All Chapters of The Blood Oath : Chapter 191
- Chapter 200
240 chapters
Chapter 192
Snow had swallowed the world.From the windows of the cabin, it looked like time had stopped. The trees were white silhouettes. The sky was a gray canvas. No birds. No animals. Just silence. The kind of silence that hummed louder than noise.Kabri sat on the edge of the narrow wooden porch, a steaming mug in his gloved hands, watching the flakes fall like forgotten ash. His coat was zipped to the chin, his boots half-buried in the powder. Somewhere behind him, a log cracked in the fireplace.They had been here three days.Three long, unbroken days.Amir hadn’t spoken since they arrived.The cabin itself was barely more than a single room—stone walls and pine beams, a fireplace, a kitchenette, and two cots split by a wooden trunk. Beneath the floorboards, Kabri had hidden food, emergency weapons, and solar batteries. It had no cameras, no signal, and no memories. That was why he’d chosen it.He had dreamed of this place once.Years ago, when the blood hadn’t yet soaked his hands, he im
Chapter 193
The thaw came unexpectedly.After ten days of howling wind and ghost-white skies, the clouds cracked open and let in a sliver of sun. It wasn’t warm, but it was golden. The kind of light that made snow glisten instead of blind. The kind that reminded you the world wasn’t always smoke and blood.Kabri stood at the edge of the frozen lake with a pair of binoculars, scanning the ridge. Amir was inside the cabin, practicing his handwriting by the fireplace, tracing the alphabet as if each letter was a wound he wanted to heal.Kabri lowered the binoculars and breathed deeply. The mountain air felt sharp, clean. His lungs, used to fire and dust, almost didn’t know what to do with it.But peace always had a limit.And the past had teeth.He took the snowmobile out that afternoon.The same one he’d hidden in the rear shed, covered with a tarp and buried beneath logs. It hummed like a beast reawakened, and as he pushed it through the shallow pass between peaks, Kabri’s mind returned to the man
Chapter 194
The ink bled slowly onto the page, soaking into the paper like guilt. Kabri didn’t write like a soldier. His penmanship was neat but tired, each letter carved with deliberation, as if confession needed discipline.The first letter began simply:Jamil, I don’t even know if I’m writing to the man who once laughed beside me, or the shadow who hunted me.He paused.Then continued.The cabin had settled into a strange rhythm. The days were white and silent, snow piling high around the windows. Amir read every morning. Kabri chopped wood. Neither asked where the other’s mind had gone. They both knew it had gone backward.Every evening, after the tea had cooled and the fire was low, Kabri took out the leather notebook and wrote in silence. He never sealed the pages, never folded them. He simply wrote and laid the paper flat on the desk, as though leaving breadcrumbs for a ghost.Amir asked, once, “What are you writing?”Kabri answered, “Things I should’ve said when I had the chance.”Amir n
Chapter 195
It started on the twelfth morning.No "good morning."No cough.Not even the sound of a book opening.Amir sat by the frosted window with a blanket wrapped tightly around his shoulders, his eyes fixed on the ridge beyond the pines. Kabri made breakfast—soft eggs, toasted bread, tea with sugar—but the boy didn’t touch a thing.“Amir,” Kabri said gently, placing the plate down. “Eat.”Amir didn’t nod.Didn’t shake his head.Didn’t blink.Just stared into the pale light as if something out there was whispering louder than any voice could reach him.---At first, Kabri thought it was grief.Then trauma.Then maybe even stubbornness—a child’s protest without the vocabulary to explain it.But as the days passed, and the silence deepened, it became something else.A fortress.A refusal.An exile.---The cabin became a library of unsaid things.Each room held the ghost of a conversation that never happened. Kabri found himself talking to fill the void, reading aloud from old war memoirs or p
Chapter 196
It began with the creak.A soft groan of old wood from the far corner of the cabin. Not wind. Not rats. A weight — a presence. Kabri paused, the mug of tea halfway to his lips. The fire hadn’t dimmed yet, and Amir was still asleep near the hearth, curled into himself with the music box tucked under his chin.But that sound — it was familiar. Not from now. From then.He stood, slowly, and turned toward the sound.The corner where the moonlight barely touched.And then he saw him.---Jamil.Eight years old.Kneeling on the floor, scribbling with a stick of charcoal on the wooden boards. His brows furrowed in concentration, tongue sticking out the way he always did when he was focused.The same tattered shirt from their training camp days.Bare feet.Dust on his cheeks.And eyes — not the haunted ones Kabri knew from adulthood, but wide, eager, filled with something resembling joy.Kabri didn’t move. He didn’t dare breathe.Because if he did — the boy might disappear.---“I’m drawing t
Chapter 197
The knock was soft.Not thunderous, not urgent—just a rhythm Kabri recognized like a half-remembered lullaby. Three taps. Pause. Two more.He stood from the kitchen table, his knife still buried in half-peeled apples, Amir asleep near the fire again. Outside, a dusting of snow covered the steps, and the trees whispered secrets to the wind. There shouldn’t be anyone here. Not this far into the mountains. Not after all this time.He reached for the pistol beneath the floorboard.His fingers hesitated.He already knew.The door creaked open before he could unlock it.And there he was.Jamil.Not a ghost.Not a hallucination.Not a memory.Flesh and blood.Wearing black.Snow on his shoulders.His hair longer. His beard sharper. But the eyes? The eyes were exactly the same—burning with that unreadable blend of hatred and love, of fire and frost.“Hello, brother.”Kabri didn’t raise the gun.He couldn’t.Jamil stepped inside like he owned the place. His boots left no prints on the wooden f
Chapter 198
The ashes of the card blew across the cabin floor like dead leaves. Kabri watched them dance briefly before falling still. The ouroboros had burned quickly—without smell, without a sound. It left no mark on his palm. But the symbol haunted him.An empire reborn.A throne offered.A warning issued.Join me or die.Kabri didn’t sleep that night.He sat near Amir, whose face twitched with dreams, forehead slick with sweat. The boy had begun speaking again—soft words, barely louder than wind, but words nonetheless. Mostly in sleep. Names. “Mama.” “Uncle.” Sometimes, a whisper: “Evelyn.”The name still tasted like smoke to Kabri.And somewhere outside, beyond the trees, Jamil was waiting.By morning, the snow had melted to slush.Kabri packed a bag—not for war, but for goodbye.He stuffed in canned food, the small photo of him and Amir in Lisbon, a knife, a few shells. He lifted the loose plank by the fireplace and stared at the second gun resting beneath it. It hadn’t been touched in mont
Chapter 199
The storm rolled in fast.Snow lashed against the cabin windows like clawed fingers from the sky. Amir sat curled under his blanket, drawing shapes in the fogged glass while Kabri tended the fire in silence. Outside, the mountains were draped in white sorrow. Inside, memory crackled louder than the flames.It had been ten days since Kabri rejected Jamil’s offer.Ten days of peace that felt like a held breath.Ten days of wondering if Evelyn’s voice would ever fade from his mind.But she returned that night—through a whisper, not from the grave, but from a box.A black recorder.Unmarked.Left in Kabri’s satchel.---He found it while rearranging supplies, buried beneath old clothes and a knife he hadn’t used since Morocco.The device was cheap. Scuffed. Obsolete.But familiar.It was hers.The one Evelyn used to document Fred’s threats. The one she once used to sing lullabies to Amir in the old safehouse. She’d carried it with her always. Even into fire.He sat by the firelight, stare
Chapter 200
The snow hadn’t melted.But the tracks were fresh.Kabri crouched by the treeline, fingertips brushing the imprints in the frozen earth—boot prints, spaced with military precision, twelve at least. They’d come in at dusk. No attempt to mask their trail. No hesitation.He’d known Jamil wasn’t done.He just hadn’t expected him to bring an army.Inside the cabin, Amir clutched his wooden toy knife, a remnant from quieter days. He sensed the tension in Kabri’s movements, the way his uncle’s eyes kept flickering to the window. He’d stopped humming. That was how Amir knew something was coming.“Kabri…” Amir said quietly. “They’re back, aren’t they?”Kabri didn’t answer. He didn’t need to.He pulled the table away from the floorboards, pried open the loose panel, and retrieved the long-forgotten shotgun and flare.“Get under the bed,” he said, voice low.Amir obeyed without question.The first gunshot shattered the silence at 8:42 PM.It wasn’t aimed at the cabin. It was a signal—one blast f
Chapter 201
The cold bit harder now.Kabri’s coat was soaked through from melted snow and smoke. His body ached from the shrapnel in his back and the long sprint through the forest. Amir’s breathing was shallow beside him, a boy wrapped in both fear and exhaustion.They had run for hours.The fire had turned night into an orange nightmare behind them. The forest had swallowed their footprints by morning.And now—shelter.A hunting shed.No larger than a prison cell, nestled between ancient oaks.Unmarked. Forgotten.And just strong enough to buy time.Kabri bolted the rusted door behind them and scanned the single room. A crate of old tools. A steel pipe. Dusty bottles of water. A cracked window too small to crawl through.No radio.No help.No escape.He looked down at his final weapon.A pistol.One clip.Seven rounds.His shotgun had been lost in the fire. His knife was bent from an earlier fight. His body was failing.But the pistol... the pistol was clean.Loaded.He looked at Amir.The boy