Erynd Vale learned early that silence revealed more than speech.
The slums of Greyreach never slept—not truly. Wood groaned. Chains rattled. Somewhere, someone was always praying loudly enough for the gods to hear. Erynd sat in the shadow of a collapsed archive tower, counting those prayers as patterns rather than pleas.
Three to the Radiant Conclave.
Two to the War Aspect.
One whispered without a name.
That last one interested him.
He closed the cracked ledger in his hands. The book was illegal—anything written before the gods revised history usually was—but the ink still held. Words always did. Truth clung harder than faith.
"Move, rat."
Erynd looked up.
A temple enforcer stood over him, white cloak unblemished by the filth of Greyreach. The man's hand rested casually on a chain-blade etched with glowing runes—divine language, simplified for human use.
"I'm moving," Erynd said, already standing.
He made sure his voice stayed flat. No challenge. No submission. Just acknowledgment.
The enforcer frowned. People usually looked afraid.
"Curfew's past. Oathbound inspection tonight." The man's eyes flicked to the ledger. "What's that?"
"A list of names," Erynd replied.
Not a lie. Not the truth.
The enforcer hesitated, then snorted. "Pray you're bound. Unsworn get taken."
Erynd nodded and walked away before the man could ask the wrong question.
He wasn't oathbound.
That was the problem.
The inspection square burned with divine light.
Pillars of radiance pierced the night sky, forming a lattice that hummed like a living thing. Citizens stood in lines, hands raised, soul-seals exposed. Each seal glowed differently—gold for devotion, blue for service, red for blood contracts.
Erynd stood at the edge, invisible by design.
The gods claimed everyone was born with a soul-seal.
Erynd had discovered, at age twelve, that this was statistically unlikely.
More accurately: false.
A scream echoed as someone's seal shattered. Unsworn.
Taken.
The system was elegant. Brutal. Efficient.
Which meant it had weaknesses.
Erynd watched the flow of light, the timing between inspections, the way the divine lattice recalibrated every seventeen seconds. The gods optimized for obedience, not anomaly detection.
That was their mistake.
He stepped forward—precisely when the lattice reset.
Pain stabbed behind his eyes.
[WARNING: Unregistered Soul Detected]
The voice was not sound. It was certainty.
Erynd didn't panic.
He'd predicted this branch.
Seventy-three percent chance of intervention. Twenty-seven percent chance of erasure.
Acceptable odds.
"I wish to bind an oath," he said aloud.
The square fell silent.
The priests turned.
"You have no god," one of them said, voice echoing unnaturally.
Correct.
Erynd looked at the lattice, at the glowing seals, at the way reality bent politely around divine authority.
"I wish," he repeated, "to bind an oath to what remains."
The ground cracked.
Light flickered.
Somewhere deep beneath Greyreach, something noticed.
The world tilted.
Erynd was no longer in the square.
He stood in a place without direction—a void layered with broken symbols and unfinished words. An altar floated before him, shattered, its name scraped from existence so thoroughly that even absence felt wounded.
And yet—
Something was still there.
Not alive.
Not dead.
Waiting.
[Unfinished Oath Detected]
Anchor Candidate: Compatible
Erynd's breath caught.
Not fear.
Recognition.
"So you're the error," he whispered.
The presence did not speak.
It didn't need to.
Erynd understood systems. Every system had a remainder—a piece that couldn't be resolved.
"I can finish it," he said carefully. "But not the way you intended."
The void pressed closer.
Agreement, not consent.
Erynd smiled, thin and sharp.
"Good. I hate flawed designs."
He placed his hand on the broken altar.
The pain was immediate and infinite.
[OATH ACCEPTED]
Designation: Null Anchor
Penalty: Loss of Future Certainty
Reward: Authority — Fear (Dormant)
Erynd screamed—
—and the world rewrote itself around him.
He woke in the inspection square.
People were shouting. Priests were bleeding light. One of the pillars had gone dark.
Erynd lay on the stone, heart racing, mind already cataloging damage.
Reality latency increased by 0.4 seconds.
Divine response lag detected.
I am no longer visible to probabilistic fate modeling.
He stood.
No chains formed.
No god answered.
High above, in a realm where certainty ruled, something ancient stirred.
For the first time in an age—
The gods felt watched.