The forest was silent when Kael awoke. Morning mist drifted through the skeletal trees, curling around the black sword resting across his knees. Its surface rippled faintly, as if it still breathed.
He felt different — sharper. Every heartbeat echoed with something other, a pulse that wasn't his.
"You've accepted it," the voice murmured. "The Oath recognizes you now."
Kael didn't answer. He'd spent the night testing the weapon's weight, feeling the way it drank the air around it — the way even the light seemed to bend away. Power this alive was never meant for mortal hands.
Footsteps crunched through the underbrush. He turned, slow and deliberate.
A group of mercenaries emerged from the fog — six men in worn leather, blades drawn. Their leader, a broad man with a scarred jaw, grinned.
"Didn't expect to find anyone out here. You're far from any road, traveler."
Kael's gaze flicked over them — movements, stance, breath. Predators, not soldiers.
"What do you want?" he asked.
"Supplies. Coin. Maybe that sword," the man said, smirking. "You can walk away if you drop it."
Kael rose to his feet, silent. His shadow stretched long behind him — wrong, too long — and the mist thickened.
"I can't," he said softly. "It's bound to me."
The leader laughed. "Bound, huh? We'll see about that."
They moved as one — a practiced ambush. But Kael didn't move to block. He only whispered.
> "Blood Oath."
The world seemed to freeze. Crimson sigils flared across the ground beneath the mercenaries' boots. The leader stopped mid-step, his laughter twisting into a gasp as a faint red line connected his chest to Kael's.
He felt it instantly — their life force pulsing through him like threads waiting to be pulled.
Kael's eyes turned black.
He raised his sword, and when he swung, the first man dropped without a sound — his body collapsing into ash.
The others screamed, slashing wildly, but every wound they inflicted on him opened on their own flesh instead.
The curse whispered hungrily in his mind.
"Yes… let them pay. Their lives are the coin of your ascension."
Kael's breathing slowed. His face remained expressionless, even as the last man fell to his knees. "What… are you?" the mercenary choked.
Kael looked down at him. "A mistake," he said. And then, without another word, ended it.
The forest was quiet again. The mist began to fade, leaving only bodies — and the faint shimmer of red light sinking into the soil.
Kael knelt, staring at his reflection in a pool of water. His wounds had closed. His strength had grown.
But his eyes — they were darker now. Less human.
He clenched his fist. The sword hummed, pleased.
The voice purred through the silence.
"Each bond you take deepens the Oath. Each soul you claim feeds the chain. The question is… how much of yourself are you willing to trade?"
Kael stood, cloak billowing in the cold morning wind.
"Enough," he said. "As much as it takes."
He turned toward the distant horizon — where smoke rose from another settlement — and began to walk.
And as he did, the ground behind him cracked with the faint echo of something waking beneath the earth.