Virell became a shrine.
Not of mourning.
Of justification.
Survivors carved their hatred into stone, each mark a promise made too late, a vow that would never be kept. The air itself tasted like regret.
The Covenant Devourer rose from it.
No longer a silhouette.
No longer hungry.
It was full.
Chains no longer floated around it.
They were embedded—fused into its form like ribs, each one etched with a broken oath, a failed promise, a desperate plea for certainty.
It spoke—and the ruins listened.
"Oathfall created me," it declared. "Now I will correct it."
Erynd felt the ascension like a nail driven through his skull.
He staggered, dropping to one knee miles away.
Lyra caught him. "It's becoming a god."
"No," Erynd whispered. "It's becoming a necessity."
That was worse.
Caelis drew his blade.
"I'll kill it."
Erynd looked up sharply. "You can't."
Caelis snarled. "You won't—so I will."
"That's exactly why you can't," Erynd said. "If you kill it, people will cling to the next certainty that rises."
Caelis hesitated.
The Devourer's voice rolled across the land.
"Come," it called. "Swear to me, and I will end choice's cruelty."
People answered.
Whole cities knelt.
The chains stretched outward—binding nations.
Freedom recoiled.
Above all, the Watcher descended.
For the first time, it manifested.
Not as light.
Not as a god.
But as a function—a vast geometric presence folding space into stillness.
INTERVENTION AUTHORIZED
Reality slowed.
The Devourer laughed.
"You taught them to doubt," it said. "Now you fear the result."
The Watcher did not reply.
It moved to erase.
Erynd screamed.
"Stop!"
The word had no authority.
Only urgency.
He stepped between them.
The Living Oath howled.
If the Watcher erased the Devourer, choice would collapse into silence again.
If the Devourer lived, freedom would rot into slavery.
This was the edge.
The threshold.
The place his oath had been made for.
Erynd spread his arms.
"I'll bear it," he said.
Both entities turned.
"I'll carry the consequence of choice," Erynd said. "Not as ruler. Not as god. As cost."
The Watcher processed.
The Devourer smiled.
Chains lunged.
They pierced Erynd.
Not binding him.
Anchoring.
Pain unlike anything tore through him as millions of broken oaths poured into his mind.
Promises made in love and fear and desperation.
He screamed.
Lyra screamed louder.
Caelis tried to reach him—and was thrown back.
Erynd's scar ignited, spreading across his body in a web of living fractures.
The Living Oath shattered—
And reformed.
[OATH EVOLUTION DETECTED]
New State: OATHFALL BEARER
The Devourer froze.
The Watcher halted.
Erynd stood—burning, broken, still choosing.
"You don't get to fix this," he said to both of them.
"I do."
The sky cracked.
Not in destruction.
In release.