The Chamber of Roots was no longer a place of counsel.
It was a tomb waiting to be filled.
Cracks spiderwebbed across the walls. Cold mist coiled around the legs of the thrones. And the Great Tree—once radiant—now stood like a skeleton wrapped in gold-tinged bark, its roots exposed, blackened, twitching as if in pain.
King Aerion sat slumped in his seat, eyes hollow. "We have three days. Maybe less. The cracks reach the city's edge. By dawn, they'll breach the outer wards."
Thorin slammed his axe into the stone floor. "Then we fight! Dwarven steel doesn't fear ghosts!"
"It's not a ghost," Elyar said quietly. "It's forgetting. And you can't kill what was never real."
Lira held up the book. Its pages showed the same image—the many-eyed horror beneath the Tree—but now, words pulsed beneath it:
"A true name is not spoken. It is lived.
To give it is to cease being remembered.
Not dead. Not gone. But unwritten."
Prince Kaelin paled. "You mean… whoever sacrifices their name… vanishes from all memory? Even their family won't recall them?"
Lira nodded, tears falling onto the page. "Their deeds, their bloodline, their very existence—erased as if they never were."
Silence.
Then Malrik spoke from the shadows. "Darien returned. He's outside."
All eyes turned.
The doors opened.
Darien stepped in—not as a warrior, but as a ghost of one. His armor was torn, his face gaunt, his ash-hand flickering like a dying candle. Yet his eyes burned with terrible clarity.
"I heard," he said. "About the sacrifice."
Aerion stood. "You cannot be considering—"
"I am House Valtharis," Darien interrupted. "My bloodline traces back to Aelarion… and before him, to Valenthis himself. My name is woven into the foundation of this kingdom."
He looked at Lira. "If a 'true name' must be given… mine is true enough."
"No!" Lira cried. "There has to be another way!"
"There isn't," Darien said gently. "Valenthis became the cage. Aelarion became the key. And I… I will be the lock."
Aelarion, standing near the Tree, bowed his head.
"You understand what none of us could. Balance is not victory. It is surrender."
Thorin gripped Darien's shoulder. "You've already given everything."
"I haven't given my name," Darien replied. "And that's the only thing left that matters."
That night, preparations began.
Not for battle.
For erasure.
In the deepest vault of Elmara, Lira prepared the Ritual of Unwriting. She mixed ink from crushed moonpetals, sap from the Tree's last living branch, and a single drop of Darien's blood—still warm, still gray at the edges.
The spell required three things:
A vessel who willingly surrenders their nameA witness who remembers them until the endAnd a place where history is thinnest
They chose the Heart Chamber—the sacred room beneath Lyothara where the first elven king was crowned.
As midnight neared, Darien stood alone in the chamber.
The walls were carved with the names of every ruler, every hero, every martyr of Eldarín.
Soon, his would be gone.
Lira entered, holding the ink and a silver stylus.
"I'll be your witness," she whispered. "Until the last second."
Darien smiled—a tired, gentle thing. "Tell my story, Lira. Even if no one remembers me… tell it."
She dipped the stylus and touched it to his forehead.
The ink burned.
Not with pain—but with loss.
One by one, memories began to fade from the world:
The day he led the defense of Frosthaven PassThe moment he held his newborn nieceHis laughter during the Feast of Twin Moons
Outside, elves paused mid-step, confused.
"Why do I feel like I've forgotten something?"
In Lyothara's archives, scrolls bearing his name blurred, then went blank.
In the barracks, soldiers stared at empty spaces on honor rolls.
Even the Great Tree's leaves trembled—as if mourning a son it could no longer name.
But deep beneath the city, the cracks stopped spreading.
The mist thinned.
For the first time in days, the ground grew still.
The sacrifice had begun.
And Darien Valtharis…
was becoming no one.