The Skarhold rose before them like the spine of some long-dead god—shattered, jagged, and half-sunken into the ashen hills. Its towers were blackened bones; broken arches reached like hands into a sky the color of old bruises. Kael felt his breath catch.
"It's a ruin," whispered Elen. "A grave, not a refuge."
Thorne stepped ahead, his voice low. "Then it's fitting. Thornbearers are nothing if not survivors of our own deaths."
They entered.
The wind died the moment they crossed the broken gate. Dust clung to their boots, and the air grew tight—thick with silence and the weight of memory. The Codex pulsed faintly at Kael's hip, pages whispering against one another in a breathless, fevered rustle.
"What is this place?" Kael asked.
Thorne's face was unreadable. "Where the last war ended—and where this one might begin."
Inside the shattered hall, statues lined the walls—men and women in poses of agony or defiance, all eroded to blankness. No names carved into their plinths. No epitaphs. Just stillness.
Kael felt something stir in his chest. The mark beneath his skin itched like it was trying to rise. He stepped past a fallen pillar—and froze.
A figure waited at the far end of the chamber. Cloaked in gray, faceless, unmoving.
Kael drew breath to speak—but the figure lifted its hand. A single finger pressed to where its lips should have been. Silence.
The Thorn on Kael's chest flared.
The figure turned. It walked toward a wall and pressed its palm to the stone. A circle of white fire bloomed, outlining a doorway that hadn't been there before. With a creak like dry bone, it opened.
"Follow," Thorne said. "Quickly."
They descended narrow, crumbling stairs that wound like a serpent into the mountain's root. The deeper they went, the more the air changed—cooler, yes, but also heavier. Like they were walking into something that remembered being alive.
They reached a chamber lit by a single shard of obsidian, floating above a bowl of ancient ash. Around it: sigils scorched into the floor—spiraling, interlocked, layered with intention.
Kael stepped forward.
"This is where Thornbearers once came to name themselves," Thorne said. "Or unname what they had become."
The obsidian pulsed.
Kael's mark burned.
Then something rose from the bowl.
A memory—not his. A battle. Screams, fire, a dragon's roar—not Vaelarith, but something older, darker. A throne of thorns. A boy kneeling. A whisper of your name is not your own.
Kael fell to his knees. Blood leaked from his nose.
And the shard spoke—not in sound, but in vision:
"To bear a Thorn is to wear the memory of flame. What you name, you burn. What you forget, burns you."
Kael reached for it.
Kael's fingers brushed the obsidian shard—and the world recoiled.
His mind was shoved inward.
He was no longer in the Skarhold.
He stood at the edge of a vast field of corpses, black thorns blooming from every mouth, every eye, every wound. The sky above swirled with dying stars, and in the distance, a figure sat upon a throne of glass and root and fire.
It wore no face.
It held a mirror in one hand, and in the other, a flame that cast no light.
"Name yourself," the faceless king said. Its voice was his own.
Kael opened his mouth—nothing came.
The Codex appeared before him, hovering, pages flapping as though winded. The Thorn on his chest seared white.
"Speak."
He tried. Kael. But the word fell apart before it reached his tongue, like ash scattered on the wind. He was not Kael, not anymore. Not in this place of unmaking.
"I…" He grasped at something deeper. "I am the one who remembers."
The Thorn ignited.
The Codex shuddered.
And in that burning silence, the faceless king rose.
"Then you are more dangerous than you know."
The mirror cracked.
Kael slammed back into his body, gasping. Blood now streamed from his ears, and his fingers trembled. His heartbeat was loud—so loud it drowned out the world.
Thorne knelt beside him. "What did you see?"
Kael's eyes met his. "A throne. A king with no name. A mirror."
Thorne's expression darkened. "Then the shard knows you. That is not lightly done."
Kael turned to the shard. It now floated beside him, pulsing like a second heart. Its obsidian edge shimmered faintly, reflecting fire that wasn't there.
It followed.
Outside the ritual chamber, the Skarhold had changed.
The shadows had lengthened.
Whispers laced the air like falling ash.
From the gate where they had entered came the sound of feet.
Not one pair.
Dozens.
Thorne's jaw tightened. "They found us."
"Name-Eaters?" Elen asked, her voice tense.
"No," Thorne said grimly. "Worse. The Unnamed. Those who surrendered their truths long ago, until not even memory clings to their bones. Whatever brought them here… it's waking them."
Kael rose slowly. The shard hovered at his shoulder, cold and steady.
"I'll hold them," Thorne said. His knuckles whitened on his blade.
Kael's hand snapped out. "No. This is my fire now."
He stepped toward the passageway, where figures began to emerge—men and women with empty eyes, names carved into their flesh in looping, forgotten sigils. Their mouths opened, but no sound came. Their very presence seemed to unravel the edges of thought, fraying memory like old cloth.
Elen staggered back, clutching her temples. "They're… eating names. Feeding on what we are."
"Then burn carefully," Thorne whispered. "Fire fed by memory devours everything."
Kael stepped forward. The Thorn on his chest bled white light.
The shard spun once in the air, carving invisible runes.
The first of the Unnamed charged—and Kael met them not with steel, but with the Codex flaring open.
He did not scream this time.
He spoke.
The Name he gave them was one that forgot itself—a loop of syllables, a knot of sound so ancient and broken it unraveled the air around it.
The Unnamed halted, stumbled, clutched at their bleeding marks—
And then they were gone.
Burnt not into ash.
But into silence.
Kael stood in the flickering dark, chest heaving. Each breath tasted like smoke and echoes.
Behind him, the shard whispered: "You do not burn with fire. You burn with truth."
He staggered back into the chamber, collapsing to one knee. The Codex floated closed beside him, as if content.
Elen knelt at his side. "Kael… what did you do?"
"I named them," he said, voice hoarse. "Not as they are—but as they once were. And that truth… it broke them."
Thorne remained silent, staring at the passage Kael had sealed with his will alone.
"It's beginning," he finally said.
Kael looked up. "What is?"
Thorne's eyes were like thunder. "Your remembering."
They did not rest long. The deeper they went into the Skarhold, the more the walls bled history. Kael could feel it now—not just with the Thorn or the shard or the Codex—but with his very skin. Every stone echoed. Every arch murmured old grief.
They passed murals of Thornbearers whose faces had been chiseled away.
They crossed a bridge of bones that led into a chamber where time flowed in reverse for three heartbeats, then forward again.
And in one forgotten corridor, Kael paused.
A broken statue stared at him.
It bore his face.
Beneath it, a name had once been carved—but the stone was cracked through the letters.
He reached for it.
The Codex stopped him.
"Not yet," it whispered through no mouth.
Elen shivered. "Kael… your eyes. They're glowing."
"Are they?" he muttered. "I can't feel them anymore."
At the heart of the Skarhold, they found it:
A spire of root and obsidian, burning with cold fire, wrapped in a cage of thorned glass.
It pulsed. Once. Then again.
Kael stepped forward, drawn.
The shard vibrated violently. The Codex opened. The Thorn burned.
"Wait!" Elen grabbed his arm. "You don't know what it is."
"I don't need to," he said. "It remembers me."
And then the spire opened its eye.
Not a real eye. Not flesh. But awareness.
It looked at Kael.
And it knew him.
The room screamed.
Kael didn't falter. He walked straight into the storm of memory and unmemory, of root and ruin.
As he stepped across the threshold, a voice filled the world—not a voice made of sound, but one etched across his very name.
"Come, Ashwrought. We have burned before."