Names were not meant to be spoken lightly.
That was why the Covenant erased them first.
In a hall carved deep beneath layered doctrine, a group of archivists stood before a sealed vault they had sworn would never be opened. The chamber was old—older than the Covenant's current structure, older than several revisions of history itself. The walls bore scars where symbols had been scraped away and replaced with cleaner, more obedient language.
At the center stood a single plinth.
Upon it lay a slate of pale crystal, unmarked to the untrained eye.
One archivist hesitated. "This violates restriction tier seven."
Another replied quietly, "Tier seven assumes the system still holds."
No one argued that point.
The slate was activated.
At first, nothing happened.
Then the air changed—not stirred, not pressured. It recognized the attention.
Letters surfaced slowly, reluctant, as if remembering themselves hurt.
G A L E
Several archivists recoiled.
"That name was expunged," one whispered.
"No," the eldest among them said, voice tight. "It was buried."
More text followed, fragmented and incomplete.
— Human Sovereign
— Wind Mastery (Non-Hereditary)
— Conceptual Authority Classification: Unstable
— Erasure Authorized by Joint Accord
The slate trembled.
Above ground, far from the vault, the wind shifted direction across three provinces simultaneously. Flags reoriented. Smoke columns leaned the wrong way. Birds altered course mid-flight without panic.
In a marketplace, a street performer paused and frowned. "Did you hear that?"
"Hear what?" someone asked.
He shook his head. "Nothing. Just… felt like something remembered itself."
In the elven forests, leaves rustled without breeze. Elders closed their eyes, expressions strained.
In the upper sky, dragons adjusted their coils.
In the lower realms, a demon smiled.
Back in the vault, the archivists stood frozen as the final line etched itself onto the slate, deeper than the others.
— Status: Unconfirmed
— Risk: Recurrence
The eldest archivist swallowed. "It's too late."
"Too late for what?" another asked.
"For silence," she replied.
Far away, on an open road with no markers left to justify its borders, Vale stopped walking.
He did not know why.
The name had not reached him as sound. It arrived as alignment—as a quiet click inside the world, as if something had finally been referred to correctly.
The air around him felt steadier.
Not stronger.
Honest.
A child nearby laughed as the wind tugged at loose cloth, playful and uncommanded.
Vale exhaled slowly.
He did not hear the name.
But the world had.
And once a name was spoken—not as accusation, not as myth, but as fact—it could no longer be fully erased.
Behind him, systems strained to correct what had already been acknowledged.
Ahead of him, the road widened just enough to matter.
The Wind King was still forgotten by most.
But forgetting was no longer complete.
And that was how remembrance began.