They couldn’t descend into the pit. Kuon held them back.
His mechanical eye scanned the internal structure, revealing a vertical shaft that dropped over ten meters to the bottom. Furthermore, the inner walls were brittle—a fragile buildup of carved names—and would likely crumble if anyone tried to find a handhold. If they went down, they wouldn't be coming back up.
"There’s another way to decipher the names below," Kuon said. "If we cross-reference them with the records in the Scriptuary, we can find out what lies dormant in this hole."
"The Scriptuary... you mean that place that looks like a grave?"
"It is a grave, a library, and the final destination for all records. To understand the meaning of what we found here in Toumimachi, we have no choice but to go there."
Koyoi let go of the pit’s edge. The dust of names lingered on her fingers, refusing to fall even when she tried to brush them off.
They retreated back through the alley. As they retraced their steps, the carved names looked fainter than before. It wasn’t her imagination. Characters were beginning to peel and flake away from the surface. She walked on, stepping over the fragments of letters scattered at her feet.
"...It’s falling apart," Asahi noted, pointing to the wall.
At the corner of the alley, a massive cluster of text had broken away entirely, exposing the raw, dark stone beneath. Bare stone, with nothing carved into it.
Koyoi reached out and touched the exposed surface. Cold and hard, a wall without a name was just a wall.
"A wall stripped of its name... is no longer this wall at all," she whispered.
The words felt like a thorn in her chest.
As they emerged from the alley, the rows of lighthouses stretched out before them once again. However, the number of lights had dwindled. When they had first arrived, every lighthouse had been crowned with a golden flame; now, one in every three had gone dark. The extinguished lighthouses stood like black pillars, sinking into the gloom.
"The town is starting to close," Kuon said.
He opened his Catalog, his lens scanning the pages as a blue light flickered rapidly across the paper. "The lighthouses of Toumimachi are devices for recording names. If the lights go out, it means the vessels for those records have either filled to capacity or failed."
"...Is there a way out?"
"If the station is still active, a train will come."
The three of them ran between the rows of lighthouses, the stone pavement striking back hard against their feet. As they passed the dark pillars, they saw the wreckage of letters strewn about their bases—fragments of names spilled out by the lighthouses.
The station sat on the outer edge of town, in a different location than where they had arrived. The cobblestones ended abruptly, giving way to a single railway track stretching out into the fog. The platform was made not of stone, but of decaying wooden planks. Grass grew through the gaps, though it too had lost its color, withering into a dull gray.
A single lantern hung at the end of the platform, its weak, pale blue flame flickering in the mist. Asahi scanned the surroundings.
"...There’s no one here."
"It will come. The train will come," Kuon insisted. "As long as this lantern is lit, the station is alive."
Kuon stood at the edge of the platform, peering down the tracks. Nothing was visible through the fog yet. Koyoi sat down on a rotting wooden bench. The wood groaned under her weight.
As she rested her drawstring pouch on her knees, she felt the gods within beginning to calm. The tension that had gripped them while they were in the heart of Toumimachi was slowly beginning to loosen.
Behind them, another lighthouse went out. Its golden flame vanished without a sound, leaving only a dark pillar behind.
"...Hey, Kuon?"
"What is it?"
"The name inside that pit. The one that was being protected. Who was the one guarding it?"
Kuon didn't take his eyes off the tracks.
"...I don't know. But I know for certain that someone tried to protect it. In this town, where the 'Name Overlap' causes everything to crush and destroy one another, someone dug a hole and lined up names one by one. It must have been a task bordering on madness."
"Madness?"
"In this town, the very act of carving a name accelerates the Name Overlap. In other words, the act of trying to protect a name only hastens the town’s destruction. They knew that, and they kept digging anyway."
Koyoi clutched her pouch.
A place where protecting and destroying were the same thing. And yet, someone had chosen to protect. Did that person’s name remain inside that pit?
From the distance came the screech of grinding iron. A single light approached through the fog—a pale, blue light.
It was the train’s lantern.
Asahi stood up, checking the strap of his sword. Kuon tucked the Catalog into his coat and lined up at the edge of the platform. Koyoi rose from the bench, cradling the pouch to her chest.
The train emerged, cutting through the mist. Its iron hull was slick with condensation, reflecting the dull blue glow of the lantern. The doors slid open, releasing a draft of cold air that ruffled their hair.
Before boarding, Koyoi looked back just once. A few of Toumimachi’s lighthouses still shone, while others had already vanished. The golden flames and the black pillars stood side by side in an alternating line.
Was the pit at the end of that alley still there? Would the protected name remain even after the town closed?
There was no answer.
The doors hissed shut, and the train began to move. The last lights of Toumimachi sank away, swallowed by the fog.