A Blade for Her Name Part 5
The Last Name
Snow fell like memory in the Vale of Blackroot—soft, steady, ancient. The sky was a pale wound above jagged cliffs, clouds stretched thin like torn vellum. Beneath the weight of that silence, the air felt heavier, as if holding its breath for what came next.
Elira stood at the edge of the world.
Below her, carved into the broken bones of a forgotten god’s carcass, lay the final sanctum. A monastery, long abandoned by any faith, now sealed by hex-chains and shadow wards. Where once there had been monks and prayerstones, now there was only quiet suffering—souls in limbo, caught in glass.
A hand lightly touched her back.
Vaelin.
He didn’t speak yet. The gesture said enough. Grounded her. Steadied her in the frost-laced wind. His own cloak was worn now, cut through with burns and dried blood, its threadbare hem stirring at his heels like an afterthought. The blade on his back—the one they’d taken from the king’s chamber—was bound in a new wrap of cloth, not to hide it, but to honor what it had done.
Elira inhaled. Slow. Sharp. She let the cold sting her lungs like truth.
“This is where I was born,” she said at last. Her voice sounded distant to her own ears. “Not by blood. By bond. I think they brought all of us here. The ones who had too much power to be allowed into the Circle right away. We were… unfinished. Dangerous.”
Vaelin’s eyes tracked the winding descent. The path was steep, cut into the rock, frozen over in places. Nothing natural moved in this place.
“They sealed the old gods beneath this ground,” he said. “Buried them under stone. The lore says their bones bleed spell-sap, still.”
She nodded. “We drank it. As children. It made the screams go quiet.”
He didn’t flinch, but he looked at her then—long, careful, like a man holding something fragile he couldn’t afford to drop.
“Let’s finish this,” she said.
The descent took hours.
They passed ancient iron statues—warriors kneeling, their mouths sewn shut. Binding glyphs pulsed faintly beneath their feet, triggered by movement but too old to function fully. The deeper they went, the more the mountain seemed to curl inward. Not just in shape—in presence.
“I can feel the names,” Elira murmured. “Like breathing beneath the stone.”
Inside the monastery, the air changed.
Thicker. Bitter. Laced with sulfur and old spells. The entrance hall had collapsed, but the side corridors remained intact—lined with relics: rusted manacles, spell-torcs with dried blood, a child’s drawing scratched into a wall with a fingernail. A sun with no face.
Elira touched it. Her hand shook.
“They erased our names,” she whispered. “But not our will.”
The vault was hidden behind a pressure seal: a door of obsidian bound with seven locks, each one needing a fragment of true memory to open. Elira bled onto the stone. Whispered names Vaelin didn’t recognize.
When it cracked open, the wail that escaped was not sound. It was grief.
The children were still here.
Their souls bound in mirrored sarcophagi, suspended in circles of spell-iron and memory runes. Boys and girls of all ages—some with their hands pressed to the glass, others curled as if still asleep. No color in their faces. Just a faint shimmer in their eyes, as if part of them still dreamed.
Vaelin walked among them slowly. Reverently. The air pulsed around him, shadows folding and reshaping where he stepped. The binding wards reacted to his presence like wary hounds.
“They remember you,” Elira said.
He turned to her. “Why?”
“You protected me. They knew. Even then, they knew.”
There were thirty-seven of them.
She knelt at the center of the room, within the ring of glass prisons, and began the unweaving. It was delicate—deadly. One wrong phrase could collapse the bindings, killing them instantly. Or her.
Vaelin stood behind her, blade drawn—not to fight, but to sever the anchor strands when she called for them.
One by one, she unwound the soul-lattices. Whispered their names aloud, even when her voice broke. As each child’s name was spoken, their image flickered—and vanished. Released.
A boy named Talin. A girl named Saeyra. A twin pair who clasped hands even in stasis.
And then—
A girl barely older than Elira had been.
“Elin,” she said softly. “She was my shadow. They paired us. When I cried, she pressed my palm and said, Hold on. Hold on and burn bright.”
Tears rolled down her cheeks.
“She didn’t make it out.”
“You did,” Vaelin said gently.
“No,” she answered. “We do. Now.”
By the time only one mirror remained, the sky above the vault had darkened.
Vaelin lit a flame—not magical, just flint and oil.
He held the ledger in his hands.
Elira turned to him, eyes rimmed red. She was pale, drawn thin by the spellwork, but stronger in her stance than he’d ever seen her.
“Write my name,” she said.
He hesitated.
“You sure?”
She stepped forward. “I’ve run from it all my life. Let it be the last one recorded—not for death. But to mark the line where this ends.”
Vaelin pulled a charcoal stick from his pouch. His hands were calloused, but precise.
He wrote:
Elira Taan – Flame that Endures
And below that:
Vaelin Sahr – Blade that Chose Her
Elira’s breath caught.
“You wrote yours.”
He met her gaze. “Because this was never just your war.”
She didn’t speak. She stepped in, closed the space between them, and pressed her forehead to his. The flame behind them flickered. Snow whispered across the broken seals. There was no kiss this time.
Just silence.
And promise.
They left the temple as the sun rose.
No more names whispered in the stone. No more chains in the wind. Just snow melting where her feet touched, steam curling up like the breath of something free.
“Where to now?” Vaelin asked, as they passed the final archway.
She looked toward the west.
“There’s a city of spellweavers. No kings. No thrones. Just thread and memory. They let you write your own name into the world there.”
He nodded. “You want to start over?”
“No,” she said.
“I want to begin.”
They disappeared into the morning.
Not as ghosts.
Not as weapons.
But as Elira Taan.
And the man who chose her name over death.
___________________________________________________
All Parts of the Series
About the Creator
Richard Bailey
I am currently working on expanding my writing topics and exploring different areas and topics of writing. I have a personal history with a very severe form of treatment-resistant major depressive disorder.
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Comments (1)
This description is really vivid. It makes me feel like I'm right there in that cold, desolate place. You've painted a great picture of the Vale of Blackroot. I wonder what kind of spells those old gods' bones could still be bleeding. And how did they manage to make the children drink that spell - sap? It's a pretty dark and mysterious setup. Can't wait to see what happens next in their descent.