The forest breathed like a living beast—cold and patient. Moonlight fractured through the branches in silver shards, and the night air smelled like damp earth and old secrets. Two hunters cut their way through a thorny path, lantern swinging between them, its flame a small defiance in a sky already swallowed by black.
"Keep the light steady," the older one grunted. Scar across his cheek. Boots broken in. The kind of man who knew the price of straying off marked roads.
The younger hunter nodded, jaw tight, eyes flicking to every shadow that twitched. "They said it was buried near the ruin."
"They say many things," the older man muttered. "Most of them get you killed."
They reached a clearing. In the middle stood the ruin—just the ribs of a stone shrine poking from the ground, half-eaten by roots. The wind changed—smelled metallic for a heartbeat, like coins and rain. The lantern flame wavered.
"There," the younger whispered, pointing to a slab half sunk in the soil. Symbols ran along its edge—spirals and blade-like letters that made your eyes ache if you stared too long.
They dug. Fingers bled. The earth clung to what lay beneath like a jealous lover. When the box finally groaned free, both men stopped breathing. It was small. Old. Bound by a tarnished clasp shaped like a teardrop.
"You sure?" the younger asked, voice barely human.
"No," the older said, and opened it anyway.
Inside, on a bed of black cloth, rested a coin the color of frozen sunlight. Gold, but not gold—etched with a circle of tiny figures holding hands, and in the center, an eye with three lashes. Not a jewel. Not a charm. Not a relic.
A vow.
The forest exhaled. Lantern light crawled, shivering, to the edge of the clearing and stopped like it had hit glass. The younger reached for the coin. The older grabbed his wrist. Too slow. Fingers brushed metal.
The vow woke.
Every leaf turned to a mirror. Every shadow grew a throat and tried to speak. The clearing dropped into a silence so loud it sounded like thunder coming from underwater. The younger hunter's eyes rolled white, then black again. Tears cut clean lines down his dirt-caked face.
"I hear her," he breathed. "She's cold."
"Put it back," the older said. Not a command. A prayer.
The coin grew warm. The ruin smelled of burned sugar. Then a voice—thin as spider silk—threaded into the clearing.
"It wasn't paid."
The men froze.
"It wasn't paid," the voice said again, closer now, like it was whispering straight into the thin shell of their eardrums. The lantern hissed, then died. The moon blinked.
When the guards from the nearby way-station found the clearing at dawn, they found the box shut, the soil perfectly smooth, and two hunting knives stabbed into a tree trunk like a warning. Of the hunters themselves, they found only footprints circling the ruin, tighter and tighter until the last prints stood on top of each other—like someone had been swallowed whole by the air.
They found something else, too. Scratched into the slab with a shaking hand:
SOME VOWS CAN'T BE BURIED.
The guards left a marker and never returned.
The coin didn't either.
Not for years.
Not until a boy who wasn't looking for trouble found it—exactly where trouble had been waiting.