Seasons turned. Kaelen grew hard, living between the forests and the forgotten roads. He crossed paths with fugitives, escaped bondsmen, and wanderers too poor or too proud to bend the knee. Many were broken, spiritless. But when Kaelen spoke the words of his vow, something lit in their eyes.
Soon, others began repeating it. First as a whisper at campfires, then as a rallying cry before defiance. They called themselves the Outcast Brotherhood.
Where lords raised cruel taxes, the brotherhood struck at night, leaving behind food for the poor. Where slavers hunted children, arrows fell from the dark. Always, on the walls or in the dirt, the same words appeared: To live free, though the world call us cursed.
Chapter III – The Betrayer's Return
But Ashmoor did not forget Kaelen. The High Elder, who had once condemned him, heard of the oath's spread. He declared it heresy, a poison that would undo the old order.
One night, mercenaries swept through the borderlands, burning the cabins of the brotherhood. Kaelen fought like a wolf, but the enemy was too many. Captured and bound, he was dragged back to Ashmoor—the same archway where his exile had begun.
The people gathered again, but this time their faces were different. Some held torches, but many carried nothing—only hope, trembling in their eyes.
The High Elder raised his staff:
"This man is twice cursed. Once we cast him out, and still he defied us. Now he shall die, and with him the blasphemy of the Outcast's Oath."
They forced Kaelen to his knees. But before the blade could fall, a voice rang out from the crowd. Then another. And another. Dozens, then hundreds:
"By fire, by stone, by blood and by bone—
We swear the Outcast's Oath."
The mercenaries hesitated. The guards faltered. The oath was no longer Kaelen's alone—it was the people's. The High Elder tried to shout them down, but his voice drowned beneath the roar.
When Kaelen rose, the ropes slipped from his wrists as if they had never bound him.
Chapter IV – The Legacy
What happened after that night is told in a hundred different ways. Some say the Elder was overthrown and Ashmoor freed. Others claim Kaelen vanished into the wilds, leaving the people to shape their own fate.
But every tale agrees on one thing: the Outcast's Oath lived on.
It was whispered in chains and shouted on battlefields. It was carved into stones by nameless hands and sung by rebels before the gallows. It became not a curse, but a crown—not of gold, but of freedom.
And somewhere, in the borderlands where the brambles grow thick, travelers still find the mark of a dagger etched into old wood, with the words Brotherhood.
Where lords raised cruel taxes, the brotherhood struck at night, leaving behind food for the poor. Where slavers hunted children, arrows fell from the dark. Always, on the walls or in the dirt, the same words appeared: To live free, though the world call us cursed.