Asher sacrifices something that cannot be undone. In doing so, he unlocks a truth buried deeper than any spell, oath, or curse. The city trembles. And across the sea, another ancient name awakens.
The name died in fire.
Not Asher's—but something older, something that clung to him like smoke in a locked room. He stood atop the obsidian steps of Noxvallis' central tower, once the heart of Velvora, and held the scroll again. The same one from the Fifth Throne's vision. Only this time, it wasn't metaphor. It was real.
Lucien, Rosa, Danya, and even Hark stood around him in silence.
The city, too, waited.
Asher opened the scroll.
The ink was his blood. The words—none he recognized. But he understood them. They spoke of oaths sealed in names, of cities woven into spells, of curses shaped like signatures.
And of one man who had once tried to rewrite the world.
The last name on the scroll was his.
Asher Blackwood—but not the one the world thought he was.
He tore the scroll in half.
It didn't rip like paper. It screamed. The wind howled through the ruins. Glass cracked across buildings miles away. Names etched into the city's foundation began to flicker.
And deep beneath the city, a shrine that hadn't breathed in centuries opened its eyes.
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The Price
"Asher, what did you do?" Rosa whispered.
"I severed it," he said. "The lie. My name. The contract. All of it."
The moment he'd destroyed the scroll, he had seen it all—again, but this time unfiltered:
The First Blackwood, an exile from the First Pillar, who forged a false identity to survive.
The Oath made to seal that identity into future generations—each born with memories slightly off, adjusted, patched.
The spell that turned Velvora into a grave for failed names and cursed truths.
And Ira.
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Who Was Ira?
Ira was not just a girl. She was the failsafe.
When the First Blackwood sealed his oath, he encoded a counterbalance—a soul not of his bloodline, but bound to it. She was the "Other Name," one that would awaken when the Oath began to crack.
Now, Ira had begun to awaken fully.
She was once Asher's twin—not by birth, but by binding. A name discarded to empower his. Her memory was erased from others. But the Throne's awakening and Asher's sacrifice tore those seals apart.
She remembered.
And so did the world.
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Asher stood at the shrine's mouth, deep underground. It hadn't opened in 400 years.
Ira stood beside him, silent, her fingers trembling.
Within the shrine lay the final remnant of the Blackwood Oath: a dying flame that once sealed their shared soul.
He reached for it—and let it burn him.
"I accept who I am. Not the name. Not the role. Me."
The flame died.
Far across the sea, in the city of Limerence—a spire rose from beneath the ground, pulsing with white fire. An old man opened his eyes.
"He's done it," the man rasped. "The First Name is dead. Now the rest will follow."
[End of Chapter 130]
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Next Chapter Preview: Chapter 131 – "Feather and Fang"Ira's full memory blooms. But in doing so, it attracts the attention of something that once hunted the Blackwood line to extinction. And it still remembers the taste.