Blade of the Silent Oath

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 difference between sworn words and the ones left unsaid.”

The Oath inside Kael pulsed in agreement, and he hated it for that.

Liara met his gaze without flinching. “Then we burn it out.”

Renji hesitated. “You’ll feel it all the way to your bones.”

“Good,” she said. “I’ll remember it next time he tries to touch me.”

The brazier’s coals glowed red as Renji set a thin iron blade across them. The room grew quieter, the kind of silence that pressed on the ears. Kael knelt beside Liara, his hand closing over hers.

“When it happens,” he said, “keep your eyes on me.”

Her lips curved in the faintest smile. “You planning to distract me?”

“Planning to keep you here,” he replied.

The iron hissed as Renji drew it from the coals. The scent of hot metal filled the room. Liara didn’t look away from Kael as the blade touched her skin.

The gold thread flared, bright as molten sun, and her back arched in pain. Her grip on Kael’s hand was fierce enough to grind the bones.

Somewhere beneath the heat and the scent of burning, Kael heard it — the Emperor’s voice, curling through the Oath inside him.

“She is mine, Oathbearer. When she screams, she screams for me.”

Kael’s own Oath roared back, a burn that rose from his chest into his arm, into the grip that held her hand.

[Oath Energy: +15]

The thread writhed once under the skin, then snapped, its light bleeding out into nothing.

Liara slumped forward, breath harsh. Kael steadied her, his hand against the back of her neck.

Renji set the blade aside. “It’s gone. But understand — this was only a mark. He still knows her name.”

Liara straightened slowly. “Then we make sure he regrets learning it.”

Night settled heavy over Moonveil. The four of them sat around the war table, the map spread between them. Joren traced the old cistern routes with a calloused finger. “If those threaded guards came from inside the Bureau, we can’t trust half the ranks.”

“And if the herald reached this deep,” Matsu added, “he’s not the only one.”

Kael studied the map, the places marked in Renji’s neat script: Vaults, Hollow, Docks, Bureau. “We take the fight outside the city walls. Force him to move in the open.”

Liara’s brow arched. “And how do you make a shadow step into the light?”

“You make him chase you,” Kael said.

Renji leaned forward, cane tapping the table. “That Core Fragment,  it’s not just a key. It’s a lure. If he wants it, he’ll come for it himself.”

Kael’s hand closed over the pack strap. The Fragment’s pulse was steady, faint but insistent, like a heart beating just beneath his palm.

Liara’s gaze met his. “You’re suggesting we dangle it where he can’t resist.”

Kael nodded once. “We choose the ground. We set the trap. And when he comes, we cut the thread at the root.”

Before dawn, they moved. The city was still, its streets empty under the pale wash of moonlight. They slipped out through the eastern gate, the guards there looking past them as if seeing something far away.

The road curved toward the river, its surface silvered in the fading moon. The air was cold, the mist low. Kael kept the Fragment close, feeling its faint hum grow stronger with each step east.

Halfway to the old river crossing, the Oath inside him flared. The mist ahead thickened, curling into shapes that did not move like wind.

“They’re here,” Kael said.

Figures emerged  six of them, gold-eyed and silent, their armor blackened as if burned. They spread across the road, cutting off the path forward.

Liara drew her daggers, Joren and Matsu their blades.

Kael stepped forward, the Core Fragment in one hand, his sword in the other. “You want it,” he called, voice carrying in the cold air, “then take it.”

The first guard lunged. Kael met him head-on, steel ringing. Liara’s daggers flashed beside him, cutting through another’s defenses.

The Oath fed every strike, each blow matched by the Emperor’s whisper in his mind. “Every wound you give them, you give me.”

Kael ignored it, cutting down another. The gold threads unraveled, scattering into the mist.

When the last guard fell, the mist shifted. A tall shape formed at the center, gold eyes bright against the dark.

The herald’s voice was low. “You carry what belongs to him.”

Kael’s grip tightened on the Fragment. “Not anymore.”

The herald’s gaze flicked to Liara, then back to Kael. “You’ll bring it to him. Or she will.”

The mist collapsed inward, and the road was empty again. Only the faint scent of ash lingered.

Kael looked at Liara. “We keep moving.”

She sheathed her daggers, eyes steady. “Until we reach the ground we choose.”

The Oath burned against his chest, and he knew the race had just shortened again.