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.
Noxvallis had begun to breathe with new lungs.
Old gods had names again—names stitched together from alley psalms, gutter chants, and broken mosaics rediscovered beneath the city's bones. But it wasn't just faith that had returned.
It was hunger.
In the southern quadrant of Noxvallis, just beneath the crumbled façade of the Dawnweaver Temple, something was found. Or rather—someone.
They called him Vey.
A boy no older than seven. Clothes scorched at the hem, eyes pale as dust, lips sealed not by fear but by spell. He could not speak. He could only listen. And what he heard… was never from this world.
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Crypt of Silence – Hours Earlier
Asher knelt before a collapsed corridor inside the ruins. Ira stood beside him, torchlight flickering against the damp stone walls.
"You felt it too," Ira whispered.
"Yes." Asher touched the wall—there, etched beneath the soot, was the Sigil of the Hollow Oath. It had once belonged to his great-grandfather, Kalon Blackwood—the man who made the first pact with Mournfeed. The man who'd buried the cost of it in a child's cradle.
"How is it possible?" Ira asked. "That this sigil still burns?"
"Because someone inherited it."
They found the child thirty feet beneath the temple, curled in the shadow of a broken statue. The statue had no face—only a jagged maw where the eyes and mouth should've been.
Asher moved slowly, but when his hand brushed the boy's, a pulse tore through the ruins.
Ira dropped to her knees.
She saw a vision—not of prophecy, but of memory stolen and scattered.
A throne built from tongues.
A crown with no wearer.
The words: "What was silenced shall not remain silent."
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Outside – Noxvallis Rising
All across the city, echoes stirred in gutters, in abandoned prayer rooms, in the walls of forgotten houses.
People had begun seeing things.
An old man weeping blood in the mirror.A butcher hearing names whispered in raw meat.A girl reciting hymns she never learned—words in a tongue no longer spoken.
The gods of alleys, cracks, and dirt remembered who once silenced them. And now, through Vey—the child with no voice—they were building a new conduit.
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Back in the Crypt
"He's not possessed," Ira said softly, checking the boy's eyes. "He's burdened."
Asher frowned. "By what?"
Ira pointed to the pendant on Vey's neck. A tiny metal fang, encased in glass.
"It's the Fang of Kalon," she said. "It was broken after the first betrayal. It was meant to seal the god's scream."
"But if Vey has it," Asher murmured, "…then the scream is loose."
They looked down at the boy. He was staring not at them—but past them. As if he saw something they could not. His mouth opened.
No sound came.
But something answered.
A crack in the ceiling. A wail from the street above. And the whisper of Mournfeed, crawling back into Noxvallis through the voice the child didn't have.
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Meanwhile – Temple of Broken Names
The Bleeding Choir gathered.
They had heard rumors of the mute child. And they knew what he carried.
"He is the Answered Silence," their leader hissed. "Bring him. Or bury the city."
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Later – Rooftop of the Ashen Cloister
Asher and Ira sat with Vey wrapped in a blanket between them.
"He's not afraid," Ira said.
"He doesn't know enough to be," Asher replied.
Then the child turned—and for the first time since they found him, he moved. His hand rose and pointed east.
Toward the oldest, darkest ruins of Noxvallis. Toward a place not even Asher remembered.
"I know that place," Ira whispered.
And in her voice was something trembling. Not fear.
Recognition.
End of Chapter 133
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Chapter 134 – "The Place We Buried Names"Guided by the silent boy, Asher and Ira descend into the dead zone east of Noxvallis—where names go to rot, and where Kalon Blackwood's first pact was made. But the old place is not as dead as they remember.