"What is more cruel than death?
To be born… and immediately forgotten."
---
🌌 [Scene: Northern Wastes – Province of Nareth, The Memory Harvest Grounds]
Ash fell like snow.
Aedric stood at the edge of a ruined cliff, his boots crunching over broken memory crystals — each one humming faintly with the echoes of forgotten cries. The wind here didn't carry sound. Only silence. And in that silence… were stories that had never been told.
Beside him, Lyara adjusted the bandages over her Eye of Fate, which now bled threads of flame.
> "This is where they hide them," she whispered.
"The children who were never allowed to be remembered."
Aedric didn't respond. His gaze was fixed on the valley below.
There, surrounded by obelisks of pure obsidian, stood the Citadel of the Unwritten — a fortress constructed by the Divine Scribes. A place where children born with uncontrolled memory resonance were locked away, their very existence erased from the world's collective memory.
> "Every godforsaken year," Lyara said, "they harvest their names and feed them to the Vault."
Aedric's fists clenched.
The Flame Core pulsed beneath his skin — not in rage, but in mourning.
> "We save them all," he murmured.
"Or we burn this place to ash."
---
🔥 The Mission
Three Ashborn lieutenants joined them:
Korin Ashrath – once a Flame Monk, now a dual-blade revenant.
Mirael Sorn – a whisperblade, unseen by light or shadow.
Thorne the Quiet – a giant who hadn't spoken since the gods killed his sister's name.
> "We've mapped the patrols," Mirael said.
"They use Echo Hounds to sniff memory resonance. If they detect you… they don't kill."
> "They erase," Korin muttered.
Lyara shivered.
> "I've felt it. The feeling of… vanishing. Like your soul is becoming air."
Aedric looked at them all.
> "Then let's become fire."
---
🏰 Infiltrating the Citadel
The Citadel was alive — not with people, but with ink. Every wall was inscribed with constantly rewriting glyphs. These weren't just architecture. They were living contracts. Divine law made into structure.
> "Even the walls remember what we forget," Mirael whispered.
> "Good," Aedric said. "Let them remember what fear tastes like."
They slipped through the cracks of the wards using Lyara's Eye and Korin's resonance dampeners. As they moved deeper, they saw it —
Children.
Silent. Pale. Staring.
Each one had a strip of divine silk covering their eyes, and a rune carved into their forehead — the mark of Erasure Pending.
---
🧠 The Memory Feeders
In the center hall, chained to celestial pillars, stood the Memory Feeders — beings once human, now twisted into translucent husks. They consumed the names of these children and converted them into divine ink to be sent to the Vault.
Aedric stepped into the chamber. The ground rippled under his presence.
One of the Feeders hissed.
> "Who walks here with a remembered name?"
Aedric raised his palm.
The glyph of the Flame Core ignited.
> "One who was a god."
> "One who chose to remember."
---
⚔️ The Battle of Silence
Alarms didn't sound.
Instead, the Silencers appeared — divine enforcers with no faces, only quills for fingers and parchment cloaks. They attacked not with weapons, but with words — writing names in the air and attempting to unmake the team with spoken erasure commands.
One whispered toward Thorne:
> "Thorne of the Ashborn… Forgotten."
Thorne staggered as his name flickered above him — starting to vanish.
Aedric moved like a blaze.
He grabbed the spoken glyph mid-air — and burned it.
> "No one forgets my people again!"
His flame carved the name Thorne into the floor, immortalizing it.
Thorne roared, grabbed a Silencer, and snapped its parchment neck in two.
---
🧒 The Children React
The children began whispering.
Not words.
But names.
Each one chanting their own name — over and over — their minds pushing against divine bindings.
Lyara collapsed from the mental feedback.
> "It's working," she gasped.
"They're… remembering themselves."
Mirael flung daggers made of broken oaths. Korin danced between memory traps, slicing Feeders apart.
Aedric stepped to the core of the Citadel.
A fountain of divine ink bubbled there — a conduit that fed all the erased memories to the Vault.
He raised his hand.
> "Return to the flames… what was stolen."
---
🔥 Flame Reversal
He summoned Ashwake — not to revive, but to recall.
A forgotten surge pulsed out.
The ink exploded upward, and names — thousands of names — burst into fire above the fortress.
Each child's name returned to them.
Each erased soul cried in relief.
And somewhere, in far corners of the realms, mothers remembered lost sons.
Fathers fell to their knees.
> "He was born," one cried.
"I remember him now."
---
🧬 Title Gained
> ✅ New Title: Breaker of the Erased
"You have shattered the divine contract of silence. Forgotten souls now know your name."
> ✅ New Ability: Namebrand
"You may brand a name into existence, preventing any god from erasing it again."
---
👁 Final Scene – Caelen's Counter
In the Celestial Spire, Caelen watched the flames in the sky.
He turned to the Scriptmaster God, who was losing control of his ink.
> "He's waking too many."
> "What should we do?"
Caelen smiled.
> "Let him light the fire."
He opened a sealed book — one Aedric had never seen.
> "Because when the world remembers too much…"
> "They beg to forget again."
He dipped his finger in the divine ink and wrote a single name.
"Lyara Nox"
And closed the book.