The River of Names — Part One
In the kingdom of Nareth, names had power. Real power. If you knew someone’s true name, you could command them — heart, soul, and will. That’s why people paid handsomely to have their names changed, rewritten, or hidden. Names were like coins — stolen, traded, forged. But for her, there was nothing to trade. Because she had no name.
She had been found in a woven basket on the shores of the River Istra, silent, eyes open, fists clenched. The villagers called her Moss, after the green lichen on the rocks nearby. But it wasn’t her real name. They knew that. She knew it too. But without a true name, she couldn’t speak. Not really. Not aloud. Not to anyone.
Of Forgotten Words and Vanished Names
Moss lived in the edges — the quiet spaces between stories. She watched from rafters. She listened at doorways. She understood more than anyone guessed. But still, no one tried to name her properly. Names cost. And she was an orphan. An extra mouth in a poor fishing village where bread was thin and magic thinner.
Until the letter came.
A single parchment, blown in on the wind. No one saw who brought it. No one knew who wrote it. But when old Gramma Dey read it, she turned pale and told Moss to pack a bag.
“Your name is upstream,” she whispered. “You must find it before the others do.”
And so the girl with no voice and no name began her journey, walking alone along the banks of the River Istra.
The Town of Borrowed Names
The first town she reached was called Eirith. Every child there wore a copper tag around their necks with names that changed daily — borrowed from travelers, bartered from merchants, sometimes stolen in the night. Moss met a boy who had twenty names and no idea which one was his.
She wrote on scraps of parchment, asking about the Name Market. He pointed to a tower made of black stone, twisting and leaning like a stack of teacups. Inside, the name-brokers moved like spiders. They hissed when she approached. One offered her a name carved in bone — old and cursed. She declined.
They asked what she had to trade. She showed them the feather tied around her wrist. Emberhawk feather. They backed away.
“That name is deeper than we dare,” one murmured.
And so she moved on.
Whispers on the Water
At night, she camped beside the river, placing her palm in the water to feel its current. Once, she dreamed the river spoke. It called her Byla. A soft name. A name like a bell. She said it in her sleep — the first sound she’d made in years.
But when she woke, the name was gone. Like a fish slipping through fingers.
She found villages that worshipped names as gods. She met a blind woman who could hear the shape of a name by touching your face. That woman cried when she touched Moss.
“Your name was torn out. Like a root. Someone powerful wanted you forgotten.”
And Moss — or whatever she once was — understood she was being hunted.
The Man Without Eyes
He came on the fifth night. Tall. Pale. Cloaked in moth-woven silk. No eyes. Just skin where they should be. But he saw her anyway. He whispered her almost-name and it made her bleed from the nose.
He said he was a Collector. That names were his craft. That hers had once belonged to something terrible and beautiful — and that he would take it back.
She ran.
He followed.
The river grew louder.
The Stone That Remembered
In a glade marked with runes, she found an ancient stone — cracked in half, but humming with memory. She pressed her fingers to it and saw fire. Wings. A voice calling her name over thunder.
Not Byla. Not Moss.
Lyren.
The name struck like lightning. It echoed in her chest. Her voice returned in a scream. And for a moment, the forest burned with golden light.
The Collector flinched.
She stood. Not silent. Not forgotten. She had a name now. Hers. And it was only the beginning.
To be continued in Part Two…
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