The night was silent—too silent. Even the stars seemed to have turned away from the world below.
Aren Voss stood among the ashes of his kingdom, the black wind howling through the ruins like a requiem. Flames licked the broken stones, dying embers painting the corpses of knights and kings in a dim, ghostly glow. The air reeked of iron and burnt dreams.
He didn't cry. He couldn't.Because the fire consuming his world was born from his own words.
"I promise... I'll protect them all."
Those words echoed in his mind like a curse.The moment he broke that vow — the moment he failed — reality itself had punished him. The Covenant Web had turned on him, and the world answered his broken promise with annihilation.
A glowing mark, crimson and alive, burned on his right hand — the Seal of the Oathbreaker. Every heartbeat felt like a chain being pulled tighter around his soul.
He fell to his knees beside the shattered crown of his father.The once-proud emblem of the Voss dynasty was now nothing more than molten gold.
The whispers began again.
"Oathbreaker…""Curse of the Vows…""You destroyed us…"
He spun around, clutching his head, but the voices weren't real. They came from within the Covenant Web — the spiritual network binding every life, every promise ever made. He could hear them now. Every scream, every dying oath. The sound of an entire kingdom betrayed by one man's failure.
Lightning tore across the sky, illuminating the towering shadow of a figure watching him from a distance — tall, cloaked, faceless.Its presence made the air tremble.
Aren whispered, "Who are you?"
The figure tilted its head.Then it spoke, with a voice that sounded like a thousand promises breaking at once.
"I am the Witness of your Word. You promised the impossible, and now the world is balanced."
Aren's heart froze. The Witness — a being that enforced the Covenants of creation itself. To see one meant death… or worse.
"I didn't mean to—"His voice cracked."I couldn't save them."
The Witness stepped closer. Reality distorted around it — the ground bending like rippling water. Every step it took dragged the world backward, as though time itself bowed before it.
"Meaning does not change truth. You broke your vow. Retribution is law."
The Witness raised a hand, and the crimson glow from Aren's curse flared violently. His veins burned, his vision fractured. Blood poured from his eyes.He screamed.
And then — a whisper cut through the agony. A voice. Feminine. Familiar.
"Aren… live. Please."
It was Elara — his sister, or what was left of her soul. Her voice drifted from the ashes, reaching him through the Covenant threads.He reached out, desperate to hold onto it.
"ELARA!"
The Witness paused. Its head tilted again, as if studying something unseen.
"Her vow binds to yours. Her life echoes through your promise."
A flicker of light — faint, fragile — emerged from the wreckage. The shape of a girl, translucent, smiling through her tears."Brother," she whispered, "you can still make it right… You can still rewrite your vow…"
Then she vanished.
The light imploded, leaving only silence. The Witness faded too, dissolving into dust carried by the cursed wind.
Aren fell forward, gasping for air.His hand still burned, but the light dimmed slightly. He was alive. Barely.
For the first time in hours, his thoughts cleared. He understood something.
The Covenant Web punished those who broke promises — but it also recorded them. If he could find a way to reach the core of that Web, he might be able to undo the Retribution.To bring back what he lost.
To rewrite reality itself.
A single vow — the right vow — could reshape the world.
Aren clenched his fist, blood dripping down his wrist. The Seal pulsed once, as if sensing his resolve.
"Then I'll make a new promise," he whispered into the night."I'll find the truth of the Web. I'll tear down every Witness, every false god that binds us. I'll break the chains of every vow."
He stood, staring at the distant horizon where the sun refused to rise.The eclipse still hung in the sky — black and burning.
A world built on promises had fallen.Now, a liar would rise to rebuild it.
And thus began the legend of the Oathbreaker.