombstones trophies. Markers. Places where someone's name had been taken, rewritten, or bled away.
This was the border of the Waneholds.
A land ruled by Namewrights, those who carved identities like weapons and wore titles like armor. Here, your Name was everything. And Calyx had walked into their territory with a borrowed one.
The first village appeared on the edge of a cliff, its huts made of blackened wood and bones woven into lattice. People moved like shadows, wrapped in cloaks covered in stitched symbols. Many wore masks. Not for hiding but for declaring. Each mask was different. One was shaped like a wolf's grin. Another had no mouth, only eyes that blinked too often.
A boy ran past him with a painted slate around his neck. On it was a chalk word: "Almost."
Calyx frowned.
He entered the village slowly.
No one greeted him.
A few stared. Others glanced and moved on. One man leaned against a post sharpening a blade, humming a tune with no melody. A woman in silver feathers muttered something about "names that stain." No one asked who Calyx was.
That told him something important.
In the Waneholds, you declared yourself, or you were ignored.
A bony man with dozens of glass needles in his robe finally stepped in front of him.
"You don't carry your title where we can see it," the man said. His voice was soft but precise, like someone used to giving orders in a place where words held power.
"I don't have one," Calyx replied.
"Then you don't exist here."
"I'm just passing through."
The man laughed short, sharp.
"No one just passes through the Waneholds. Either you're coming to give a name, or to take one."
Calyx looked him in the eye. "Maybe both."
That seemed to please the man.
He bowed slightly, two fingers pressed to his chest. "I am Shardwright Koven, Master of the Third Hold, Binder of Thrice-Worn Names, and Keeper of the Memory Forge. You may call me Koven."
The titles made Calyx's head spin. But he returned the bow, simpler.
"Calyx. Just Calyx."
"For now," Koven said, eyeing him. "Though I'd wager that'll change soon."
"Why's that?"
"Because we only remain nameless here if we're dead. Or about to be."
Koven gestured for Calyx to follow him through the narrow streets. Every structure seemed twisted by identity. One house had chains running up its walls, each link carved with phrases. Another looked like it was made entirely of letters fused into black glass. Every space here was a reflection of its owner's claim to self.
Calyx kept his hand close to his shard-blade. No one attacked him. But he felt watched. Not just by eyes but by names, coiled and waiting.
Koven led him into a chamber at the base of a hill. The interior was circular, lit by braziers that burned with violet fire. Dozens of Namewrights stood around a stone table, carving glyphs into blocks of obsidian.
When Calyx entered, several looked up.
One woman whispered, "That one doesn't echo."
Another said, "He smells like forest ghosts."
And a third muttered, "He's burnt. Something burned him."
Koven raised a hand. Silence fell.
"This is Calyx," Koven announced. "A wanderer. One who walks with no written title."
The others murmured. Not hostile but curious.
Koven turned to Calyx.
"In the Waneholds, you must carve your right to remain. A name is not just given. It is earned. Or taken."
"And if I don't want to stay?"
"You've already stayed too long."
Calyx studied the stone table. In its center was a smooth black tablet, slightly curved. A naming shard. It pulsed faintly, as if aware of him.
"What am I supposed to do?"
"Touch it," Koven said. "Speak a name one you claim as your own. If the shard accepts it, it will bind to you. If it doesn't… well. The walls are littered with bones of those who tried to be something they weren't."
Calyx hesitated.
"I don't know what I am yet."
Koven's expression didn't change. "Then say what you aren't. And let the rest find you."
The others began to chant softly. Not in any language he knew just sound, rhythm, tone. A web of voices that felt like it was pulling something loose from his spine.
He stepped toward the shard.
His mind raced. What was he? Just a boy from a forgotten dusk-village. Just a shadow running from the Hollow Kings. Just someone trying to remember what the Moon whispered when he bled beneath it.
What wasn't he?
He wasn't the same after the forest. He wasn't empty anymore. He was becoming something. His hand touched the shard. A flicker. A sting. Then—
Calyx of the Ashwrought Moon.
The words carved themselves across the stone, burning into it with searing light.
The chamber went still.
Even the fire in the braziers dimmed, as if pausing to listen.
Ashwrought.
It wasn't a title he understood. But it felt right. Something in his chest warmed, like the moment the moon-thread first curled around his bones.
Koven studied the name with curiosity.
"Unusual. That name wasn't yours until now. I wonder who gave it to you."
"I didn't hear anyone speak it," Calyx said.
"No. But something did. The Verge, perhaps. Or something older."
A different Namewright, a woman with braids made of paper, stepped forward. "The Ashwrought are said to rise from burned oaths. Lost in the forest. Carried by a silence that screams. He shouldn't exist."
"But he does," Koven said simply.
Calyx looked at the name carved into the stone. It pulsed now, once every few seconds, like a heartbeat.
"What now?" he asked.
"Now," Koven said, smiling faintly, "you're invited to stay. And hunted for it."
"Hunted?"
"You think you can claim a name like that and not be noticed?" the woman said. "The Choir will hear it. The Hollow Kings will feel it. And the Shadeknots—"
"They'll want to cut it out of him," Koven finished.
Calyx stepped back from the shard. He felt different already. Heavier. Not in body, but in memory. The name clung to him, echoing through his bones like it belonged there.
"Then I should leave," he said.
Koven nodded. "You should. But first—"
He handed Calyx a thin silver chain, with a shard of obsidian etched with the same symbols.
"This binds your Name to you. Wear it. Or lose everything you just became."
Calyx took the chain and looped it around his neck.
"Thank you."
Koven looked almost amused. "Don't thank me. You'll curse me before long."
Outside the chamber, the sky had turned a deeper violet. Clouds churned like ink above the hills. A strange hum echoed in the air, and the stones beneath his boots felt warm.
"The Waneholds have noticed you," Koven said. "Now the rest of the world will too."
Calyx adjusted the chain and turned toward the road west. He felt it now. The pull. Not just of the Moon above.
But of something older something that had waited a long, long time for someone to walk forward carrying a name that wasn't given, but earned.
He was no longer nameless. He was Calyx of the Ashwrought Moon. And the Symphony had only begun to play.