Chapter 2782: Story 2783: The Fifth Name

The three knocks came again.

Seratha stopped breathing.

“No,” she whispered. “That coffin was sealed before the First Kingdom existed.”

The Firstborn stood beside it, his bloodstained hands hanging at his sides.

“Some prisons are built to keep monsters inside,” he said. “Others are built to keep mothers from hearing their children cry.”

Ronan approached the coffin. The four familiar names glowed across its lid: Elias, Aren, Darian, and Ronan.

Beneath them lay a fifth name, scratched away so violently that deep grooves split the ancient stone.

“Who is inside?” Ronan asked.

His mother shook her head.

“Don’t open it.”

“Why?”

“Because I already lost him once.”

The coffin knocked from within.

“Mother?”

The child’s voice was small and trembling.

“I was good. I stayed quiet, just like you told me.”

Seratha covered her mouth.

Ronan looked at the Firstborn. “You said you wanted justice. Is this what you came for?”

“I came for the truth,” the Firstborn answered. “Justice is what remains when truth has finished destroying everything.”

He placed his palm against the coffin.

The lid slid aside.

Inside lay a little boy with pale hair and closed eyes. His clothes were centuries old, but his skin looked untouched by time. Golden threads wrapped around his wrists, ankles, and throat, disappearing into the coffin’s black interior.

A red mark burned over his heart.

Ronan stumbled backward.

The boy had his face.

Not the face of the Firstborn standing beside them, but the face Ronan had seen in childhood dreams—the face of himself before fear, before blood, before the sword.

Lyra moved beside him.

“Another reflection?”

“No,” the Firstborn replied. “This one was real.”

The boy opened his eyes.

“Ronan?”

The moment he spoke, the golden threads snapped.

Every dead king in the chamber screamed. The Nameless King tried to flee, but black roots erupted from the floor and dragged it toward the coffin.

Elias attacked the roots with his chains. Aren formed a silver barrier around Darian, shielding him from the collapsing ceiling.

But the roots ignored them.

They reached only for the Nameless King.

“Please!” the King shrieked. “I guarded your name! I kept the memories buried!”

The boy sat up.

“You kept my name because you were afraid I would remember yours.”

He raised one small hand.

The Nameless King’s six golden eyes went dark.

Its body collapsed into a heap of empty robes.

Silence returned.

Ronan stared at the child. “Who are you?”

The boy looked toward Seratha.

For a moment, his expression softened with the desperate hope of a child seeing his mother after a nightmare.

Then he noticed her trembling hands.

“You remember me,” he whispered.

Seratha fell to her knees.

“I never forgot.”

The boy’s smile disappeared.

“Then why did you kill me?”

A red crack opened across his chest.

Something inside it began to beat.

The Firstborn seized Ronan’s shoulder.

“Don’t let him touch your heart!”

But the child was already reaching for Ronan.

And from within Ronan’s chest, a second hand reached back.