They camped a short distance from the Threshold, far enough to sleep without hearing its hum, yet close enough to feel its pull. The night was quiet, but not peaceful. The stars refused to shine overhead, and the fire they lit burned lower than usual, as if the air itself hesitated to hold flame.
Eren sat alone, Akreth resting against a stone beside him. The sword no longer pulsed. It simply waited, like an open book with the final page left unwritten.
Elira watched him from the edge of the firelight. She hadn't pressed him with questions not about what he saw, not about what he felt. But her eyes asked enough.
And finally, he answered.
"There's something behind the Threshold," he said. "Not just visions. Not just power."
Elira didn't speak.
He looked up at her. "There's a name. Waiting."
Her brow furrowed. "What do you mean?"
He tapped the blade lightly. "A name meant for me. A name that completes the bearer. But it only appears when you cross."
Elira moved closer, kneeling beside him. "And you're afraid of who that name will be?"
"No," he said. "I'm afraid it won't be mine. That it'll be his. The first bearer. That this sword wasn't looking for someone to end the cycle… only to continue it."
She stared into the fire. "Then choose your own name."
"It's not that simple."
"Yes," she said, "it is."
He looked at her.
She met his gaze without flinching.
"You've fought memories. You've faced shadows of yourself. You've denied the Circle. Defied the Reclaimers. You've walked through fire and still breathe."
She reached out and touched Akreth.
"You've carried this thing farther than anyone alive. And it hasn't taken you. Not fully. That means something."
He exhaled slowly. "What if I'm not strong enough?"
Elira gave a dry smile. "Then you'll fall. But not because of the sword. Because of the silence."
He didn't reply.
But her words stayed with him.
They left camp before sunrise.
Their next destination lay deeper into the mountains, through a valley where the old Seers once walked. According to Elira, there was one last place tied to Akreth's forging a forge not of flame, but of memory. If anything could reveal the blade's final truth, it was there.
The path twisted into mist and stone. The sun never fully broke through the clouds. Birds didn't sing. Time moved strangely too slow in some places, too fast in others.
On the second day, they found a cairn by the road.
A pile of blackened stones, surrounded by runes carved in a circular pattern. At the center sat a shard of glass, blood-red and humming with quiet power.
Eren knelt beside it.
"It's a name-stone," Elira said softly.
"Whose?"
She looked away. "We don't say it aloud. That's the point."
Eren touched the glass.
A whisper bloomed in his mind not a voice, but an emotion. Loss. Grief. Rage repressed until it became stone. Someone had come here. Someone who had tried to hold the sword and failed.
He stood, the stone echoing in his chest.
No more names in ash.
Not if he could help it.
They pressed on.
That night, he dreamed again.
He stood before the Threshold, the archway now crumbling. The corridor of mirrors lay beyond, but this time, every reflection bore his face. Not as he was, but as he might become.
The tyrant. The martyr. The monster. The savior.
Each version looked back with knowing eyes.
At the end of the corridor, the flame-echo waited, seated upon a throne made of broken memories.
"You seek a name," it said.
Eren nodded.
"Then earn it."
The being rose and pointed.
Eren followed the direction of its gesture and saw a mirror unlike the rest. Cracked. Dust-covered. And in it nothing.
Just darkness.
"This one," the echo said, "is yours. When you are ready, it will show who you truly are."
He woke with the echo still burning in his chest.
The next morning, they reached the edge of the Seers' valley.
A vast stretch of black grass and stone lay ahead, and in the center of it: a forge built into the bones of the earth, its chimney still faintly steaming despite the centuries.
Eren stopped at the ridge.
Elira stood beside him.
"This is it," she said. "The Forge of Naming."
And from deep within, a voice whispered across the land.
"Come forth, bearer. The flame waits to know your name."