The ruins of the city groaned under the weight of silence. Every shattered tower, every broken archway seemed to whisper of lives extinguished, of screams that had long since faded into echoes. Shinomiya Reiji walked among the wreckage with slow, deliberate steps, his breath still heavy from the battle he had endured.
The cut on his arm still burned, though the wound was shallow. It was not the blood that unsettled him, but the sensation left behind—as if the blade of his doppelgänger had carved deeper than flesh, reaching into the hollow places of his soul.
The night was cold. Wind howled through the skeletal remains of the city, carrying with it fragments of ash that glowed faintly in the moonlight. Yet in that emptiness, Reiji felt something else—eyes watching, voices pressing against the walls of his mind.
He stopped before a collapsed cathedral, its once-grand spires now jagged scars against the sky. Inside, the shadows moved with an unnatural rhythm, coiling like serpents. As he stepped through the threshold, the air grew heavy, suffocating, as though the city itself was drawing its last breath.
And then he heard it—low, resonant, inhuman.
A voice, not like the whisper of the doppelgänger, but vast, ancient, as if the stone and earth themselves spoke through it:
> "Oathbreaker. Wanderer. Child of shadows."
The words dug into him, cold and merciless. His hand instinctively gripped the hilt of his blade, though he knew steel would mean little here.
From the altar at the far end of the cathedral, a figure emerged. Cloaked in rags that seemed woven from shadow itself, faceless yet towering. Its presence bent the air, distorted the silence, and with each step, the ground trembled.
"You…" Reiji whispered, though no name came to him. Only fear.
The entity raised a hand, and chains of darkness erupted from the ground, slamming against the cathedral walls. They wrapped around broken statues, fractured columns, until the entire place became a prison of shadows. Reiji stood at its center, bound not by steel, but by inevitability.
The voice filled him again:
> "You carry the oath of silence. You swore to bury the truth beneath blood. And yet you walk, blade in hand, against the fate you chose."
Memories cut through him—the night of betrayal, the bodies he had left behind, the vow he had whispered into the dark. A vow that had bound him as much as it freed him.
Reiji's chest tightened. His silence had always been his shield, his refusal to speak of the past a way to survive. But here, in this cathedral of shadows, silence felt like a curse.
The entity stepped closer. Chains coiled, ready to strike.
Reiji lowered his head, his voice hoarse yet steady:
"I swore silence not to protect myself… but to carry their sins with me."
His blade slid free of its sheath, the sound sharp, cutting through the oppressive air. Shadows writhed as if recoiling from his defiance.
"I am Shinomiya Reiji. I will not beg forgiveness. I will not break. If silence is my curse, then I will turn it into my oath of war."
The cathedral shuddered as the entity roared, its faceless form unraveling into a storm of chains and darkness. Reiji launched forward, blade flashing, his body driven not by hope but by the grim weight of resolve.
Steel met shadow. Pain met defiance. Oath met abyss.
And in that clash, a vow was reborn—not whispered, but carved into the very fabric of the night.