Chapter 6 – The Outpost
The rain had stopped hours ago, but the world still felt wet like it hadn't decided whether to breathe again.
Uzo and Ronnie moved through the fog like broken shadows, their clothes torn, their bodies smeared with ash and dried blood.
The forest around them had grown quiet, unnaturally quiet, as though even the insects feared to speak their names.
Ahead, the remains of a structure rose from the earth stone walls split by vines, half-eaten by time.
The sigil carved above the gate had long faded, but Uzo could still feel the hum of old magic beneath his fingertips.
It was a ruined outpost, probably from the early age of the Houses. A place built before they learned how to hide their sins.
"Shelter," Ronnie whispered, her voice rasped raw.
"You sure that's shelter? Probably our graves," Uzo murmured back. Still, he pushed the gate open.
Inside, the air smelled of dust, gun oil, and ghosts. The remains of metal frames and shattered glyph-lamps littered the ground.
A fire burned faintly at the center, and beside it sat a man — draped in gray, face shadowed beneath a hood stitched with faint runes. His right eye gleamed faintly blue, mechanical and tired.
"I thought I heard the wind bring strangers," the man said without looking up.
His tone was calm, but layered — like someone who'd spoken to too many corpses.
Uzo stiffened. His fingers twitched toward a shard of steel on his belt. Ronnie rested her hand on his arm, silently warning him.
The man finally lifted his gaze.
His left eye the human one widened slightly.
"A Lexicon carrier," he muttered. "I haven't seen one in… years."
Uzo's jaw tightened.
"Who are you?"
"Names are heavy debts," the man said. "Mine's long gone. You can call me what the wind calls me — The Wanderer."
Ronnie stepped closer to the fire, her hands trembling as warmth touched her skin for the first time in days.
The Wanderer studied her scars, her eyes, the silent fury beneath them. Then, he turned back to Uzo.
"You've no True Name," the Wanderer said softly. "I can see the silence clinging to you like a wound. The Houses fear your kind. Because you can rewrite what they protect."
Uzo frowned. "Rewrite?"
The Wanderer smiled faintly.
"The Lexicon is the root of all power.
Every True Name is a word etched in it — a fragment of meaning. But those without a True Name… those like you… you're unbound by its grammar. You can take, bend, merge, or destroy words as you wish."He leaned forward. "If you wish to learn how then survive long enough."
A shiver crawled up Ronnie's spine.
"Then… what happens to those who find their true name?"
"They stop being human," he said simply. "They become meaning itself."
Before Uzo could reply, the ground trembled a low hum, rhythmic, mechanical. The Wanderer's head snapped toward the door.
"They've found you," he hissed.
The first bullet cracked through the air, a high-pitched snap that split the silence. Uzo dove, dragging Ronnie down as dust exploded around them.
The outpost door burst inward, and figures poured through — armored soldiers marked with the sigil of the House of the Brute, their weapons humming with kinetic runes.
"Targets confirmed! The Nameless and the girl, capture them alive!"
Uzo's pulse hammered. He grabbed a fallen spear from the floor, its shaft chipped but balanced.
Ronnie rolled behind a collapsed pillar, tracing glowing runes in the air the fragments she'd learned from Uzo's whispers during captivity. The sigils flickered, unstable but they were real.
The first soldier charged, gauntlet glowing with the Rune of Impact.
Uzo sidestepped, letting instinct take over. The spear snapped forward, not clean, but desperate — and slammed into the soldier's throat. The armor shattered like glass.
Uzo felt the man's True Name flicker, then fade.
"Behind you!" Ronnie shouted.
He turned too slow — a blade tore across his back. Pain bloomed, bright and searing, he spun, caught the soldier's wrist, and muttered a word he didn't understand.
The air pulsed, the soldier's armor imploded inward, folding bone and steel like paper.
Even Uzo looked stunned.
The Wanderer stood now, his hood down, eyes glowing faintly with pale light.
He moved like ink spilling across the air his hand tracing sigils mid-motion.
"Leave none alive," he said softly.
The runes erupted from his palm, binding one soldier mid-leap.
The man screamed as his body was rewritten — his flesh dissolving into dust and syllables.
Ronnie ducked behind the flames, blood streaking her face. She slammed her palms together, shouting: "Rune of Break!"
The wall cracked, stone fragments flinging forward like bullets, shredding the enemy ranks.
Uzo's world slowed, he felt the Lexicon hum within him threads of power whispering through his veins.
Not words, not spells just meaning, he reached for it, and the air bent.
The last soldier froze mid-strike.
Uzo exhaled, and the man's armor shattered outward in a silent bloom.
When it was over, the only sound was their breathing.
The Wanderer regarded him with something like fear.
"You're too dangerous," he said quietly. "Too dangerous to be left untaught.
Those fucking Houses will come for you now, they always do, when a nameless one speaks his first true word."
Uzo wiped blood from his cheek.
"Then let them come," he said. "If words can wound, I'll make mine a blade."