The Everhart vessel nosed through tatters of mist and kissed the black stone pier of Mountain Scar with a low groan. Wind swept down the broken ridgelines like a long, cold breath; it smelled of wet rock and roots torn from ancient soil. Andy stepped off first. Ember Edge, Tide-Singer, and Stormbreaker Fang throbbed against his hips, their sheaths warm, their auras whispering like restless stars. The pull came from inland, where a stair of shattered slabs climbed toward a ring of ruins grown over with veined stone and strangling vines.
Nia landed beside him, staff tucked to one arm, blue light pooling around her knuckles. "This place… it feels like the earth remembers a war."
Aurelia dropped lightly to his other side, golden hair caught by the updraft, eyes narrowing as she scanned the cliff road. "Not just memory. Hunger." She rolled one shoulder, loosening the bowstring at her back. "Let's move before the mountain decides we're a snack."
They climbed. Each step sent a faint answer through Andy's blades, like notes in a chord seeking its root. At the crest, the ruins opened: toppled pillars; a cracked dais spidered with green crystal; walls scored with glyphs that pulsed faintly under the skin of the rock. The three swords vibrated in unison.
A translucent screen flickered into being before Andy's eyes.
[Dragon Blade Resonance Detected] [Location: Ruins of Terrafang] [Trial Commencing…]
The ground answered. A low tremor rolled outward from the dais. Veins of jade-green light laced the stones, and a pressure built in the air—heavy, earthen, inevitable. Nia's free hand found Andy's sleeve on reflex. Aurelia took half a step forward, then the world snapped.
A dome of green radiance peeled up around Andy like a seed pod closing. Nia lunged and struck the barrier with her palm; ripples ran through it and shoved her back as if the mountain itself had exhaled. Aurelia swore, swung the bow from her shoulder, and loosed a flash shot—light met light, fizzled, died.
"Andy!" Nia's voice hit the dome and rang like a bell. "Andy, listen to me!"
Aurelia slid to her side without thinking, shoulder brushing shoulder. "We can't break it," she said through her teeth. "Then we outshout a mountain. He has to hear us."
Together, they planted their feet on the ruined stone, braced against the quake, and spoke his name into the glow.
The green deepened. The dome turned to fog and swallowed him whole.
—
He opened his eyes to a sky split by seams of dull red. The plain around him had buckled, plate on plate of rock thrust upward at savage angles. The wind smelled of iron, dust, and old ash. He knew at once it wasn't real—but the weight of it pressed against his ribs the way reality did.
A shape uncoiled from the horizon. It rose like a range shouldering higher, stone drawing itself into sinew, slate into scales. Eyes opened in the cliff face—two furnaces guttering to life. When the dragon spoke, the ground vibrated and pebbles hopped in place.
"Power is burden," said the voice of Terrafang. "All oaths are weight. Tell me, bearer, what weight will you keep?"
The plain shivered. Vision slid; the world rethreaded. Andy reached for balance, and the trial reached for his throat.
Nia lay in the grit five strides away, hair matted with dust, eyes glazed toward a sky that would never answer back. Aurelia knelt further on with an arrow blooming from her breast, hands stained black where she'd tried to break it off. Beyond them, the Everhart banners burned; stone fell through fire; the great hall collapsed like a lung giving up air. He staggered, throat working, breath suddenly a small and insufficient thing.
"No," he said, and the word came out thin.
A screen burned through the air in front of him.
[Trial of Burden — Select Your Oath]
Three paths unspooled from where he stood, etched by glowing glyphs in the broken earth.
Dragon's Path — Take the power alone. Carry all. Protect them by yourself. Bond's Path — Share the burden. Risk is shared. Stand and fall together. Selfish Path — Take the power. Forsake all else. Live, no matter who dies.
His fingers shook. He could hear a thought in his head that wasn't his voice but used it anyway: If I carry it all, then they don't have to. If I take everything on my back, they can't be crushed beneath it.
He stepped toward the first path and felt stone flex under his boot.
A whisper threaded the hot wind: "Andy…"
He turned. Nia's body on the ground wasn't moving—but the air above it shimmered, and a second Nia stood there like light poured into the shape of a girl. Her mouth trembled; her eyes did not. "You don't have to carry it alone," she said. The wind dropped for an instant, and her voice went in clean. "You promised me we would walk together."
Another presence warmed his shoulder. Aurelia's shadow leaned beside him, hands on hips, hair wild from a gale that didn't move her. "And if you break your back trying to be a one-man mountain," she added, dry and fierce, "what were we even here for?"
He closed his eyes. Behind his lids, the whole path of his life unreeled—the first time he'd seen Nia's hand shaking and still reach for his; Kayla's smile curling like a blade; Ashens' fire feathering the air; Andrew spitting hurt and envy until it turned to something worse; a thousand small choices, all of them weight. Fear scuttled in his chest with sharp feet.
What if I choose wrong and they die because I wanted the right to protect them?
The dragon waited. The dead sky listened. The path under his foot did not forgive indecision.
He breathed in to his bones and out to the ground. "You asked me about burden," he said, and the voice that came out was his and steadier than he felt. "I'll carry it. Not because I love weight for its own sake. Because I love them. But I won't carry it alone."
He lifted his head toward the furnace eyes. "My oath is bond. My strength is shared. If I fall, it will be with their hands on my shoulders, not because I shook them off."
The dragon's gaze narrowed, stone grinding over stone. "Then prove it, oath-bearer."
The plain convulsed. The three blades at his sides burst into light and peeled upward, tracing circles around him—crimson cinders, river-blue arcs, pale wind spirals. The ground directly before him cracked and split; from the seam rose a hilt of jagged emerald and basalt, the blade still fused to the earth that had borne it. The weight of it, even half-risen, pressed on his knees like a mountain asking a question.
He reached for it. Heat stung his palm; cold bit his bones; the rock refused. He closed his fingers anyway.
Outside the illusion, the green dome went black at its edges, then blazed brighter. The dais heaved; ribs of stone pushed up through the floor. Nia braced with both hands and threw her weight into the air, voice ringing to a pitch that made the barrier shimmer. "Andy! I am here. Do you hear me? I am here."
Aurelia's laugh was harsh and breathless and laced with fear she refused to feed. "You absolute idiot, don't make me climb in there and drag you out—stand up. Stand with us."
Their words cut fine channels into the glow, like rain carving paths into hard dirt. Inside, he heard them. The fear in his chest didn't vanish, but it had somewhere to go.
He lifted again. The earth let go.
The blade rose free in a sweep of green light knotted with threads of iron gray. It felt heavy—but not heavier than he could hold, not heavier than three people could shoulder together. When he turned it, the plain brightened; the stone dragon's eyes narrowed to slits, and then widened, a slow acceptance like dawn forced through a storm.
Attunement climbed in front of his eyes.
[Terrafang — Attunement 54%] [Attunement 72%] [Attunement 100%] [Oath Registered — Bond's Path]
The illusion folded along its seams. The red sky tore like cloth, and the breath of the real world rushed in.
—
The dome exploded outward in a flurry of leaf-green sparks that dissolved on the air. The quake steadied. Nia stumbled forward, caught herself on the lip of the broken dais, and then vaulted up as the last of the barrier fell. Aurelia was already moving, boots thudding, bow forgotten at her shoulder.
At the center of the ruin, Andy stood with his head bowed and his shoulders squared, breathing like a runner who had crossed a country. Around him floated three swords: Ember Edge, Tide-Singer, Stormbreaker Fang—each a comet with its own tail. In his hands, the fourth burned from coal to star: Terrafang, alive in a way the others had not been when he first touched them. The four lights leaned toward each other the way magnets do when they are meant to meet.
He looked up. Nia saw his eyes—shocked, clear, stubborn—and a grin broke across her face that was half cry. "You stubborn, beautiful fool," she said, and her voice shook. "You listened."
Aurelia stopped just within reach, breath fogging in the cool air. She tipped her chin, trying for sardonic and missing by a fraction. "About time you figured out you're not a wall, you're the door."
The four blades answered each other. Fire curled around water and did not hiss. Wind braided through flame and did not gutter it. Earth anchored the lot, a steady pulse that matched the pound in his chest. All at once, the orbits tightened, light arced, and the ruin vanished in a white flare that left afterimages like constellations behind closed eyes.
When color returned, there was only one sword.
It was longer than any of the four had been alone, but it moved like an extension of his arm. Its edge held a thin red glow, its fuller ran deep blue like a river at night, the crossguard bled a faint white wind, and the core of the blade went a dark green that wasn't a color so much as a promise. Sigils he did not know and somehow understood walked the metal from guard to tip.
A name rose up to meet it, old as oath and new as breath.
[Fourth Dragon Blade Acquired: Terrafang] [Fusion Complete — Draconic Oathblade] [Bond Progress: ★★★★★ → 80%]
Power rocked through him. Scales skated across his forearms and vanished, leaving the memory of armor. Heat licked at his shoulders and then settled into a deep ember glow. Behind him, for a heartbeat, a spread of spectral wings unfurled—feathers like flame, edges like talon—then folded into air, leaving only the smell of clean smoke and rain.
Nia reached him first. She didn't throw herself into him like she wanted to; she put her hands—steady, gentle—on his face, and searched his eyes for the ghost of wherever he had just been. There was fear in hers, and relief, and a depth that made his chest ache in a way weight never had. "Welcome back," she whispered.
He leaned into her palms for a second longer than a second should be. "I chose us," he said. "Not because I had to. Because I wanted to."
Aurelia hovered at his shoulder, gaze drinking the Oathblade in. She lifted a hand, then let it fall. "It suits you," she said softly. "Big, impossible, and inconveniently noble."
The ruin grew quiet in a way that was not absence but satisfaction. Pebbles stopped their small dances; dust settled; even the wind along the teeth of Mountain Scar seemed to approve.
Andy let the tip of the Oathblade lower until the blade's shadow lay across the cracked dais like a line drawn and signed. The weight in his hand was real and right. The weight in his chest had changed—not lighter, exactly, but distributed, like a load shared among strong backs.
He turned to the women who had put their voices into him when he couldn't find his own.
"I'll carry the oath," he said, and the promise put iron in the words. "Not alone."
Nia's fingers slid down to tangle with his. Aurelia, after a beat of visible pride wrestling with something softer, hooked two fingers around the knuckle of his other hand and squeezed once. The three of them stood like that while the mountain watched—three breaths finding a single rhythm, three shadows drawn together by a blade that had been four.
Far above, hidden in daylight, a handful of stars refused to be entirely invisible. For just a blink, Andy saw or thought he saw a line drawn between two of them, then a third, a pattern not yet named flickering at the edge of knowing. It was gone when he looked straight at it, but the sense remained: something was listening, and something had answered.
He exhaled, steady now, and slid the Draconic Oathblade home. The sheath accepted it as if it had always been meant for exactly that blade.
They started down from the dais together. Stones that had tried to trip them before seemed suddenly to prefer to be steps. Nia kept close enough that their shoulders brushed; Aurelia walked out ahead as if scouting, which gave her an excuse to glance back more often than scouting required.
At the edge of the ruin, where the green veins faded back into the common rock of the mountain, Andy paused and looked over his shoulder. The air was empty; the dragon was gone. But the impression of an enormous presence laying its head back down and closing its eyes a little easier than before lingered the way heat lingers in stone after sunset.
Thank you, he thought, and could not tell whether the answer he felt—like a low, contented rumble—came from the mountain or from the blade in his hand.
They began the descent to the waiting ship, the wind at their backs. Somewhere deep in the marrow of the world, something old had settled, and something new had opened its eyes.
The cabin was dim, lit only by a lantern swaying from the beam above and the faint glow bleeding from the Draconic Oathblade resting across Andy's knees. Its fused edge pulsed like a living thing, threads of crimson, blue, white, and green curling and fading as though the blade itself was still learning to breathe. Andy leaned back on the wooden bed, bare arms resting against his thighs, eyes lost in the dance of light.
Nia sat on his right, legs tucked beneath her, auburn hair loose around her shoulders. Her fingers traced idle circles over the fabric of his sleeve, as if to reassure herself he was really there. "When the dome swallowed you," she whispered, "I thought—no, I felt—my chest tighten until it hurt. Like I was already losing you." Her voice trembled, but her gaze was steady. "And then I saw the light. You chose us. You chose me."
On Andy's left, Aurelia perched elegantly, one knee drawn up, golden hair tumbling like a silken curtain. She gave a half-smile, more daring than soft, but her eyes betrayed the same unease. "I won't lie. I was ready to shoot until my bow snapped. But…" She tilted her head, lips curving. "When the barrier cracked at our voices, I thought—maybe he's not just our shield. Maybe he's our fool who listens."
Andy chuckled under his breath, the sound warm despite the weight in his chest. He turned the Oathblade, watching its light reflect on their faces. "I heard you both. Clearer than the dragon's roar. If not for your voices…" He exhaled. "I might have chosen the wrong path."
The room settled into silence for a heartbeat, broken only by the creak of the ship's timbers. Nia's hand slipped into his. Aurelia, not to be outdone, leaned in until her shoulder brushed his other side. "You'd better get used to hearing us," she said. "Neither of us plan to shut up anytime soon."
Andy smirked, shaking his head. "That's what I'm afraid of."
Nia's cheeks pinked as she squeezed his hand, then suddenly leaned closer, her breath warm against his ear. "Afraid? You didn't seem afraid the last time we were alone in my chamber." The implication hung heavy in the air.
Aurelia's laugh rang low, amused and daring. She crossed her arms beneath her chest, leaning back slightly but letting her eyes wander with deliberate boldness. "Tch. If I didn't know better, I'd say our noble mage likes to brag. Should I be jealous, or should I start planning my turn?" Her golden gaze locked with Andy's, challenging, playful, hungry.
Andy coughed, ears heating, and quickly set the Oathblade aside before one of them made him drop it. "You two are going to kill me before any dragon ever can."
Nia tilted her chin up proudly, eyes glinting. "Don't pretend you don't enjoy it."
Aurelia smirked, flicking her hair back. "Oh, he enjoys it. The question is… how much more will he enjoy when I decide to test his stamina?"
Andy groaned, dragging a hand down his face, caught between embarrassment and laughter. The women—different as fire and storm—leaned closer, their playful rivalry filling the small cabin with a heat that had nothing to do with the lantern. And though the air was heavy with jest, there was no mistaking the truth behind it: bonds were shifting, strengthening, weaving themselves tighter than before.
The Oathblade's glow pulsed once, faintly brighter, as if approving.
---