Ash no longer fell from the sky. It rose.
The land Kael now walked was once the dominion of the Temple of Forgotten Oaths—a sect so ancient that even the gods dared not unearth its name from the dust. Its disciples had sworn eternal silence, binding their tongues to the mountain they worshipped.
And when they were betrayed by their own deities, they buried their shame in flame and vanished into extinction.
But Kael remembered them.
He did not read of them in scrolls.
He felt them in his blood.
The winds wept with their voices as he entered the grave-path that led into the mountain, the air itself curving around his presence as if too reverent to resist him. Seven statues flanked the road—headless, armless, broken. Yet as he passed, they turned.
Not in body.
In faith.
Kael did not light a torch. His presence alone summoned a memory of light.
At the temple's core lay a shattered monolith, a pillar once carved with every oath ever taken by a disciple of the sect. It now lay in four pieces, shattered by divine decree and abandonment.
Kael placed his hand on the cold stone. It did not respond.
But the space around it bent, the air whispering a single phrase:
> "Are you worthy to remember us?"
Kael said nothing.
He drew Noctis-Aurem, its spectral edge humming in stillness.
And with a single motion, he cut across the air—not to strike, but to divide false remembrance from truth.
The ruins pulsed.
The fragments of the monolith trembled—and reformed.
Not by repair.
By will.
Vines curled away. Dust reversed. Blood-stains dried back into form. The stone reassembled as if the betrayal had never occurred.
Kael stood before it, unchanged.
The monolith now bore a new oath, one not carved by hands but written by the mountain itself:
> "We are remembered not by glory.
But by one who dares to walk without it."
The temple rumbled.
The mountain breathed.
And a door long sealed by divine silence groaned open.
---
Beyond it lay a chamber soaked in stillness. A single sword stood embedded in obsidian, its hilt wrapped in chain, its blade inscribed with runes that trembled at Kael's presence.
The Oathblade of the Silent Legion.
Forged not to kill, but to speak for those too broken to speak for themselves. A relic so cursed it once turned against its wielder for lying with intention.
Kael approached it, hand outstretched.
The air grew heavy.
Time slowed.
The blade tested him—not with questions, but with reflections.
One by one, Kael saw himself:
As a child, begging for entry into a sect that feared his lineage.
As a boy, coughing blood after being denied cultivation marrow.
As a youth, holding the corpse of a brother slain to protect a lie.
As a man, buried beneath a dozen divine betrayals.
As something else, walking through the heavens unannounced.
He did not turn away.
He accepted each version.
And the blade surrendered.
It leapt into his palm—not with power, but with purpose.
Kael turned, and behind him the stone doors shut. Not to seal him in.
To entomb his past.
---
When he emerged, the skies over the mountain had cleared.
The sun dared to rise, but its light did not touch him.
Kael walked forward, the Oathblade strapped across his back like a silent promise.
And from the horizon, the world trembled—not because he approached.
But because it no longer remembered how to oppose him.