They walked for three days across a land without directions.
No sun.
No compass.
Only the scroll to guide them — a thing that pulsed when held too long, whispering directions through changes in temperature and dread.
Each step deepened the silence.
Even Tirian stopped speaking.
They were getting closer.
Not to a place.
To a realization.
---
The Garden was not guarded by walls.
It guarded itself by memory.
At its edge, Elías fell to one knee.
Not because of pain.
Because of recognition.
A smell.
A sound.
A fragment of lullaby his mother used to hum.
But twisted.
As if time had chewed it and spat it back.
Tirian touched the soil.
It pulsed like skin.
"This place," he said slowly, "is made of people."
---
The Garden bloomed in spirals — petals of bone, stems of severed timelines, thorns shaped like letters.
In the center, a fountain of still blood.
Above it, hung by strands of forgotten language, floated names.
Thousands.
Each one fading slowly.
Some screamed as they vanished.
Others wept in silence.
None were remembered.
---
Elías stepped forward.
The Garden reacted.
Petals turned.
Stems leaned.
The entire place breathed him in.
A voice rose — not from above, not from below.
From within the blood.
"One of your names is already buried here."
He turned.
And saw it.
Burnt into the stone beneath the fountain:
"Elías, Son of Mercy."
A name he never remembered claiming.
And yet it felt heavier than any truth.
---
Tirian found a name too.
"Mine is cracked," he said. "Unreadable."
Elías looked.
It wasn't cracked.
It was clawed out.
Ripped.
Erased.
Something had stolen his name before it could ever settle.
No wonder Tirian never dreamed.
---
The Garden grew louder.
Not with sound.
With pressure.
Choice thickened the air.
And from the soil, something rose — a woman, woven from roots and forgotten hymns.
Her face was blank.
But her voice?
Identical to Elías's mother.
"Will you bury your name?" she asked.
"Or claim another?"
---
To bury a name was to forget a version of yourself.
To claim another…
was to become it.
He remembered the scroll.
The version of him crowned in fire.
The one who wrote truths into oblivion.
Was that who he should become?
Or the child beneath the mirror?
---
"I don't want to forget," he whispered.
The root-woman nodded.
"Then you must carry all your names."
One by one, the Garden offered them.
Elías, Orphan of the Ash.
Elías, He Who Opens Mouths of the Dead.
Elías, Bearer of the Feather.
Elías, Who Denied the Chain.
He wept.
Not from fear.
From weight.
Each name carved itself along his spine.
Not wounds.
Oaths.
---
Tirian stepped beside him.
And for the first time, the Garden hesitated.
Then gave him one name.
One word.
"Ashborn."
He smiled, bitterly.
"Guess that's close enough."
---
When they left the Garden, the flowers bowed.
Not in reverence.
In warning.
And the fountain's blood whispered one last thing:
"A name forgotten does not die.
It becomes hungry."
---
That night, as they walked beneath a sky stitched from regret, Elías saw something behind them:
A trail of ink-footprints.
Bleeding backward.
Being followed.
By himself.
Not the him he was.
But the him who forgot mercy.
The one buried beneath the fountain.
And that version was smiling.
---
What happens when the name you abandoned… refuses to be forgotten?