Noxvallis begins to stabilize—but not in the way Asher hoped. As factions rise from old ruins, the gods once worshipped in alleys and gutters begin to stir. And they remember what the Blackwoods took from them.
Noxvallis no longer screamed.
It breathed.
But what it exhaled was not peace—it was memory. The kind that bled. The kind that grew teeth.
In the aftermath of Asher's sacrifice—the burning of the First Name—an eerie stillness had spread across the city. Cracked skyglass towers mended themselves slowly, groaning like ancient bones. Shadows that once twitched with madness now flowed smoother, more patient. The city had found a rhythm.
But it wasn't his.
Not anymore.
Ira sat in the cathedral's crypt, her hair slick with rain, her fingers tracing the Blackwood sigil etched into the altar stone. "We were the oath-bearers," she murmured. "We thought that made us rulers."
She looked up. "But we were thieves too."
Asher, standing beside her, said nothing. His eyes stared into the candlelight, haunted. He was thinner now. Not from hunger. From burning.
The name he'd given up—his own—had cracked the foundation of the entire city's spell-laced structure. And in doing so, it had unearthed older ruins beneath it.
Factions began to rise from the fractures. Not political factions—faiths.
The alley-shrines. The sewer-priests. The Bleeding Choir. The Gut-Stained Prophets. They had waited, hidden in the grime of the city, whispered into by the forgotten gods. And now, they walked again.
One in particular had a name Asher couldn't erase.
Mournfeed.
The God Beneath the Gutter.
A god that had once made pacts with the first Blackwoods before betrayal.
A god that had lost its tongue—but not its appetite.
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The Library of Noxvallis – Lower Ruins
Archivist Darik clawed open a sealed door that hadn't moved in over three centuries. The sigil on the lock was unmistakable—the Blackwood Thorn. But beneath it was something older.
A mural carved in sewer-mud and goldleaf.
The mural showed five figures with no eyes, standing over a man with a broken sword and a hollow chest.
One of the figures wore a mask of tongues.
The others had bones for crowns.
"They were the gutter gods," Darik breathed, fingers trembling. "And the Blackwood… took everything from them."
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Memory Fragment – 109 Years Ago
A child, no older than ten, stumbled into a rain-slick alley. His name: Asher Blackwood. Not the Asher of now—but a shadow born before memory.
He was not alone.
Beside him was a girl with silver hair and a necklace of teeth—Ira.
They watched their parents die not to war or disease, but to something they summoned. A pact gone wrong. A name spoken too loudly in a place too sacred.
The gods had warned them: names are oaths.
But the Blackwoods had written their own.
And then they'd buried the price in their children's minds.
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Present – Noxvallis Cathedral
Ira pressed her palm against Asher's chest. "The city stabilized because you offered something it couldn't refuse—a name so true, it created room for falsehood to die."
"But what grew in its place?" Asher asked.
She looked down.
"Mournfeed. The god we betrayed. The one your family tried to chain. It's free now, Asher. Not fully—but enough to taste the wind again."
A moment passed. Then Ira added:
"And it remembers you."
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Elsewhere – The Gut-Temple
A sewer chasm lit by bile-green fire. The cult knelt, swaying, chanting in syllables older than syntax.
A voice spoke from the mire.
It didn't echo.
It invaded.
"Bring me the un-named prince.He burned the oath.He broke the gate.The Blackwood blood must not remember its crown.Let the gutters flow with godhood once more."
End of Chapter 132
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Chapter 133 – "The Child with No Voice"A mute orphan is discovered beneath the Temple Ruins—carrying a relic of the first Blackwood pact. Asher and Ira race to find him before Mournfeed does. But the child may already be listening… to someone else.