Part Forty — A Name That Changed Everything

　Before she left for the town, I stopped her at the edge of the clearing, an odd thought catching up to me a beat too late.

　"Um," I said. "What's your name again? I'm sorry, I kind of forgot."

　She was quiet a moment, something complicated crossing her face.

　"I don't think I want people calling me by the name the parents who abandoned me gave to me," she said finally, steady despite the weight of it.

Fair. More than fair, honestly.

　"Could you give me a new one instead?" she asked.

　I blinked.

　"A new name. Are you serious right now?"

　"Yes."

Oh. She's dead serious.

"Giving an individual a name is common practice in this world," Anti-Subconsciousness offered, unprompted.

So I should just start handing names out like candy, is that it?

"Your choice."

You're really not helping, you know that?

　No response.

　Same as always, when it decided a point wasn't worth defending.

　"Alright," I said, out loud, turning back to Aria. "What name should I call you, then?"

　I thought about it longer than the moment probably needed――turning over sounds, syllables, something that fit her without being something she'd have to carry the weight of forever.

　"I've got it," I said finally.

　"Eris."

　"Eris," she repeated, testing the shape of it. "I like it. What's it mean?"

　"In an old mythology――from somewhere very far from here――the word Eris translates to something like strife, or conflict. Fitting, given everything you've survived to still be standing here."

　"Eris," she said again, warmer this time.

　Something settled into place behind her eyes, like she'd just been handed something that actually belonged to her, for the first time in longer than she could probably remember.

　"I like it. What's Greek?"

　"Don't mind it," I said, waving the question off. "Long story. Another day, maybe."

　I didn't notice anything unusual in the moment itself――just a girl trying out a new name, turning it over like a stone in her palm, smiling for the first time since I'd found her.

　It was a heartbeat later that I felt it.

　A flare of something entirely unfamiliar, radiating outward from her, faint but unmistakable――an aura where a moment before there had been none at all.

　She felt it too.

　Her eyes went wide, hands raised in front of her like she expected to see something different about them, though nothing visible had changed yet.

　"What――" she started. "What is that? What's happening to me?"

"Unprecedented," Anti-Subconsciousness said.

　And for the first time since it had started speaking to me, I heard something in its flat register that might, almost, have been surprise.

Unprecedented.

That's not a word it uses lightly.

　"What do you mean, unprecedented?" I said out loud, watching Eris's new, faint aura settle and steady――gold at first, and then...

　Impossibly, given everything I understood about how any of this was supposed to work, it began to shift toward something else entirely.

"No record exists of a name alone causing an individual to awaken anti-mana," it said. "This has never happened before, in the entire history of this world. Not until now."

　I looked at Eris――steady on her feet again despite everything she'd survived to get here, an aura flickering to life around her that had no business existing yet.

　Given a name less than a minute earlier by someone who genuinely hadn't meant for it to do anything more than give her back a piece of dignity nobody else had bothered to offer.

I didn't know. I swear I didn't know a name could do that.

I think I just changed something about how this entire world works, without even meaning to.