The boy ran.
Or tried to.
His legs barely moved. His lungs screamed. His ears rang with noise that didn't make sense.
Around him, it was chaos. Not the kind with shouting or orders—just people running. Stumbling. Falling.
One man turned to help another and was gone in seconds—something black tackled him from above, teeth sinking into his neck, claws shredding through skin and bone like wet paper. The sound was wet. Heavy. Final.
The thing didn't stop.
It ripped the man's skull out with a single motion and held it—slowly, reverently—like it hadn't eaten in days.
The boy froze.
The creature was black. Not just dark—black, like the sky when it forgot how to hold stars. Its figure barely showed in the moonlight, only visible through gaps between broken fires and rubble.
It had no mouth. No face.
Just two massive eyes—wide, glowing white. No iris. No pupil. Just blank, eternal stare.
They didn't blink.
But they moved.
Always moved.
The boy screamed.
He didn't know where his voice was going. If it reached anyone. If anyone was left.
Then a man grabbed him—rough, panicked—and yanked him forward.
"Go! Move!"
The boy stumbled in his arms, trying to look back.
"I want my mom!" he shouted. "My dad—! Please—!"
The man didn't answer.
He just ran.
Dragging the child as fast as he could, over broken concrete and half-buried bodies.
The boy looked back one last time.
And saw it.
The thing.
The monster.
Still standing where it had fed.
Still watching.
Its glowing eyes tilted.
It didn't chase.
It didn't need to.
It had already won.
Because what the boy didn't know—
What no one told him yet—
Was that the monster had once been his mother.
It had been three weeks since the war broke out.
Since the gods vanished.
Since the world found out they were real.
When the smoke cleared and the bodies were counted, people tried to make sense of what they saw—divine weapons splitting the sky, men walking through bullets, voices that made buildings collapse.
And then came the idea.
If gods were real—
If Oaths were real—
Why not make one?
Pacts with the divine.
Deals struck in desperation. Promises whispered in burned-out churches and shattered homes. People begged for strength. For safety. For revenge. Anything.
Some succeeded.
Most didn't.
They didn't understand the cost.
Oaths weren't just words. They were contracts—written in essence, sealed in soul.
If you broke it?
It broke you back.
Some turned into crawling things—skin falling off in sheets, thoughts melting until they couldn't form a full sentence.
Others lost their bodies completely. Still alive, still conscious, but controlled—puppets dancing on divine strings, their gods using them for entertainment. Sometimes in battles. Sometimes in crowds.
Sometimes just to watch.
Worst of all?
Some became Shades.
Monsters.
Not dead. Not alive.
Just… emptied. Their Oath hollowed them out. Left them moving, hunting, feeding—not out of hunger, but absence.
The thing that killed that man?
That wasn't a creature.
It was a mother.
She had made an Oath. Then broke it.
She turned into something that couldn't feel.
That couldn't stop.
She killed her husband first.
The boy didn't see it.
He was outside.
Playing with other kids.
It was nighttime. Quiet.
And then everything changed.
Now he was running.
The boy was dragged inside the village church, barely able to keep his feet under him. Doors slammed shut behind them, iron bars pulled across handles. Someone shoved a broken table against the entrance like it would stop a god.
Inside, it was chaos.
Screams echoed through the small hall. Adults yelled over each other, voices panicked, words slurring together in a blur of fear. No one knew what to do. No one had a plan. These were poor district folk—no training, no weapons, no working Oath Striders among them.
"What the hell was that?!"
"Was it magic?"
"Someone said it used to be Lina—"
"Shut up! Just shut up!"
The boy curled up near the altar, knees to his chest, breathing fast and shallow. His eyes burned. Everything smelled like sweat and smoke. His ears rang, not from noise, but from silence—his mother's silence, his father's absence, the unanswered questions crawling through his chest.
Where was she?
Where was he?
Where was his family?
He buried his head in his arms, trying to shut it all out—the screaming, the pounding on the doors, the images he couldn't forget.
No one here knew how to stop what was happening.
And it was only getting worse.
A man stepped up to the altar.
Tall, silent, face hidden beneath a dark robe. His presence cut through the noise like a blade. No one had seen him before, not clearly. Some thought he'd come in with them. Others weren't sure he was ever outside.
His hands were black.
Not like they were burnt. Not like they were gloved.
Just... black. As if whatever made up the rest of him stopped at the wrists and something else took over.
He placed both hands on the altar.
The crowd quieted instantly.
No one told them to.
They just stopped.
He spoke, and his voice was low. Calm. No force, no command.
"I know how to remove the creature."
Everyone froze.
He turned his head slightly, as if looking at each person through the hood.
"You will open the door. Let it in. Then give me your belief."
The silence broke.
Shouts rang out. People yelled over one another—accusing, cursing, calling him insane. A woman cried out that he was trying to get them killed. Another man tried to shove him away but didn't dare step closer.
The figure didn't move.
Didn't flinch.
He just waited.
And one by one, their anger died.
As if shouting was suddenly too loud in front of him.
When no voices remained, he spoke again.
"You are loud."
His hands gripped the altar slightly tighter.
"You are always loud."
He tilted his head up slightly.
"And you never listen. No matter how many times I return to this place."
The words weren't angry.
They were... tired.
Disappointed.
Every person in the church felt the weight of it—like they'd failed a test they hadn't known they were taking.
But the boy—curled by the altar, barely breathing—felt nothing.
Not fear. Not judgment.
The voice didn't press on him.
Didn't reach for him.
If anything, it avoided him.
Like the words weren't meant for him at all.
Like he was the only one in the room the man wasn't disappointed in.
The man didn't step around the altar.
He walked through it.
His robe parted the wood like mist. His legs phased through the solid frame, untouched, unbothered. When he emerged on the other side, the altar was whole. Untouched. As if he had never passed through at all.
He stopped in front of a man near the pews.
"Tell me," the figure said softly, "what did you do this morning?"
The man tried to answer.
He didn't get the chance.
"You woke up late," the figure said. "You cursed your wife. You looked at the mirror and hated your face. And you thought about how much better off the world would be if someone else—someone richer, stronger, younger—had your life instead."
The man's eyes widened.
The room froze.
"I know who you hate," the figure whispered. "Even if you lie about it."
He raised one hand—still black, still lightless, like someone had poured ink over stars.
And touched the man's forehead.
The man collapsed instantly.
No blood. No scream.
Just gone.
Unmoving.
The crowd screamed.
A woman cried out—"He's one of them! A Shade!"
People backed away, scrambling toward the walls, pressing into corners, clawing at closed windows.
The man didn't respond.
Didn't defend himself.
He just spoke again, tone even.
"You scream every time."
He turned slightly, eyes invisible beneath the hood.
"You always scream. You always call me monster. You always fight. And every time—"
He raised his other hand.
"—you lose."
Everyone fell.
All at once.
Not like they were struck.
Like their strings were cut.
Bodies dropped to the floor. Limbs slack. Mouths open. Silent.
Their eyes were gone.
Not gouged.
Not melted.
Just… never there. Smooth skin in place of sockets. No pain. No expression. No response.
The man exhaled, long and tired.
He reached up and pulled back his hood.
His hair was long. Dark. Same as his hands. It flowed without shine—matte black, like dust and ash woven into silk. There was no color in him. No depth.
Just darkness.
He turned back toward the altar.
The boy didn't move.
Didn't breathe.
He turned his head away, eyes shut tight.
And for the first time since the chaos began, he prayed.
Not to the gods.
But that this thing would forget he existed.
The figure walked back toward the altar.
Not in silence.
He was humming.
No—singing.
His voice drifted through the church, each syllable slow, soft, and hollow, like a lullaby sung at the bottom of a grave.
"Ring around the rosy,
Pocket full of posies,
Ashes… ashes…"
He stepped through the rows of bodies—still, breathless, eyeless.
"…we all fall down."
He stopped in front of the boy.
Closer now, the boy could see more.
The man had only one eye.
One massive, unblinking eye that took up nearly half his face—wide, empty, glowing dimly from within. His skin—if it could be called that—was black. Not shadow. Not burned.
Just missing.
There were no features. No mouth. No nose. No brows. No shape.
Just a blank shape carved by apathy.
As if God Himself had drawn the outline—then left.
And above that faceless head, antlers stretched outward in jagged arcs, bone-white, asymmetrical. No blood. No cracks. Just impossible.
The boy had no idea how they could've fit under the hood before.
Had they always been there?
Or did the figure change them just to be seen?
The creature knelt beside him.
The boy flinched, burying his face deeper into his arms, trying to disappear into the floor.
Then came the voice.
Not from its head. Not from its face.
From its torso.
The words didn't echo—they vibrated through the air like heat.
"A few times," the voice said softly, "I wasn't on time."
The boy didn't move.
"They opened the doors. They panicked. They needed someone to throw to the shade."
The air grew colder.
"They chose you."
The boy looked up—just a little. His breath hitched.
The figure tilted its head.
"You cried. You screamed. You asked your mother to stop."
The boy shook his head, fists clenched.
"She didn't."
The voice didn't change. Didn't rise. It just stayed there—calm, sharp, surgical.
"You died… badly."
It leaned in, closer.
"You've done it a few times now."
The boy's heart pounded against his ribs.
"And I still haven't gotten bored."
There was no smile. No mouth to curl.
But the boy could feel it.
Whatever this thing was—
It was enjoying this.
The figure raised its arm, placing its blackened hand on the boy's head.
Then it grabbed a fistful of hair and pulled—gently at first, then side to side, like testing weight. Not enough to hurt. Not enough to kill.
Just enough to remind the boy he was alive.
"Congratulations," the voice said, as if it were commenting on the weather. "You survived. Again."
The cloak slipped.
Just for a second.
The boy's heart stopped.
Everything went black—fully black.
The church vanished. The air, the altar, the floor—gone.
And then, eyes.
Eyes everywhere.
Dozens. Hundreds. Thousands.
They didn't blink.
Some stared with rage. Others with sorrow. A few just wept silently, endless tears trailing from hollow sockets. There were children. Elders. Shapes he didn't recognize and others that felt too familiar.
They were all watching him.
And then it was gone.
The room snapped back into place.
The figure stood again, letting go of the boy's hair as if none of it had happened.
"All of them," he said. "Dead."
The boy looked up, mouth open, shaking.
"In a few minutes, the remnants of your government will drop a bomb on this place. Their final gift to the faithless."
He stepped back from the altar.
"You can sit here. Wait. Die knowing you did nothing."
The boy pushed forward on his hands and knees. "Please! Help me—again! You have to—" His voice cracked. "I don't know if this is the first time, or if we've met before, or if I've asked you already but—please—"
The figure nodded, unsurprised.
Expected.
Inevitable.
"I will help you," it said. "You will live. But you will serve."
The boy didn't hesitate.
"Yes."
"You will be my witness when I am gone. My slave, in function—though I care not what word you use."
"Yes," he whispered again, louder this time. "Yes—please—"
He looked up at the figure, trying to prove himself.
"Tell me your name."
The figure didn't move.
Didn't answer.
Only turned slightly.
And then came the voice—flat, final, eternal.
"We'll see each other again soon."
A pause.
"Inane."
The figure disappeared.
No smoke. No sound.
Just gone.
And with him, the bodies vanished too. Every scream. Every limb. Every proof that anything had happened here.
Inane stood alone in the church.
Shivering. Breathing hard. Trying to think—really think—but his thoughts came in flashes, not full sentences.
He moved.
Step by step, until he stood in front of the altar again.
On the far side, almost hidden beneath the cloth, something glinted.
A blade.
Small. Jagged. Dark steel.
Not ceremonial. Not decorative.
It pulsed—just slightly—with a rhythm that didn't match anything human.
He reached out and picked it up. His hand burned instantly. He didn't let go.
A Cursed Weapon.
Tier 3. The kind of thing they whispered about in orphan camps and border towns. They called them "Tempted Edges"—the blades that offered power if you bled enough to ask.
Knives that showed you things.
Made you hear things.
Blades that needed to be fed.
Most cities banned them. Churches called them heresy. The old men who sold them said they came from gods no one prayed to anymore.
Inane didn't care.
It was sharp.
It was real.
It was his.
He ran.
The door creaked open, no resistance. His "mother" wasn't there anymore.
No bodies. No Shade.
Only the cold, broken road outside.
He stepped into it.
He had no food. No destination.
Only a promise.
He had sworn himself to a god with no face, no name, and no kindness.
And if that's what it took to survive?
So be it.