The battlefield was still trembling from the echoes of the Cosmic War. Shattered fragments of promises, glowing like dying stars, drifted in the void. Kento stood at the center, his chest heaving, his hands shaking not from weakness—but from the weight of the choice before him.
The voice of the Twisted Oath slithered into his mind, smooth as venom:
"Child of promises… You cling to that naïve oath of the past. But you and I both know it cannot hold. The world itself is breaking beneath it. Give in. Forge a New Oath with me, and together we will bind reality to our will."
Kento's knuckles whitened. He remembered the night sky of his childhood—the laughter, the promise whispered under the stars. That vow had carried him here. Yet as he glanced at his companions—Furi, battered but unyielding, and the mysterious Child of the First Promise—he saw doubt mirrored in their eyes.
Maybe the Twisted Oath was right. Maybe the world needed something stronger than the fragile vow of a boy.
But then the Child spoke, voice calm yet sharp as a blade.
"The oath you carry is not fragile, Kento. It is alive. It grows because you believe in it. To abandon it now is to abandon yourself."
Furi clenched his fist, blood dripping onto the ground.
"Choose, idiot! Old promise or new oath? Don't stand there frozen—we'll fight with whatever you decide!"
The Cosmic Archive stirred, its pages flaring open above them. One side burned with the Old Oath—innocence, truth, hope. The other side glowed with the New Oath—power, dominance, survival.
The air shook. The battlefield waited. Every Oathborn, every lie, every fragment of heaven and earth leaned in to see which path he would choose.
Kento's breath slowed. He lifted his hand toward the Archive.
And in that moment, he whispered to himself:
"A promise is not meant to rule the world. A promise is meant to protect it."
With a roar, he reached toward the light of the Old Oath—
But his hand didn't stop there. He seized both sides of the Archive at once.
The Cosmic Archive screamed. The heavens split open.
"Then I will forge something greater… A vow that no one can twist again!"
And in his grasp, the New Oath of Bonds was born.
---