Farcastles

FARCASTLES: CHAPTER SIXTEEN – THE NAMES BELOW

The spiral stair twisted deeper into the dark, each step damp and narrow, the stone cool against their boots. Their lanterns glowed orange, steady but unwelcome as if the space had grown used to shadow.

The silence wasn’t empty. It shifted with them. Cracked softly like parchment being flexed by unseen hands.

With every step, Ern felt a pressure behind his eyes, like the air around him was remembering too much at once—and trying to make room.

Torv led with Sarra close behind, her hand on the hilt of her sword. Gellon moved slowly, leaning more heavily on Ern than he wanted to admit. His breath was shallow. His wound no longer bled, but his skin had taken on a faint grey sheen.

“It’s humming again,” he whispered. “Like it’s calling me back.”

Myrr turned their head slightly but said nothing.

Probably sitting on a stool | Shower thinker | Collaborative Worldbuilding | Community Games

/farcastles /brians-rescue

Myrr knelt beside him, tracing a glyph in the air. The magic fizzled. They cursed under their breath.

“This place won’t let healing hold. It’s not just remembering—it’s rewriting.”

They moved quickly from the name chamber into a domed vault carved from obsidian-black stone. At its center stood a basin, not unlike the one at the sealed site—but this one breathed.

The surface of the liquid rippled gently, despite the air being still. In its center floated a single drop of blood.

Fresh.

Ern’s gut twisted.

Sarra raised her lantern. “Is this another memory?”

“No,” Myrr said quietly. “That one reflected. This one records.”

Torv approached it slowly. “Records what?”

Myrr didn’t answer.

Then, a sound.

Not spoken.

Not heard.

Just... there.

“Who will stay?”

Gellon whimpered, shaking, eyes unfocused.

Ern took a step forward. Toward the basin. Toward the voice. He didn’t know why.

Behind him, the glyphs on the chamber walls began to glow.

One name brightened first—then another. Then dozens.

Sarra’s hand went to her sword.

But Myrr gasped. Their fingers twitched like they wanted to rewrite the name and couldn’t.

A name—etched in flame across the far wall—was changing.

Letters bending, lines melting, reconfiguring.

It became Ern’s.

Ern stared.

“I didn’t carve that,” he said, but the words didn’t feel like his anymore. The wall had known them before he did.

Myrr took a step back. “The names below don’t sleep,” they murmured. “They wait for a reason to be remembered.”

The basin rippled again.

A second name began to change.

And it wasn’t Ern’s.

They reached a landing—a stone chamber etched with thousands of glyphs. The air was dry, still, and heavy with unseen motion.

Ern lifted his lantern. The walls pulsed faintly, illuminated line by line.

Names.

Carved in every language. Some recognizable. Some entirely alien. Many scratched out. Others burned in, glowing faintly gold, silver, or sickly green.

One name shimmered like heat haze at eye level: “Stay.”

Ern stepped toward it, drawn.

Myrr’s hand snapped forward and gripped his wrist. “Don’t touch the names.”

“Why?” Ern asked, not moving.

“If it knows your name, it can call you back.”

“To what?”

“To whatever you were before you chose your word.”

Behind them, Gellon let out a low moan and dropped to a knee.

Sarra was there instantly, hand on his shoulder. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s writing in my head,” he rasped. “Not words—just... changing me.”