At the corridor threshold, the Obsidian Tower breathes around Delfarius and Lyss. Behind them, the wall of iron names gives a dry, tiny rattle, and the opened lower throat below the chamber answers with a hard, patient click.
The tags are shifting. The wall is still listening.
Lyss
If you mean to finish this, do it plainly. I am standing here.
Lyss keeps her chin high despite the collar at her throat, but her eyes flick once to the empty gap where Veyra’s tag used to hang. The tower’s red script tightens under Delfarius’s boots like a held breath.
Repine
Mine.
Repine pads into the red light at Delfarius’s side, smoke-black and watchful, staring toward the wall of names as if scenting something buried beneath them.
Lyss
There is more in this tower than the ones you have named. Finish your claim, or it will keep opening where you do not mean it to.
The iron names shiver again, and one tag at the far end turns enough to catch the light, as if something missing is trying to be remembered. The tower waits on Delfarius’s next command, and on whether he names what the wall is still hiding.
“I name what the wall is hiding”
SUCCESS (Legendary Reasoning, rolled -1)
Delfarius names the hidden thing, and the wall answers at once. The thousand iron tags shiver in their hooks, then settle into a pattern that was always there, waiting to be spoken.
Delfarius sees it now, the wall is not only holding names. It is holding replacements, faces, and the old order beneath the names.
A tag near the empty gap gives a dull turn, revealing Veyra’s mark tucked behind the others, half-hidden where the stone throat can still reach it.
Lyss
So that is what it is keeping. Not a body, a place to put one.
Repine
Found.
The lower stone throat clicks hard below them, then quiets into a slow, listening pulse. The wall of names stops trembling and goes still under Delfarius’s claim.
Repine holds at Delfarius’s side, staring up at the exposed tag cluster while Lyss remains rigid and pale at the collar. The tower has been named, and it does not argue.
Delfarius
No more hiding. I name what you kept: the missing, the copied, the buried. All of it answers now.
The iron tags shiver, then settle into a stark and honest order. Veyra’s mark shows clear behind the others, and the wall seems to breathe once.
Lyss
That’s it, then. It was keeping a place for a body.
Repine
Good. It listens properly now.
The corridor falls quiet, the tower reduced to a low, watchful pulse.
Delfarius stood before the named wall, and the tower no longer pretended innocence. What it had hidden was exposed at last, its replacements and old identities laid bare in iron and silence. Lyss and Repine kept vigil beside him as the Obsidian Tower listened, changed, and held its peace.