Chapter 10: Oath of Hearth
Wei climbed. The branches cradled him, bearing his weight as if they'd been expecting this, as if the tree had shaped itself to make this particular climb as easy as possible.
Higher and higher he went, past the empty clusters where the strength and wisdom fruits had hung, past the branches that had held the Hearth fruits. The farm spread out below him like a map, small and precious and impossibly fragile from this height.
"Still not there, the tree is growing too fast".
Weight hung holding a branch for a while, looked at the fruit then climbed again.
He could see everything. The wall walk where Feng kept watch, a solitary figure against the stars. The house, dark and quiet, his family sleeping inside—his mother's dreams full of recipes and worry, his father's mind still and deep as a lake, Hao dreaming about geese or food or both.
The barn, where the survivors slept, their presence warm and steady. The animal pens. The orchard. All of it held together by the tree's roots and the tree's will and something else—something that was not quite magic and not quite love but felt like both.
Something that had been growing here since long before the shimmer, since his grandfather planted the first twelve trees, since the original house stood where the tree stood now.
The bronze fruit hung on its solitary branch. It did not glow. It did not pulse. It simply waited, patient as stone, heavy with meaning.
Wei reached out, and the moment his fingers touched its skin, the tree spoke to him.
Not in words. In understanding. The way the seed had spoken, in a dream that was not a dream, in a dying world that had given him a chance to save one small piece of life. The way the earth speaks to roots. The way water speaks to stone.
This fruit will give you authority over all who swear the Oath of the Hearth. They will know you as their Guardian, and the land itself will witness their bond. They will not be able to raise their hands against you or against the farm, for the soil beneath their feet will not allow it. It is not mind-control. It is not slavery. It is trust made manifest—the promise of the hearth made unbreakable.
Those who choose to swear will do so freely, as they always have. The choice must be theirs, or the bond will not hold. But once sworn, they are sworn forever. And you will be their sovereign, their protector, their shield.
This is a burden. It is heavy. You may refuse it, and the tree will not judge you. The choice is yours, Guardian. Always yours.
Wei's hand hovered over the fruit. His mind was very still.
Power over other people. That was what the tree was offering. Not power over crops or animals or soil—power over human beings. The ability to command. The ability to compel. The ability to make sure that what had happened with the
Lins—the fires, the broken leg, the years of small cruelties that had festered into something murderous—could never happen within these walls. The ability to guarantee that no one who swore the oath could ever become a Lin.
His father's voice surfaced in his memory. Not from any specific conversation—from a hundred small moments accumulated over a lifetime. You don't force the soil to give more than it has. You don't force the animals to thrive. You work with them. People are the same. People are the same soil, just shaped differently.
But his father had also built the wall. His father had spent nearly everything they'd saved on stone and mortar, on iron gates and reinforced hinges. His father had stood at the gate with a scythe in his hands and told the Lins to leave, and when they wouldn't leave, he'd made them.
His father knew—had always known—that protection required boundaries, and boundaries required the willingness to enforce them.
Was this really so different? Wasn't this just building a different kind of wall? A wall inside people's hearts, maybe, but a wall nonetheless. A wall that kept the bad out and the good in.
He thought about the survivors in the barn. Liu Wei, who had offered everything he owned—a handful of crumpled yuan and a father's broken watch—in exchange for his son's life.
Cheng Wei, who had carried Bai Jun on his back for a mile while goblins threw rocks at his head, because that's what you did for the people you loved.
Mei, pregnant and terrified and still running, one hand on her belly, refusing to give up. Song Na, whose hands were steady even when the world was ending, because someone had to be.
Feng, who said almost nothing and watched everything, but who had turned to face the goblins at the gate rather than run. Bai Jun, who had been dying when the gate opened and who had chosen to live anyway, just to spite the darkness.
They had chosen to stay. They had sworn the oath. They trusted him, for reasons he still didn't fully understand. Maybe they saw something in him that he hadn't learned to see in himself yet.
This fruit would make sure that trust was never broken. Not by them, and not by anyone who came after.
He plucked it from the branch and ate it.
The taste was indescribable. Not sweet, not bitter, not any flavor that existed in the ordinary world. It was the taste of responsibility. Of duty. Of the weight of lives placed in his hands and the knowledge that he could not—would not—let them fall.
The warmth spread through him not as fire, but as a steady, heavy pressure, settling into his bones like the foundation stones of a house, like the roots of a tree that would stand for centuries.
Grandfather once told me that a man isn't measured by what he can do, but by what he chooses to do when no one is watching. Everyone's watching now. Everyone. And I choose this. I choose to carry this. For them.
```
┌──────────────────────────────┐
│ FRUIT OF SOVEREIGNTY CONSUMED │
├──────────────────────────────┤
│ The Guardian now holds absolute authority │
│ over all who swear the Oath of the Hearth. │
│ │
│ Effects: │
│ - Oath-bound individuals cannot knowingly │
│ harm the Guardian, family, or farm. │
│ - Guardian senses location and emotional │
│ state of all oath-bound. │
│ - In crisis, Guardian may issue a Command │
│ that oath-bound cannot ignore. │
│ │
│ This bond is for life. Cannot be broken │
│ by any force the Guardian does not permit. │
│ │
│ With great power comes great weight. │
│ Carry it wisely. │
└──────────────────────────────┘
```
"With great power comes great weight." Thanks, tree. Very helpful. Very reassuring. "Carry it wisely." Sure. I'll just add that to the list of things I'm carrying. Right between "keep my family alive" and "don't let the goblins eat anyone." The list is getting pretty long. You might need to give me another fruit just to carry the list.
They trust me. Hell if I know why. But they do. I guess I'd better be worth it. I guess I'd better spend the rest of my life being worth it.
He climbed down from the tree slowly, each branch familiar now, each handhold sure. When his feet touched the ground, Hei was waiting. The big dog pressed his head against Wei's hip and made a soft sound in his throat, something between a whine and a sigh.
"I know," Wei said. His voice was rough. "I know. It's a lot. It's so much. But I chose it. The tree asked me, and I said yes."
He sat down at the base of the tree, his back against the warm trunk, and Hei lay down beside him with his head on Wei's knee. Xiao Hei, still mostly asleep, crawled into the space between them and immediately began snoring again—a tiny, rhythmic sound like a very small engine running somewhere in the distance.
The sky was beginning to lighten in the east. The black was fading to grey, the stars winking out one by one. Dawn was coming, whether he was ready or not.
He did not sleep. He waited, and he thought, and he felt the weight of everything the tree had given him.
*****
His mother found him at sunrise.
He heard the door open, heard her footsteps stop on the threshold, heard the sharp little intake of breath that meant she'd seen him.
He was sitting under the tree, the empty branches above him, the dogs at his feet, the faint gold glow still clinging to his skin like morning dew that refused to evaporate.
She stood there for a long moment, one hand on the doorframe, her face doing something complicated that he couldn't quite read.
"Wei." Her voice was strange. Quiet. Uncertain. His mother was never uncertain. She was the most certain person he'd ever met.
She could look at a pot of congee and tell you exactly how many more minutes it needed, down to the second. She could look at Hao and tell you exactly what mischief he was planning, usually before he'd even thought of it himself. "What did you do, again ?"
He stood up slowly. His body felt different—lighter and heavier at the same time. The morning light seemed brighter than it should be, the colors sharper, the shadows deeper.
He could smell the congee she'd started cooking before she came outside: the rice, the ginger, the faint toasted scent from the bottom of the pot where she always let it catch just a little, the way Grandmother had taught her before Wei was born.
"The tree had special fruits," he said. "Thirty of them. I ate most of them. The ones that were for me, anyway."
Hao appeared behind her, rubbing his eyes with both fists. His hair was doing that thing where it stuck up in three different directions, like he'd been fighting the pillow and the pillow had won decisively. "You ate thirty—wait. You look weird."
"Thanks. Good morning to you too. You look like you lost a fight with a blanket."
"No, like, weird weird. You're glowing. There's actual gold light coming off your skin. Li! Li, come here! Tell him he's glowing!"
Li, who had slipped out behind him with her blue jacket wrapped tight around her shoulders against the morning chill, squinted at Wei with the critical eye of someone who had spent years evaluating animals for signs of illness.
Her gaze moved from his face to his hands to the bare branches above him. "You're glowing, like radiation," she confirmed. "Is it contagious?"
"No."
"Good. Because I don't want to glow. I have enough problems without being luminous. The chickens would never leave me alone. They already follow me everywhere. If I start glowing, they'll think I'm one of them."
Their father came last, stepping out of the house with his usual deliberate calm—the measured, unhurried walk of a man who had learned decades ago that rushing never made anything better and usually made things worse. He took one look at Wei—at the gold-tinged skin, the bare branches, the faint shimmer still clinging to the air—and his expression went very, very still. The expression of a man who was calculating. Assessing. Preparing.
"What the hell happened to him ?" he said.
Wei explained.
He told them about about gaining new abilities last night. He had strengthened his body—he was better than his previous self , which was insane but useful.
About getting new ways to utilise his newfound power.
If you have to give someone bad news, give it straight. If you have to give them terrible news, give it straighter. People can handle the truth. What they can't handle is finding out later that you lied.
When he finished, the silence was so complete he could hear Báixuě honking indignantly at the duck pond. Probably a frog had offended him. That goose found offense in everything. He was basically a feathered grudge with wings.
Hao was the first to speak. It was always Hao. "So you're telling me," he said slowly, working through it,
"We can get stronger by just consuming some fruits."
"They're not just fruits. They are made specifically for the oath-bound. There are spares and everything."
"Uh-huh. And the one that lets you control people?"
"It doesn't control people. It prevents them from hurting us. And lets me give commands in a crisis.
"And lets me feel their general emotional state and location." Wei paused.
"Which is honestly kind of invasive, now that I think about it," Wei felt a bit embarassed
"but I didn't get any manual for my input on the design specifications. I just got the ability"
Hao crossed his arms. "Okay. What am I feeling right now?"
"YOU HAVEN'T EVEN EATEN THE FRUIT."
"But I can't still tell, You're hungry. You're a little confused, but you're trying to hide it."
Hao stared at him. "Well, that's a bit accurate."
"Everyone knows when you're hungry, Hao,"
Li said, not unkindly. With a smirk, "You get that look. Like a sad puppy who's been denied a treat. Your whole face changes. Your eyes get bigger. It's actually kind of impressive."
"I do not have a sad puppy look."
"You absolutely do. Xiao Hei has the exact same look. You're basically twins separated at birth.
Look." She pointed at Xiao Hei, who had woken up and was now staring at Hao with an expression of pure, hopeful hunger, his tail wagging slowly. Food? Snack? Maybe just a small piece of something?
"See?" Li said. "Identical. It's uncanny. If I cover your face and only look at the puppy, I can't tell the difference."
Hao threw his hands up. "I'm being compared to a dog by my own sister. This is what my life has become."
"You've been compared to worse," Wei said.
"Name one time."
"Last week. Mother said you ate like a pig."
"That was a compliment. Pigs are efficient eaters."
Their father, who had been watching this exchange with the patience of a man who had raised three children and was therefore immune to chaos, cleared his throat.
"Some things never changed."
"That's a dangerous thing," he said. "The Sovereignty like ability". It's the most dangerous thing you have right now. More dangerous than strength. More dangerous than those skills. Power over other people—that's the kind of thing that changes a person. Not always for the better."
Wei met his eyes. "I know."
"Do you remember what your grandfather always says? About farmers and gardeners?"
"Gardeners want things to be beautiful. Farmers want things to survive." It was one of the first lessons Grandfather had taught him, from years ago, when Wei was still small enough to stand under the mulberry tree without ducking.
He'd asked why they grew vegetables instead of flowers, and Grandfather had given him that long, considering look and said, "Flowers are for beauty. Food is for life. A farmer knows which one matters most."
His father nodded slowly. "But there's more to it than that. Farmers also know that power over the land is borrowed. You can't force the soil to give more than it has. You can't force the animals to thrive. You can't make the rain fall or the sun shine. You work with what you're given.
You work with the land, not against it." He paused, letting the words settle. "People are the same. You hold their loyalty because they choose to give it. Not because you can compel it. The moment you start compelling, you stop being a farmer. You become something else. Something that takes instead of tends."
"I know," Wei said again. "That's why I'm going to tell them. All of them. Exactly what the fruit does. Exactly what the oath means. Before they decide whether to take it or not. They deserve that much." He met his father's eyes.
"If they don't want to swear, they can still stay. They can still work, still eat, still be part of this place. No fruit. No oath. No consequences. No one will make them leave. No one will treat them differently. I promise."
His father held his gaze for a long moment, searching for something. Then, slowly, he nodded. "Good," he said. "That's the right way. That's the only way."
His mother stepped forward. She'd been standing with her arms crossed, her face pale, her eyes moving over Wei's face like she was looking for something she recognized—her son, maybe, underneath all the gold and the power and the weight.
Now she reached up and touched his cheek with her rough, warm palm. Her hand was steady. It had always been steady. She'd pressed that same hand against his forehead when he was sick, against his shoulder when he was scared, against his back when he was leaving for the city two years ago, headed for a future that had turned out to be nothing like what he'd imagined.
"You look the same," she said quietly. "But you feel different. There's something behind your eyes now that wasn't there before."
"I feel different," Wei admitted. "Stronger. But also heavier. Like I'm carrying more than I used to. Like there's a weight on my shoulders that wasn't there yesterday."
"That's what happens when people depend on you." She held his gaze for a moment longer. Then she dropped her hand and said, in a voice that was almost steady, "I'll put on more congee. We'll need it. Someone wake the survivors. If we're doing this, we're doing it properly—full bellies and clear heads."
She walked back toward the house. Her shoulders were straight. Her steps were firm. But Wei could feel her through the new bond—the steadiest candle of all, but it flickered. Just a little. Just enough to notice.
Afraid. Not of me. For me.
That was worse, somehow. That was much, much worse.
****
The survivors came from the barn, and they were afraid.
Wei could feel it —a cold spike of fear that cut through the morning warmth like a knife through skin. They stood in a tight cluster near the barn door, their eyes fixed on Wei.
On the golden light still pulsing faintly in its trunk.
On the empty branches where the fruits had hung. And on Wei himself, standing beneath the tree with gold still clinging to his skin like a second layer of light he couldn't quite shake.
Liu Wei was the only one who didn't look terrified. He'd been through this before, three days ago, when Wei had first offered him the oath.
He held Jun on his hip, the boy clutching his wooden duck—the one Li had carved for him in her spare moments—and his face was calm.
But the others—Cheng Wei, Mei, Song Na, Feng, Bai Jun—they looked at Wei like he was something that might eat them. Something that might offer them gifts that were really traps.
Wei explained them about supernatural activities, and his abilities to defend the farm.
"So the only thing remains is your choice, I have something that can make you stronger in many ways from before, but you need to take an oath, to obey me for life."
"You want to give some fruits to us." It wasn't a question.
"Yes."
"Why?" Song Na's voice was sharper than usual, her nurse's composure cracking at the edges.
"What do they actually do? Are they even safe? Everything outside these walls is poison—you have to know that. Every plant that survived the shimmer, every fruit, every vegetable—it's all toxic."
"People have died eating things that looked perfectly normal. Old Man Chen from the next village found a peach tree that was still green. The fruit looked beautiful. He took one bite. Just one. And he was dead before he hit the ground. His heart stopped like someone flipped a switch."
"I've seen worse," Feng said quietly. His eyes never left Wei's face, watchful and unblinking. "Whole families. They found food in a cellar that looked perfectly preserved. Thought they'd survived the worst of it. Sat down to eat together for the first time in days." He paused.
"None of them made it through the night. The children went first."
Mei pressed her hand against her belly, her face going pale.
"Please," she whispered with tears and panic.
"Please just let us go. We won't harm anyone here."
" We'll leave right now. We'll go back to the ruins if we have to. Just... don't make us eat anything. Don't make us eat something that'll kill us. Please."
Wei felt his heart crack a little at that. A clean, sharp fracture right down the middle.
They think I'm going to poison them. They think I'm like the Lins, offering something that looks like help but is really just another way to hurt them.
They're standing here thinking they're about to die, and they're still being polite about it. "Please just let us go." Like they're asking for a favor.
"I'm not going to make you eat anything," he said, keeping his voice as steady and calm as he could manage.
"I'm not going to hurt you. That's not why I brought you out here. I brought you here to give you a choice. Not a sentence. Not a trap. A choice."
He paused, letting the words sink in.
"But before you choose, I need to show you something. All of you. It'll make more sense if you see it first. Words can only do so much."
He turned and began walking toward the vegetable gardens. Liu Wei followed immediately, Jun still balanced on his hip, his wooden duck clutched in one small fist.
"Come on," Liu Wei said over his shoulder to the others. "I've seen it. You need to see it too. Words really don't work for this. You have to look at it with your own eyes or you'll never believe it."
One by one, hesitantly, they followed.
******
Wei led them through the farm like a tour guide through a museum of impossible things.
Past the chicken coop first, where the Sootfeather and Emberglow Hens were already scratching in the dirt, their feathers catching the morning light.
The Emberglows glowed like dying coals, deep red with orange edges, their eyes bright and intelligent. One of them—the speckled hen who had been the first to evolve—clucked softly and approached the fence, tilting her head to examine the strangers with obvious curiosity.
"They're not monsters," Cheng Wei said, stopping in his tracks. "They're... they look like chickens. Big chickens. They look a bit suspicious and wild. But chickens."
"They are chickens," Wei said. "Special chickens. They survived the shimmer under my barrier. They're healthier and stronger than they were before the shimmer."
"But they're still themselves. That speckled one has been on this farm for six years. She used to follow my sister around like a puppy."
They walked past the pig pen. Old Wang lay under his shade tree, massive and tusked and utterly peaceful.
His eyes tracked the group with calm, intelligent interest, but he didn't get up. He was too dignified for that. The other Ironhide Boars grunted softly in their sleep, their dark, metallic hides gleaming.
"That's a wild boar," Song Na said, her voice climbing slightly.
"That's Old Wang. He's been on this farm since he was a piglet. My grandfather named him after his oldest friend because they both had the same stubborn face." Wei paused.
"He likes having his forehead scratched. He won't hurt you unless you threaten the farm. Then he'll gore you. But only then."
Past the cow shed, where the Smolderhorn Bull stood in the morning sun, smoke curling from his nostrils, his amber eyes following them with patient assessment. The Greyhide Cows chewed their cud behind him, calm and massive and utterly unbothered.
"They're alive," Mei whispered. "All of them. They're not monsters. They're not... changed into something horrible. They're just... more."
"They're blessed," Wei said. "Stronger. Healthier. Smarter. But they're still themselves. Still the same animals they were before. The same personalities. The same habits. The bull used to follow my father around the fields. Still does."
He kept walking, and they kept following. Through the vegetable gardens, where cabbages the size of melons grew in neat, orderly rows, their leaves a deep, vivid green. Where radishes as thick as a man's arm pushed up through the dark soil.
Where tomatoes hung in clusters like red jewels, and beans climbed trellises in spirals of green, and the herbs in Grandmother's corner garden smelled so strongly of mint and ginger and ginseng that the very air felt medicinal, like you could cure a cold just by breathing deeply.
"How?" Song Na asked. Her voice was barely a whisper now, all the sharpness drained out of it.
"How is any of this possible? The shimmer destroyed everything. The soil was poisoned for miles in every direction.
The water was tainted. Nothing should grow like this anymore. Nothing does grow like this anywhere else. We've seen the dead fields.
The rotting crops. The fruit that kills anyone who touches it. How is this farm different? What makes this place immune?"
Wei stopped walking and turned to face them. The morning sun was warm on his back. The gold light still clung faintly to his skin. He could feel the tree pulsing behind him, steady as a heartbeat.
"Because of me," he said.
They stared at him. All of them. Even Liu Wei, who already knew some of it, stared.
"I have an ability. Something that awakened after the shimmer passed. I don't know why I got it when no one else did. Maybe it was luck. Maybe it was fate."
"Maybe the universe just rolled dice and my number came up. I've stopped trying to figure out why. I just know what it does."
He gestured at the fields around them, at the thriving plants and the healthy animals and the wall that had held against goblin hordes.
"Everything within these walls—the plants, the animals, the land itself—it all thrives because of me. I can make things grow. I can heal wounds and cure sickness. I can sense threats from miles away, before they ever reach our gate."
"I can strengthen the earth and purify the water. All of this—the food you've been eating, the clean water you've been drinking, the safety you've been feeling—it all comes from the same source."
He paused, letting the words sink in, letting them look at the evidence all around them.
"The fruits on that tree? They're not poisoned. They're the exact opposite. They're concentrated power—the same power that's been keeping this farm alive since the shimmer."
Everyone looked and Wei awkwardly.
Wei said, coughing out the embarrassment.
"The fruits I want to give you will make you faster, tougher, healthier, smarter. But they only work if you swear an oath to this land. To me."
Silence. Long and deep and full of things unsaid. The kind of silence that happened when people were completely rethinking everything they thought they knew.
Feng broke it. His voice was flat, controlled. "What kind of oath? What exactly does it do to us?"
"An oath that binds you to the farm. If you swear it, you become part of this place. The land recognizes you. Protects you. You'll be stronger, healthier, harder to kill. But the oath comes with conditions."
"Wei met his eyes squarely. "You won't be able to harm anyone here—not me, not my family, not each other. The bond won't allow it. And in a crisis, if we're about to be overrun and I need everyone to act together, I can give you a command that you won't be able to ignore."
"You'll still be you."
"You'll still think your own thoughts and make your own choices. But in that one specific situation—when survival is on the line—you'll do what I say."
"Mind-control," Feng said flatly.
"No. It's not mind-control. You keep your mind. Your thoughts. Your personality. Your free will. All of that stays exactly as it is. The only thing that changes is that you can't harm the farm or the people on it, and in an emergency, you follow my orders. That's it. You're still you. You'll always be you."
"And it's for life."
"It's for life. The oath doesn't break. It doesn't fade. You swear once, and you're oath-bound forever. There's no undo button. No escape clause. That's why I'm telling you all of this now, before you decide. You need to know exactly what you're getting into."
Feng stared at him for a long, long moment. His face was completely unreadable—if there was a card game somewhere in the post-apocalyptic world, Feng would clean everyone out. Then, very slowly, the corner of his mouth twitched. Just slightly. Just enough.
"That's either the most honest thing anyone's ever said to me," he said, "or the most terrifying. I haven't decided which yet."
"Probably both," Hao said cheerfully from somewhere behind the group. He'd followed them out at some point, apparently unable to resist the drama.
"Shut up, Hao," Wei said without turning around.
"Just saying. Honesty and terror often go hand in hand. Like me and that goose."
"This isn't about the goose."
"Everything is about the goose. The goose is a metaphor for life."
Bai Jun limped forward, his cane tapping against the dirt. He'd left the barn without it this morning, but Song Na had forced him to take it. "You'll undo three days of healing if you fall," she'd said. He'd grumbled but taken the cane. Now he planted it in the soil and straightened his back as much as his healing wound would allow.
"He's telling the truth," Bai Jun said to the others. "At least about the healing. I don't know about the rest of it, but I know about that." He turned so they could see his back, lifting his shirt just enough to reveal the wound. The skin was pink and new, smooth where there should have been ragged stitches and red inflammation.
"I had a goblin knife in my back three days ago. Almost died. Song Na stitched me up, but it should have taken weeks to heal. This morning, he touched me, and in about ten seconds it closed. I felt it happen. I'm not saying I understand it. I'm not saying I'm not scared. But I'm saying I believe him. Whatever he can do, it's real."
"He healed you," Song Na said. It wasn't a question. She'd been the one to stitch that wound. She knew exactly how deep it had been, exactly how much damage the goblin knife had done.
"He healed me," Bai Jun confirmed. "Right in front of you. You saw it."
Song Na was quiet for a moment. Then she said, "I did see it. I still don't understand it."
Mei looked at Wei, her hand still pressed protectively against her belly. Her eyes were red-rimmed, but her voice, when she spoke, was steadier than it had been. "And the oath. It won't hurt the baby? It won't... change him? Make him something he's not?"
"No," Wei said. "The tree's gifts don't harm. They never have. The baby will be fine. The oath won't make him oath-bound unless he chooses to swear when he's old enough to understand. It'll be his choice, just like it's yours now."
She stared at him for a long moment, searching his face for something. Deception, maybe. Cruelty. The kind of casual malice the Lins had shown when they'd thrown bread at the survivors' feet and told them to be grateful. Whatever she was looking for, she seemed not to find it.
"I want to believe you," she said quietly. "This place... it looks like a dream. After everything we've seen—the dead fields, the poisoned food, the monsters, the people who turned on each other when there wasn't enough to go around—this place looks like a dream I don't want to wake up from.
Living plants. Healthy animals. Clean water. Children laughing. I haven't heard a child laugh since the shimmer. I'd forgotten what it sounded like."
"It's not a dream," Wei said. "It's real. You're standing in it right now, looking at it with your own eyes. And you can be part of it. Permanently. But only if you want to be. Only if you choose it freely."
Liu Wei stepped forward, Jun still balanced on his hip. The boy had stopped clutching his wooden duck and was now watching the Emberglow Hens with intense fascination, his small finger pointing.
"I already swore the oath, the only thing is left to eat the fruit" Liu Wei told the others.
"Three days ago, when Wei first offered it to me. I made the choice then, and I'd make it again." He looked at each of them in turn—Cheng Wei, Mei, Song Na, Feng, Bai Jun.
"I'm still me. Jun is still Jun. But I'm safer and healthier here. And I know—I don't just think, I know—that this place is home now. Really home."
"The kind of home you don't leave." He met Cheng Wei's eyes. "I trust him. With my life. With my son's life. I wouldn't say that if I didn't mean it."
Cheng Wei looked at his wife. Mei looked back at him. Something passed between them—a whole conversation in a single glance, the kind of communication that only happened between people who had been together through the worst and come out the other side still holding hands.
"We've been running since the shimmer," Cheng Wei said quietly. "Running and hiding and starving and watching people die."
"The Zhangs opened their gate when they didn't have to. They gave us food and shelter and medicine. Nobody else did that. Nobody else even thought about it." He squeezed Mei's hand. "I think we finally found where we're supposed to be."
Mei nodded, her eyes glistening. "I think so too. I think this is it."
They walked forward together, still holding hands, and stopped in front of Wei.
"We'll swear," Cheng Wei said. "Both of us. Whatever it means, whatever it costs, whatever it changes. We're done running. We want to stay."
****
The oath ceremony took place under the Tree of Life, the morning sun warming the courtyard, the birds singing in the orchard, and Báixuě honking at irregular intervals from somewhere near the duck pond. The goose, Wei reflected, was probably furious that he wasn't the center of attention.
Feng went first, after a long silence that involved staring at Wei, staring at the tree, staring at the fruit, and staring at his own hands as if they might provide answers. Hao, standing nearby, started humming after about thirty seconds, a tuneless, meandering sound that was clearly designed to be annoying. It worked.
"Fine," Feng said finally, cutting Hao off mid-hum. "I'm in. I'll do it."
"Just like that?" Wei asked.
"Not just like that. I've been thinking about it since you first mentioned the oath. I've been thinking about it all night, actually, while I was standing on the wall." He paused. "I've never trusted anyone. Not really.
The people I trusted before the shimmer are all dead. The people I tried to trust after tried to kill me. I learned a long time ago that trust was just another word for vulnerability, and vulnerability got you killed."
He looked at the tree, at the lantern-shaped fruit in Wei's hand.
"But you haven't given me a reason not to trust you. Not once. You could've left us outside the gate. You could've lied about what the fruit does. You could've just fed it to us without telling us anything and we would've been bound without ever knowing what we were getting into."
He met Wei's eyes. "You didn't do any of that. You told us the truth, the whole truth, and then you gave us a choice. That's either really honest or really stupid, and I've decided it's honest."
He placed his hand on the trunk of the tree.
"I've never belonged anywhere," he said quietly. "Not really. Maybe it's time to try."
The tree pulsed gold, and Wei felt the oath take hold—a sharp, clear thread weaving into the web, distinct and strong. Feng took the fruit, examined it for a moment, then ate it in three quick, decisive bites. The gold light rippled across his skin, sinking into him like water into dry earth.
"Huh," he said. "Feels like I just had a really good nap. And also like someone punched me in the chest, but in a good way. Like the punch knocked something loose that needed to be knocked loose."
```
┌─────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ FRUIT OF THE HEARTH │
│ Tier 2 | Legendary │
├─────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ Effect: Permanently increases all basic │
│ stats by +0.5 when consumed by an │
│ oath-bound individual. │
│ │
│ Requirement: Active Oath of the Hearth │
│ │
│ The hearth burns brighter when fed. │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────┘
```
End of chapter 10.