THE REVENANT'S OATH:
ARRIVAL IN ASH AND BONE
The chapel trembled.
Elara raised her glyph-ring, casting a protective ward that shimmered briefly in the moonlight before dimming to a cold violet hue. Riven stepped in front of her, claws extended, golden eyes fixed on the shrouded figure emerging from the ruins.
It hovered an inch off the ground, wrapped in decayed ceremonial bindings, face locked in a hollow scream. Its eyes glowed a faint blue, not with life—but memory. Its presence fouled the air, turning breath to ash in their lungs.
The remnant.
Drawn by the Lunarch Heart. Or worse—sent.
"Elara," Riven muttered, "don't let it touch you."
The remnant hissed, its bindings shifting like tendrils. As it moved, fragments of memory spilled into the air—whispers of names long erased, screams of cities lost to the Rift. It was a creature bound to grief, held together by magic older than language.
And then it spoke—but not with words.
In Riven's mind, a voice like frost scraping stone:
"He rises. The curse remembers. The oath is broken."
The runes on Riven's chest flared violently.
The remnant surged forward.
Riven reacted with instinct sharpened by pain. He leapt, claws slashing, striking the remnant's midsection—but his blades passed through half-corporeal wrappings. The creature twisted mid-air and hurled him across the chapel.
Elara fired a binding glyph—Ek'thuras arann—catching the remnant mid-lunge. It froze, limbs jerking against invisible chains. The spell would hold for seconds—maybe less.
"Elara—now!" Riven shouted.
But before she could move, something shifted in the air. The very shadows twisted. Cold flooded the room, and for a heartbeat, time halted.
A second presence stepped from the blackened archway.
He wore blackened armor gilded with silver veins, rusted by centuries but untouched by decay. His eyes burned like twin stars. Around him, reality frayed—cloth whispering against time itself. On his back, a broken sword radiated dormant fire.
The remnant screamed.
Riven froze. Even the Lunarch Heart dimmed its pulse.
Elara backed away, her ward rising once more. "Who... what are you?"
The figure stepped into the moonlight. Pale skin, white as death. His voice was neither soft nor loud—but eternal.
"I am Aeron Vale," he said. "Revenant of the Rift. Keeper of the Oath."
He extended a gauntlet toward the remnant.
"Return to your slumber, Orun the Hollow. Your war is over."
The remnant trembled. The scream stopped. And for the first time, it wept. It collapsed midair and dissolved into ash, fading like a dying breath.
The chapel fell silent.
Aeron lowered his hand. He turned to Riven, eyes scanning the sigil on his chest.
"You bear the mark," he said quietly.
Riven stood, chest still burning. "You knew that thing."
"I knew all of them," Aeron said. "They were once my brothers."
Elara stepped forward, stunned. "You said... keeper of the oath. What oath?"
Aeron removed his helmet. His hair was silver-white, bound in braids, his face youthful but gaunt, drawn tight by centuries. His eyes—no longer burning—were deep with pain.
"The Oath of the Rift," he said. "To stand between this world and the darkness beyond it."
He stepped closer to Riven. "And your heartbeat carries its rhythm."
Riven shook his head. "I'm no revenant. I bleed. I burn."
"But your blood remembers," Aeron said. "You carry what Aamon once did. The Lunarch Heart binds you both."
Elara looked between them. "You knew Aamon Bloodbane."
"I did more than know him," Aeron whispered. "I buried him"
Riven stiffened. "You're lying. Aamon's name still echoes in bloodlines—he's not a myth. He—he started all this."
Aeron's voice was quieter now, not weaker—measured. "That's true. But myths are often more than dead men. Aamon became a myth. He chose it."
Elara, breathless, whispered, "You were there."
Aeron nodded. "When the sky cracked and the Veil between realms bled open. When the Rift birthed the first horrors. And when Aamon crossed the line between salvation and damnation."
He stepped forward and touched the altar's edge. The Lunarch Heart pulsed slowly in its cradle. Beneath his fingers, light flickered—and a vision spilled out, projected like smoke and memory into the air.
A battlefield older than the one Riven had seen.
But grander.
Armies stretched beyond the horizon—lich-witches riding leviathans of bone, blood reapers commanding legions of silent vampires, werewolf berserkers howling beneath a shattered moon. All of them united.
And at their head stood two figures.
One wore flame-shadow armor: Aamon, unchanged by time. The other—Aeron Vale—cloaked in silver and black, the sword on his back still whole, glowing like a dying star.
Together, they faced a tear in reality—a rift in the sky, pouring forth creatures stitched from void and sin.
"We were called the Twelve Revenants," Aeron said. "Sworn by oath and bound by sacrifice. Each of us had touched death, and returned not fully human. Not fully anything. We were anchors."
Riven stared. "Anchors?"
"To keep reality tethered," Elara said. "That's why remnants exist—echoes of those who tried and failed."
Aeron turned to her, impressed. "Exactly. When the Rift opened, Aamon was the only one powerful enough to enter and return. He brought something back—a fragment of the moon that exists beyond ours. That was the Lunarch Heart."
He glanced at Riven's chest. "And it cursed you before you were born."
Riven backed away slightly. "So what are you saying? That I'm… a weapon?"
Aeron met his eyes. "No. You're a key."
Lightning cracked in the distance.
A gust of wind blew open the chapel doors.
The air shifted.
Elara turned sharply. "We're not alone."
A low growl answered from the forest. Then another. And another.
Dozens.
Aeron drew his broken sword, and the rust on the blade began to glow.
"The remnants weren't alone," he muttered. "They brought them."
CHAPEL SIEGE
The first beast lunged from the mist with a shriek—a lupine horror with too many limbs and a head split down the center. Its body was made of fur, bone, and smoke. As it struck, its form glitched—shifting between real and unreal in jerking spasms.
Riven met it in midair, claws raking across its ribs. The beast shrieked as silver fire erupted from the impact—Aeron's broken blade had followed through, cutting not the beast, but the soul within it.
"I thought remnants were memories," Riven growled.
"These are worse," Aeron said coldly. "These are failures."
Three more burst from the trees. Two charged the chapel. One leapt for Elara.
Elara turned her ring—and dropped the glyph.
A dome of pure kinetic force rippled outward, but the beast phased through it. Her eyes widened—too slow to stop it.
It tackled her.
She hit the ground with a scream, the creature's jaws snapping inches from her face. Black spittle burned through her warding coat.
It reared up.
And something in her snapped.
Her eyes turned crimson. Not a glow—a burn. Her mouth opened wider than a human's should, and twin fangs descended with a hiss like steam from a boiling cauldron.
Elara drove her claws upward, piercing the creature's skull with unnatural strength. It howled, twisted—
—and she drank.
For a moment, the beast's body spasmed as red light was pulled from its veins—corrupted blood, black and silver, flowing into Elara's mouth.
Then it collapsed, ash pouring from its chest.
Elara stood. Her skin was pale marble. Her lips bloodstained. Her breathing was steady—but not hers.
"Gods," Riven muttered, watching. "You said you only had latent traits."
"I lied," Elara said calmly. Her voice was deeper. "I've spent years not being what I am. That's done."
She turned toward the trees. "Let them come."
They did.
The horde poured in. Dozens of them—some quadrupeds, others walking like men but with shattered skulls and arms ending in voidlight. They screeched as they hit the chapel's outer defenses.
Aeron spoke a word in a dead language—"Na'thorak."
The ground split. Pale fire erupted in a circle around the chapel's base, forming a battleground of cursed soil.
"They've come to corrupt the Heart," Aeron said, his blade burning blue. "We hold them here—or the Rift wins."
Riven took his stance beside him. Elara walked to Riven's other side.
The three of them stood in a triangle, backs to the Heart, eyes forward.
And the first wave hit.
What followed was chaos.
Riven fought with raw fury—half-transformed, claws gleaming with blood and lightning. Every strike sent beasts flying, but their wounds closed. Only when his sigil flared did they die—and each death hurt him.
Aeron fought like a god from a forgotten war—his broken sword moving with impossible grace, leaving trails of shattered time in its wake. Where his blade struck, the creatures unraveled.
And Elara—
Elara became rage.
She vanished into clouds of smoke and reappeared mid-air, striking from above, draining beasts in flashes of red-gold lightning. Her strength was unnatural. Her speed—a blur. She was no witch now.
She was vampire.
And the field was hers.
But they were outnumbered.
And when the second wave came—twice as large—the sky itself began to crack.
A pulse erupted from the Heart, and Aeron stumbled.
"No," he muttered. "It's awakening too fast—"
The Lunarch Heart began to rise from the altar, lifted by unseen force, spinning, radiating light.
Riven turned. "What's happening?"
Elara shouted, "It's calling something!"
The sky above the chapel split.
And from it… stepped a shadow.
A figure.
Not fully here. Not fully now.
It wore no face. But it remembered one.
And it whispered in a voice like shattered stars:
"He remembers me."
Riven fell to his knees.
His mark burned like it was being branded.