Nix crashed into the bed she assumed was hers. It wasn’t like there was anyone else here to say otherwise, so for now the room, and this bed, were hers.

This would be the first time she evolved.

The most important event in every Coral resident’s life.

She was giddy… and terrified.

While the naming ceremony for fifteen-year-olds was the starting point of everyone’s lives, an evolution was a mark of achievement. It was a day that their efforts and pain accumulated into a consolidation of their very being. Evolutions, even bad ones, brought people into a new tier of opportunity.

By evolving for the first time, it was like a new world opened up to you. The cults would suddenly have a dozen new paths for advancement out of the lowest creed — most unevolved never reached further than the first creed — and an equivalent standard of respect and power came with it.

But the opportunities came not only from the cults. By evolving one’s name, they improved the foundation of their soul. It allowed countless more names to become available to them. Stronger, more useful names.

To evolve, all Nix needed to do, was lean back and fall asleep.

But why does that have to be so hard?

She had already tried a dozen positions, but rest never took her. It would be so much easier if she found out she was ready to evolve like everyone else; by discovering it in her sleep. But she could already feel how ready her names were. Nix was too excited to rest.

Idly, she wondered if Tarchon kept any of his cult’s scrolls or tomes lying around this place. He wasn’t the most organised of people. If he had any, they weren’t likely to be well stored or protected.

If she could use one of the cults’ forced evolution rituals, then she wouldn’t have to wait until rest found her for the evolution to start. She could force it to appear before her like in the name ritual.

But now wasn’t the time to be making enemies of the cults. Especially not one that she didn’t have any great grudge against. If Tarchon, or any of the Technocultists discovered she’d been snooping, they wouldn’t let her go with only a warning. To a cult, secrets were everything.

Hoping that her meditation might allow her to slip into slumber, she took in deep gulp of void, and cycled her breath. Nix ignored the slightly damp feathers hugging her side. She ignored the demands of her blind eye to be freed from the skulk shroud. All thoughts of K’tan, and his death slipped her mind.

Nix blinked. Or it felt like she did, but she wasn’t sure if her eyes were even open.

Nix-ine-oth-Zylth

Suddenly she could feel her name. Not with the sense given by her Feat, but the innate understanding she felt during a naming ritual. She could read each name’s descriptions again if she wanted, but it was another feeling that held her attention.

Her name was ready.

She’d known it before because of her Feat, but this felt far more intimate. Her name screamed at her that it was ready to evolve, and waiting even a minute was something it refused to do. It wanted to be more than it was. Now.

Reaching out, she felt her name expand. She tried to use her Feat’s sense, but found it unavailable to her. Even without it, Nix was sure she already knew what she might see. Each of her names split into their pieces, ready to combine in whatever way she chose.

Eleven options made themselves known. Eleven paths for her name, her advancement, and her fate.

Nix tossed away four immediately.

Even a glancing sense made it clear they were not true evolutions — not in the sense she wanted — they were combinations that excluded her base name. If she chose any of those, the fundamentals of her soul wouldn’t improve, and she would be limiting her growth.

For later evolutions, such choices became reasonable. But now — while her base name was still unevolved — they would be a complete waste.

Two of the seven remaining were considerably less impressive than the rest — consisting of only two names rather than three — but there was none besides the top two possibilities that Nix focused on. They were the only ones that felt more. Like they were a tier above the rest. They were the only two she’d ever truly considered as options.

She directed her gaze to the first.

Nix-ine-oth

Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.

Curse — Fate repeats

Nix glared. She’d always been told that descriptions for evolutions were more cryptic than names, but this was clear. It was so clear, that despite the combination being the one she had been prepared to take, it had now slipped from her list of options completely.

Combining her curses would doom her to the same fate? She didn’t care if the next best option would leave her crippled, it would be better than this.

She’d wanted to have certainty that she could control her mutations. She’d wanted to keep ‘Zylth’. Sure it was likely to mix with her other names and become more than it was, but there was always the risk that what she wanted wasn’t what her evolution thought was right. The risk was only made worse by the fact that she was combining the Feat with curses. She had no idea how horribly those might twist it.

Now realising that her options weren’t as open as she’d hoped, she focused on the combination that felt most instinctively promising.

Nix-ine-oth-Zylth

Curse — A seedling grows within the rotting soil of fate. Not yet sprouted. Not yet free of rot and parasitic weeds.

Okay, there’s the more cryptic description I was expecting. At least this one doesn’t outright state I’m fated to repeat my past.

It was still labelled a curse, but she hardly expected any different. Considering she had enough curses and corruption to ignite Dark Stars, there wasn’t a future she could see where she’d somehow cleansed them all. Usually, one could evolve away a major blood curse by sacrificing a name, but apparently that would be so pointlessly ineffective against Nix’s curses that her name hadn’t even offered the option.

The metaphor about a seed in rotten soil was rather apt for her situation; her task before her was immense and nearly impossible, but if she could surmount the challenge — if she could sprout — she would be out of reach of the rot and parasites that were the cults.

Nix already knew what her only option was. Tarchon was right; combining all of her names was for the best. But she was curious what the path that ignored her mutations looked like.

Nix-Zylth

Death Curse — The collapse of a star destroys not only itself

Well. She really didn’t have a choice, after all.

But it was strange that the curse descriptor had changed. Besides the obvious, how did a death curse differ from any of her current cursed names? Was there something specific that gave this its own distinct descriptor while all her other curses were just a general ‘curse’?

The description itself was rather ominous. Considering she achieved her Feat for being willing to die, and her base name held the power to create Dark Stars, it wasn’t hard to imagine what sort of path this would lead her down.

For a brief moment, Nix actually considered the option. It was clearly a suicidal path… but what if it let her destroy the cults and their leaders? If it gave her the opportunity to self-sacrifice and wipe out all of Coral, could she turn it up? Like K’tan’s death, all of their own lives would be taken through a sacrificial ritual. Fitting.

But what of the people like Ari and Dan who do speak up? Those that try to fight, only to be crushed by the immense cults. Nix would have to kill them, too. What about the future Nix had so greatly desired? The life she’d wanted to live while stuck in the cults’ basements.

Nix wanted revenge, but not at the cost of herself.

She grabbed the option to combine all her names, and with a mere nudge, she felt her names flare into action. All descriptions disappeared and Nix felt herself change. It was intimate. Her soul flowed into a soup, before searching for proper places to connect.

How she wished her Feat sense still worked during this. Her name had ripped itself apart to search for new ways to combine itself. What did her curses look like? She could somewhat guess at how her Feat broke apart, considering the puzzle pieces were observable from the surface. But she’d never been able to decipher her cursed names. How had they altered her names from the usual cloud of components?

The evolution washed over her, and she felt her mind stutter, as if readjusting to a slightly different Nix.

Nix? No, that doesn’t feel right. Why doesn’t that feel right?

The answer came almost immediately as the evolution locked itself in place, and her new name registered to her mind. It flooded her soul and she knew it was now who she was.

Nỷx

Before she could truly relish in the name, she found herself startled awake. She snapped her eyes around the room. But there was nothing. She’d finished her evolution, and had been kicked out of that contradictorily aware slumber.

Nỷx. That was now her name. It was different, yet it felt as natural as Nix previously had. Nix no longer felt right. It was a thing of the past. And yet despite her intense desire to have everyone begin calling her by her proper, new name, she couldn’t tell anyone. It would be too strange that she’d already evolved.

Well… except maybe Tarchon. The man knew she was ready to evolve, didn’t he? That was why he gave the advice he did. But even if he did have a pretty good idea, was it smart for her to outright confirm those suspicions?

She stretched her body, and looked over herself. There was no reason to; evolutions rarely had an immediate effect on the body — they were an effect on the soul after all, any physical change or improvement would only come as the body tried to reflect the soul — but something screamed out at her to check.

Nothing seemed off… but she wasn’t exactly ready to take of her top and check her wings unless she was certain she was safe from any eyes. It was only when she tapped her fingers along the side of her leg that she noticed.

Her chitinous claws, her gem eye, her bound wings; they all felt innate.

She’d never had problems controlling her mutations, but there had always been a lingering sense of unease around them. It had only added to the despair her mutations had caused her. That feeling was now gone. If anything, they felt more natural than her own arms.

As interesting as it was that her mutations might have grown more fitting for her — or the change in her soul had adjust her to the changes — it took a backseat to her Feat’s touch.

The sense was, thankfully, not gone. But as she passed it over her name, it became clear it had changed. She got the sense that she could no longer detect the willingness of death, either in a person’s mind or their past. But there was now more to it. Aspects of the sense she couldn’t yet understand, but were possible.

What was also made abundantly clear from her touch; Nyx had no idea how she would control her changes.

As all her curses were now crammed into a single name, was it even possible to rush her changes without igniting a Dark Star Event? Had she lost that tiny bit of control she’d gained over her mutations?