2025-08-09 08:32:41The Arms Hall had never felt so small. The rain-slicked courtyard, the wide training floor, even the council chamber all seemed to press inward, as if the building itself sensed the weight hanging over it.
Kael Ruan stood at the center of the war table, hands braced on its edge. The map of Moonveil lay before him, the inked streets and districts familiar yet suddenly foreign. In the corner, the crack from the Hall of Justice had been sketched in charcoal: a wound in the city’s heart.
Liara Fen leaned against the wall, arms folded, her eyes tracking Kael’s every move. Two Bureau blades — Joren and Matsu — waited by the door, their armor still dented from the Vault fight.
“We need to move now,” Kael said. “The Emperor gave us a full moon’s turn, but that wasn’t a gift. It was a warning.”
Liara stepped forward, the torchlight catching in her hair. “Then we hit first. Where?”
Kael tapped a spot on the map the eastern dockside. “This is where the Soulsteel shipments were funneled before the Vaults. If Thaven’s… shell… is gone, his lieutenants will scatter. Some will run. Some will try to claim what’s left.”
Joren frowned. “You think they’ll keep moving the Soulsteel after what happened in the Hall?”
“They have to,” Kael replied. “Whatever the Emperor is building, it’s not finished. Those ingots were a foundation, not the end.”
Liara’s gaze sharpened. “And if we take that supply line out—”
“We take away his teeth before he can bite,” Kael finished.
The plan was simple enough to state and dangerous enough to make Renji pale when he heard it. The old master sat at the far end of the table, his cane resting across his knees.
“You’re walking into a nest,” he said. “And this time, they’ll know you’re coming.”
Kael met his mentor’s gaze. “They’ve known since the day I swore the Oath. This is just the first time they’ll admit it.”
Renji’s sigh was slow, but there was no more argument. “Then take care where you step. You’re not just fighting men anymore.”
Night fell heavy over Moonveil. The streets of the Dockside Quarter glistened in lamplight, shadows stretching long between the leaning warehouses. Kael, Liara, and the two Bureau blades moved like ghosts, their boots silent on wet planks.
The warehouse Kael had marked loomed at the end of a narrow pier. Its doors stood open, spilling the glow of oil lamps onto the dock. Voices echoed inside — rough, hurried.
Kael signaled once. The four slipped in.
Crates were stacked high, marked with the Duskbane crest. Men worked in pairs to pry them open, checking the contents before loading them into smaller carts.
Kael’s eyes locked on the ingots. The pale veins within them pulsed faintly, as if something inside each one was listening.
He drew his sword. The Silent Oath burned hot against his chest.
[Oath Energy: +10]
The first man went down before he could shout. Joren and Matsu moved to cover the flanks, cutting down another two. Liara was already in the rafters, her daggers flashing in precise arcs.
But the real danger came when the last crate was cracked open.
The ingots shifted.
One by one, they slid free, clattering to the floor — and then began to rise. Pale mist leaked from their seams, coiling upward until it formed the vague shapes of men. Faces swam in the vapor, mouths open in silent screams.
“Not good,” Joren muttered.
The nearest shape lunged. Kael’s blade passed through it like water, but the Oath’s pulse in his chest told him the strike had landed all the same. The mist recoiled, twisting back toward the ingot it had come from.
“Break them!” Kael shouted.
They moved fast, striking the ingots with steel and hammer alike. Each one shattered released a burst of cold air that froze the sweat on Kael’s skin. The mist figures howled without sound before dissolving into nothing.
Liara dropped from the rafters beside him, her cloak streaked with frost. “That wasn’t just storage,” she said. “That was a gate.”
Kael didn’t ask for where he already knew the answer.
When the last ingot was destroyed, the silence felt heavier than the fight. The warehouse was littered with shards of Soulsteel, each piece already dull, lifeless.
Kael’s hand went to his chest as the System’s voice rang in his head.
[Oath Energy: +15]
[Secondary Quest Triggered: Trace the Soulsteel Source]
Liara glanced at him. “What is it?”
“Another thread,” Kael said. “If we pull it, we get closer to him.”
They were halfway back to the Arms Hall when the fog rolled in. It came without wind, thick and low, curling around their boots. The city lamps blurred to pale halos in the distance.
A voice slid through the mist, familiar and wrong.
“You think to starve me, Oathbearer?”
Kael stopped, hand on his hilt. “You’re wasting your breath.”
The Hollow Emperor’s laugh was like stones grinding together. “Every ingot you break, every shadow you scatter you feed me with the pieces you cannot see. The race has already begun.”
The mist thickened, shapes stirring in its depths. Kael took a step forward, the Oath blazing inside him. “Then I’ll run faster.”
“Run, then,” the Emperor whispered. “And see what I leave behind.”
The fog thinned, and the street was empty again.
Back in the Arms Hall, Renji listened in silence as Kael described the fight. When Kael finished, the old master tapped the map once. “If the ingots were a gate, then the Vaults were not the beginning. They were a crossing point.”
Liara’s brow furrowed. “From where?”
Renji’s gaze shifted to Kael. “That is the question you have to answer before the moon turns. Because if you don’t, the next gate won’t open in some hidden cellar.”
Kael understood. The next gate would open in the heart of the city.
And when it did, the Oath would demand more than he’d yet been willing to give.
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Broken Promises
The bell at the Arms Hall tolled at dawn, its deep chime echoing across Moonveil’s streets. Kael Ruan stood in the courtyard, cloak damp with mist, eyes fixed on the gates. Messengers had ridden through the night, their reports all the same: attacks in the outer districts, vanishing patrols, witnesses describing gold eyes glowing in the dark.The Hollow Emperor was no longer whispering from beneath the stones. He was moving through the city.Liara Fen joined him, her hair tied back, daggers at her belt. “The Dockside Quarter is burning. Families are fleeing toward the central square. If we don’t hold them there, the streets will choke on panic before nightfall.”Kael’s jaw tightened. “Then that’s where we go.”Inside the council chamber, Master Renji sat stiff-backed, his cane across his knees. The faint golden threads in his eyes had faded since the burning of the tether, but his voice was weaker than before.“You can’t be everywhere,” he said. “The Emperor knows that. He’ll strike w
Into the Undercity
The entrance to the undercity lay beneath the oldest part of Moonveil, hidden behind a rusted grate in an alley no one used. By daylight, it was nothing more than a scar in the stone wall. By night, it breathed cold air that smelled of damp earth and something faintly metallic, like blood long dried.Kael Ruan knelt to unbar the grate, the Core Fragment strapped to his chest under his cloak. The Oath burned faintly, as if it knew where they were going.Liara Fen stood watch at the alley’s mouth, her daggers already in hand. Joren and Matsu waited just behind Kael, their armor muffled in black wraps.“Once we’re inside,” Kael said quietly, “there’s no quick way out. Stay close. If the mist rises, keep your backs to the wall and your eyes open.”Liara glanced at him. “Eyes open I can manage. Breathing, maybe not.”The grate opened with a groan, and Kael dropped into the darkness first. His boots landed in shallow water, the chill biting through the leather. The tunnel ahead stretched in
Ground of Choosing
The valley was a scar between two ridges, the ground littered with pale stone and the skeletal remains of long-dead trees. A river once ran here, but now only a shallow channel cut through the rocks, its water dark and still.Kael Ruan stood at the center, the Core Fragment heavy in his palm. The Oath pulsed in time with his heartbeat, each throb a reminder that this was the place he had chosen.Joren and Matsu were already setting the outer perimeter, driving iron stakes into the ground where ropes strung with talismans would hang. Liara Fen crouched near a flat slab of stone, arranging clay jars in a precise pattern. Inside each jar was a mixture of ash, salt, and ground quartz — Renji’s design to slow the Emperor’s mist.Renji himself sat cross-legged on the slab, his cane resting across his knees. His eyes were half-closed, his breathing slow. “The ground remembers,” he said quietly. “Blood was spilled here long before you were born. It will be spilled again.”Kael glanced up at t
The Thread Beneath the Skin
The healer’s chamber smelled faintly of crushed herbs and oil, the air warm from the brazier burning in the corner. Liara sat on the low bench, her cloak discarded, her shoulder bare under the lamplight. The faint gold thread shimmered just beneath the skin, curling like a mark burned there from within.Kael stood at her side, the weight of the Core Fragment heavy in his pack on the floor. Joren and Matsu guarded the door, their shadows stretched long across the wall.Master Renji leaned over Liara, his lined face drawn tight in concentration. “It’s not a wound,” he said finally. “It’s a channel. He’s using it to listen… and to speak.”Liara’s jaw tightened. “Then cut it out.”Renji shook his head. “If it were that simple, you’d be bleeding already. This isn’t in the flesh alone. It’s in the oath you carry.”Kael’s eyes narrowed. “She’s not oath-bound to the Bureau.”“No,” Renji said, “but she’s bound herself to you, hasn’t she? That’s enough for him. The Oath doesn’t know the differe
The Threaded
The first guard moved with a speed that didn’t belong to him. His blade sang through the dim light, striking where Kael had been an instant earlier. The gold-threaded darkness in his eyes didn’t blink, didn’t flinch.Kael pivoted, letting the Oath guide his arm. His sword met the guard’s in a sharp ring, sparks scattering into the cold air. The second guard closed in from the left, the black mist coiling from his mouth with every exhale.Liara slid between two shelves, twin daggers flashing. Her first strike caught one guard across the arm — the flesh beneath split, but instead of blood, threads of gold spilled out, writhing like living things.“Not human anymore,” she said, voice tight.Kael drove his shoulder into the first guard, slamming him back into the shelf. Scrolls tumbled to the floor, parchment scattering across the cold stone. The guard’s head snapped forward, teeth bared, and the gold in his eyes flared.[Oath Energy: +5]Kael’s sword cut clean through the man’s chest. Th
Shadows in the Hall
Moonveil’s walls rose from the morning mist like the ribs of some ancient beast. Kael Ruan rode at the front of the small column, the Core Fragment’s weight in his pack a steady reminder of the fight in Ashen Hollow. Liara Fen kept pace at his side, her eyes scanning the gates ahead.The guards on duty did not call out greetings. They watched in silence as the group passed through, their faces pale, eyes shadowed. Kael’s grip on his reins tightened.“They look like they haven’t slept in days,” Joren murmured from behind.“Or like they’ve been dreaming someone else’s dreams,” Liara said.The Arms Hall courtyard was empty when they arrived, its flagstones slick from a night of rain. The training posts stood untouched, and even the sparring racks looked neglected. Inside, the council chamber was lit by only two braziers, their flames low and sullen.Master Renji sat alone at the far table, his cane across his lap. He didn’t look up when Kael entered.“You’re late,” Renji said. His voice
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