I left the memoryless village beneath a moonless sky, boots echoing against the silence it left behind in me. There was no warmth, no wind — only the weight of what could not be spoken.

  The road ahead was mossbound, carved by forgotten feet. I didn’t follow it.

  I wandered beside it.

  Then I heard weeping.

  Not far — just beyond a crescent bend in the old roots. It was not the echo of grief, but the honest sound of someone too young to lie to their own heart.

  I found the child beneath a broken shrine, curled between roots grown wide like fingers. She could not have been more than six.

  Her skin bore no runes. Her eyes were not clouded with illusion or fear. But what struck me most — she had no feather.

  No thread.

  No name.

  She looked up at me, tear-tracked cheeks smudged with soil.

  “Are you Death?” she asked.

  I blinked. The question did not sting.

  “No,” I said. “I am what remembers what Death forgets.”

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  She tilted her head, birdlike.

  “Then… do I exist?”

  I knelt beside her.

  She did not flinch. Only watched me with a gaze too old for her bones.

  “What’s your name?” I asked gently.

  She shook her head.

  “They said I wasn’t born right. That names don’t stick.”

  I reached for my satchel. Drew a feather from its fold — soft, white-veined, unbound.

  “Would you like one?”

  She stared at it like it might vanish if she breathed too loud.

  “What does it do?”

  “It remembers you. Even if you forget yourself.”

  She nodded.

  I began the chant — soft, steady, incomplete. But when I reached the naming thread, the feather resisted.

  It burned my fingertips.

  Not rejection. Not rage.

  But emptiness.

  There was nothing to write.

  The child wasn’t empty. She was full — of laughter, of questions, of breath. But no name followed her. None would stay.

  The chant broke.

  I let the feather fall.

  The child touched my cloak.

  “That’s okay,” she said. “I think I’m supposed to be someone else. Later.”

  I watched her as she stood and walked toward the trees.

  She did not vanish.

  But neither did she leave a trail.

  Serre-du-Vide hummed with a strange rhythm — like a lullaby that had no end.

  Some names are not forgotten.

  Some have not yet arrived.

  And some — like that girl — carry echoes of a future that hasn't yet spoken.

  I walked on.