Chapter One – The Price of Silence
The night the oath was sealed, it rained ash instead of snow.
Kaelen stood at the edge of the ravine, the black wind biting at his cloak. Far below, the ruined fortress of Durnhollow glowed with dying embers, the scent of charred stone and flesh still thick in the air. Smoke curled skyward like the ghost of a promise broken.
He didn't cry. Not yet. Not for them.
The blade in his hand trembled—not from fear, but fury. Dried blood clung to its edge, some of it his, most of it theirs. He had fulfilled the ritual as commanded: one life for one vow, one cut for each sacred word.
And now, the gods were watching.
"You should not have come alone," said a voice behind him. It was soft, female, and laced with something more dangerous than steel.
Kaelen didn't turn. "I wasn't alone when I buried them."
A woman stepped out of the darkness. She wore the robes of a Veyari oath-keeper—stitched in silver thread, lined with the runes of silence and truth. Her eyes, pale like winter's last moon, studied him without pity.
"You were warned, Kaelen. Blood-oaths are not bargaining tools. They're chains."
"I know what I swore," he snapped.
She moved closer, unconcerned by the edge of his blade. "Then you know the price."
He looked down into the ravine, where the fire still smoldered in the bones of what was once his home. "I've paid it."
"No," she whispered. "You've only begun."
Lightning cracked across the sky. For a moment, the world turned white—and Kaelen saw the truth etched into the scars on his hands.
He was bound.
Bound to the words spoken in desperation.
Bound to the gods who now claimed his soul.
Bound to the vengeance that would consume him.
The woman stepped back into shadow. "The blood remembers, Kaelen. And the oath does not forget.