The frost grew heavier the farther north they traveled.
Kaelen didn't feel it the way Vos did. His cloak iced over, his fingers numb beneath the wool wrappings, but the cold never touched the markings beneath his skin. They pulsed like embers. Faint, steady, defiant.
The Watcher followed at a distance, never fully visible. A veil of darkness that flickered in reflections, water, and glass. When Kaelen glanced toward it, he saw the outline of a tall figure with a tattered cloak and a cracked obsidian mask where a face should be.
It didn't speak again. It didn't need to. The path was pulling him forward now, each step like a breath drawn by the land itself.
Vos muttered as they crested another snowy ridge. "We've been walking for half a day. Nothing but ruin markers, ghost-trees, and old system pylons. Are you sure this place even exists?"
"It's not a place," Kaelen said. "It's a remnant."
Vos glanced at him. "Of what?"
Kaelen paused, staring across the white expanse.
"A war the system pretended never happened."
The wind howled around them.
Then it stopped.
Dead silence.
Vos took a step, and his boot crunched unnaturally loud on the frost.
Kaelen's markings flared. Not in warning.
In recognition.
The snow ahead parted, just slightly, as if invisible hands were brushing it aside. Beneath it, stone emerged. Carved and black, half-buried in ice.
A single glyph pulsed in its center.
Kaelen stepped forward and touched it.
The world vanished.
No sound. No light.
Then the system interface appeared in pure darkness.
But it wasn't system white.
It was written in red.
[ Archive Fragment Accessed: Forbidden Tier ]
[ Playback: Oath Origin Record – Thread Alpha ]
[ Warning: All viewing participants will be recorded as Witness Class ]
[ Proceeding… ]
Kaelen blinked
and stood in another life.
Not as a vision, not as a memory from afar.
He was in it.
A city of towers carved into obsidian cliffs. Fires burning in brazier-circles. People with markings like his, but brighter, clearer. Some knelt in meditation. Others stood at circular tables, arguing over shifting strands of golden thread woven between floating stones.
And in the center stood a monument. A vast obelisk, cracked and humming.
Kaelen's hand reached out.
Not by his choice.
It was instinct. Muscle memory from a body he hadn't lived in for centuries.
He touched the obelisk.
It spoke.
Not in sound.
In oath.
"I am the Threadkeeper. Witness and Warden. What was torn here will be remembered."
Kaelen staggered back as the voice filled his bones.
A man approached.
Tall. Robed. Not armored like the Oathkeepers, but his presence weighed the air around him.
He looked at Kaelen, eyes burning silver.
"You broke the chain," the man said.
Kaelen wanted to speak.
But this memory, this record, had no voice for him.
The man continued.
"You severed the Oath so that others could choose. You gave them freedom."
The city began to fracture.
Cracks split the towers. Light flickered.
And then
The system appeared.
But not as code.
As soldiers. Lines of them. Uniformed. Armed. Their faces blank, their eyes glowing with hollow purpose.
The man raised his arms.
The monument shattered.
A pulse of light swallowed everything.
And Kaelen
was pulled back into his own body.
He gasped.
Vos caught him as he stumbled backward from the stone slab. "What happened?"
Kaelen's eyes were wide. "I saw the beginning. I was there. The first Oath… I broke it. I created the possibility of betrayal."
Vos went still. "You didn't just abandon the system. You made the fracture."
Kaelen nodded slowly.
The system chimed.
[ User Identity Deepened ]
[ Alignment: Null-Origin – Aspect Class: Threadbreaker ]
[ Class Evolution Path Revealed: Archivebound → Unwritten Sovereign (Locked) ]
[ Warning: System Authority is now converging on location ]
[ Estimated Time to Arrival: 23 minutes ]
[ Active Mark: Witnessed by Threadkeeper – Tracking Suppressed Temporarily ]
Kaelen read the last line again.
The Watcher was no longer behind them.
It stood beside him now.
Its eyes glowed faint gold beneath the mask.
"You have remembered enough," it said.
Kaelen turned to it. "Why now? Why help me?"
The Watcher tilted its head. "Because when the system erased us, it forgot one thing."
"What?"
"We do not serve memory. We are memory."
It reached out.
And placed a single obsidian shard into Kaelen's hand.
The shard pulsed.
Kaelen stared at it and understood.
It was a piece of the first oath. Uncoded. Untouched. A seed of creation, older than law.
He turned to Vos. "We can't run anymore."
Vos blinked. "What do you mean?"
"We have to challenge Thalanir."
Vos froze. "That's suicide. You saw what he did in your memory. He commands reality through the system."
Kaelen looked at the shard again. "Then we'll rewrite reality."
Vos opened his mouth to protest.
But then the sky split open.
A line of golden fire carved itself across the heavens.
From it, a figure descended.
Radiant.
Unstoppable.
Thalanir had arrived.