The next morning, Saltpier didn't rise. It lurched.
A whole sector's worth of sleepers jolted awake not from dreams but from names—their own or someone else's, half-forgotten ones tangled in whispers on the edge of hearing. I woke to the sound of a vendor shrieking a name from a rooftop, and a window shattering two streets over from the vibration of too many syllables screamed at once.
The city wasn't a city anymore. It was a throat.
A thousand voices, raw and rising.
And I had to speak louder than all of them.
The Name Market wasn't real. Not officially. According to the Syndic registry, Block Eight was zoned for waste filtration and pigeon containment. But everyone knew that under the railway scaffolds and rusting ink towers, there was trade.
Not of goods.
Of names.
We made our way through the tight alleys, ducking under swinging banners stitched from repurposed laundry. A kid ran past us, barefoot and painted head to toe in black ink. On his back was a name I didn't recognize: VAULTWALKER. Under it, a newer one, still smudged. ARLEN.
"You're trending," Hecate muttered.
"Great," I muttered back. "Can I trade it in for silence?"
"No," she said. "But maybe we can sell it."
The first stall was selling pre-names. Unwritten paper soaked in memory residue, still soft enough to accept an imprint. The vendor was old and hunched, wearing a cloak made of shredded Syndic forms.
"You name it," he rasped, "you own it."
"What's the going rate for forgetting one?" I asked.
He smiled, toothless. "Depends who wants it gone."
I stepped back. I didn't need that temptation.
The next row was more familiar—name-chains, old ones, dragged from the archives. Some were carved into bone. Others into fingernails. Hecate stopped at a stack of teeth engraved with syllables.
"Infant records," she said. "Stolen from the Cradle Book."
"Why?"
"To stop the Syndic from ever binding them."
She pocketed three.
The air thickened as we moved deeper. People shouted names like currency. One woman wore a dress made of laminated name tags, each one fluttering like windchimes. Another sat cross-legged in front of a board where he etched theoretical names for unborn things—concepts, futures, places that didn't exist yet.
I passed a mirror where my reflection didn't move.
Instead, it wrote.
WARD, ARLEN. DEFINED BY REFUSAL.
I looked away.
We reached the back. A canvas wall sprayed with graffiti held shut by nails and wax seals. Hecate raised a hand.
"I'm calling in the Thorn favor," she said.
The seals popped like bubble-wrap, one by one. The canvas parted.
Inside was Gavri Thorn.
She hadn't moved since the last time we saw her. Still cross-legged on her throne of broken signage, drinking something thick and red from a teacup shaped like a tooth. Around her, silent guards in eel-skin armor adjusted the hooks on their belts.
"Arlen," she said, smiling faint. "And the fox-eyed ink-eater. I expected you hours ago."
"We were busy not dying," I replied.
"Mm. An overrated pastime."
She gestured us forward.
"I hear you've become a market item."
"That's why we're here," Hecate said. "We need a stabilizer. A public one."
Thorn raised a brow. "Ah. You want a name license. You're looking to legalize the rebellion."
"Something like that."
She leaned back, swirling her drink.
"Two problems. First, it's suicidal. Second, it's expensive."
"What's the price?"
She stared at me for a long time.
"Let me write a clause into you. A binding. Only one line."
"Clause K-Twelve," Hecate hissed.
Thorn didn't deny it.
I met her eyes.
"Will I still be me?"
"You'll still be loud. That's all Saltpier needs."
I looked to Hecate. She didn't nod. She just stared, unblinking.
I stepped forward.
"Write it."
Thorn reached behind her and pulled a quill from a skull. She dipped it into her drink, then into a wound on her palm.
And she wrote.
Right across my collarbone, the ink boiling under my skin.
Clause K-Twelve: This name cannot forget.
The scream didn't come from my mouth. It came from the walls. From the dirt. From the memory in my bones.
I dropped. Hecate caught me. The air rippled.
And then it settled.
My name burned like a brand.
Thorn smiled. "You're stable now. Congratulations. Saltpier's newest legend."
Hecate grabbed my arm.
"We need to move. Fast."
Back on the surface, the market was shifting. Something had gotten into the pipes—some old memory, maybe, or just panic. Names were floating. Literal words, drifting like smoke across stalls.
People shouted, fought, bargained.
But every few seconds, someone just collapsed.
Not hurt. Just…unwritten.
Their names vanished from everything. Mouths. Minds. Ledgers.
Gone.
Hecate swore. "Clause F-loop is active. That shouldn't be possible."
"It is now," I said, my voice rough. "They're not purging people anymore. They're purging categories. Whole types of names."
We ran.
We didn't make it far.
The canvas stalls exploded outward as something crashed through—twelve feet tall and entirely made of pages.
A Lex Golem.
Pure enforcement construct.
It screamed in contractese, a thousand pages flapping like wings. People scattered. One vendor threw burning ink at it. It evaporated before it hit.
"Names," Hecate said. "We need names, now!"
I grabbed the nearest slip from the ground.
BANYAN.
I screamed it.
The air thickened. A tree grew out of the cobblestones beneath the Golem, splitting its legs. The bark shivered, coated in names.
Others followed suit.
CAVERN.
DAUGHTER.
BROKEN-TOOTH-SKY.
The Golem buckled.
Hecate sprinted to the pillar next to the plaza entrance and started etching. Not with a pen. With her fingernail.
"Help me hold it!"
I planted my feet and shouted my name.
WARD. ARLEN. DEFINED BY REFUSAL.
It echoed.
The Golem paused.
Hecate finished the glyph.
And the plaza reversed.
Wind and ink and ash swirled backward, and the Golem collapsed in on itself—its clauses reabsorbed, its laws eaten by contradiction.
Silence.
Then a single child's voice:
"What was that thing?"
No one answered.
We were too busy catching our breath. And realizing that Saltpier's war wasn't just political anymore.
It was ontological.
That night, we lit signal-fires in every district.
Names etched into rooftops, shouted into drainpipes, woven into the braid of children's hair. Hecate wrote on every open surface she could find. I spoke until my voice tore.
Thorn's clause didn't let me forget.
But it didn't let me rest either.
And maybe that was the point.
Saltpier didn't need a hero.
It needed a witness.
And my name had been volunteered.