The wind in Saltpier had changed.
It didn't howl anymore. It spoke—long, drawn murmurs through alley gaps and broken shutters, like a name whispered through a dying mouth. People started calling it the Shatterwind. Said it only showed up when something deep cracked open.
And something had.
The Vault was behind us now, a ruin of melted ink and collapsed memory. But what we did there didn't stay buried. Not this time.
The names were waking up.
The slum-alleys were alive with them. Scratchy scribbles on wash lines. Smears across old Syndic murals. Chants rising from windowsills. Every block felt like it was breathing, hot and fast. You could taste the syllables in the fog, feel them drag across your skin like a shiver with teeth.
We were back in the east spire, watching the city shake itself awake. Hecate paced, holding an unmarked ledger like it might explode.
"Half the clauses in Westpier have inverted," she muttered, scratching a constellation of ink-blots into the paper. "They're feeding each other. Reflective recursion. Every time a Syndic tries to purge a name, it engraves their own instead."
"How long before they figure it out?"
"They have. That's why they're rerouting enforcers through the Iron District."
I blinked. "Wait, Iron's closed. There's nothing there but scrap yards and dead furnaces."
Hecate gave me a tight look. "That's exactly why they're moving there. No names. No reflections."
That's when we heard it. A crash of metal on stone, far off, but growing. Like steel skeletons marching through gravel. The floorboards under us buzzed.
We stepped to the window.
A convoy.
Not Syndic. Not exactly.
These were Clauseborn.
Twisted things. Each one a walking doctrine—bones carved with declarations, joints locked in perfect posture. Their faces were masks, shaped like the names they were built from. Some had three mouths. Others none. All of them buzzed with passive ink, like their skin was still being written. You could feel it before they even turned the corner—like someone rewriting your blood from the outside in.
And they were coming.
Hecate cursed. "That's not a purge patrol. That's a compliance harrow."
"So they're not coming to erase us?"
She shook her head. "No. They're coming to make us comply."
We didn't have time to run. Not properly. Every alley, every staircase, every bolt-hole we'd used before was burned now, either by actual fire or Syndic lockdown.
So we didn't run.
We stood. Me, Hecate, and about thirty people we barely knew.
Wharfers. Ink-thieves. Name-poets. A drunk kid with a flute. An old butcher who still wore his stained apron. A street preacher whose robes were stitched with the names of his dead congregation.
They weren't soldiers.
They were angry. That would have to do.
I stood in the middle of that circle, breathing shallow, watching them pass around name slips and scrap-metal weapons. Hecate whispered a prayer in no language I knew, eyes flicking like she was reading invisible script from the air.
"Once they come in range," she said, "you speak. Don't write. Just speak."
"To them?"
"To us. To the crowd. To Saltpier. The names need anchoring. They need you to say them."
The Clauseborn rounded the curve into the plaza.
Three of them.
Their legs moved like ink poured in reverse. Their hands were sealed into prayer shapes, but each finger bore a separate name. Some names pulsed.
The lead one raised a hand.
"NONCOMPLIANT ENTITY: ARLEN WARD. SURRENDER CLAUSE IN EFFECT."
I stepped forward.
"I refuse."
The Clauseborn clicked. Not like speech. Like punctuation slamming shut.
One of them reached behind its own neck and pulled out a fresh clause-slip. It burned with ink. It burned with me.
I opened my mouth.
And I started to name.
Not me. Not them. Us.
I named the dock rat who had his name stripped at eight. He used to sleep under the tilting staircase behind the copper mill.
I named the woman who sang under bridges, her voice rough as burlap but sweet as sugar water.
I named a boy who'd died before he learned to speak, but his mother had written his name in charcoal on the wall.
I named the old man who gave his meals to street kids and went unnamed even on his death cart.
I named the dead. I named the erased. I named the forgotten.
And the Clauseborn began to shake.
Ink boiled over their skin.
One of them fell to its knees.
Another screamed, but it sounded like a song unraveling. Like a thousand syllables collapsing into static.
The third burst into flames.
The crowd didn't cheer.
They joined.
Everyone shouting names. Chanting them. Wailing them like prayers, fists raised, eyes wild. Even the drunk kid with the flute played a name somehow—each note carving syllables in the air. The preacher fell to his knees and screamed the full baptismal chain of a name that had been erased for decades.
Saltpier's sky darkened.
Not with smoke.
With memory.
The kind too heavy to stay buried.
Even the buildings seemed to groan, like they were remembering names they'd held in their bricks.
By nightfall, it was done.
No more Clauseborn. No more plaza.
Just ash. Just names.
We sat on the chapel steps, covered in ink and blood and smoke. The kind of silence that follows a funeral clung to us like wet cloth.
Hecate leaned her head back against the stone. Her mask was gone, and her eyes were red from smoke or grief or both.
"You realize we just declared war on the Syndic for real."
"I think they declared it on us a long time ago," I said.
She smiled, the kind of smile that meant everything hurt.
"You gonna keep going?" she asked.
I looked out over the rooftops.
Names still danced there. On wires. In gutter cracks. Even in the stars.
Someone across the block screamed a name into the void like it was a battle cry.
"Yeah," I said. "I think I am."
And somewhere out there, I swear I heard the stones whisper back.