~Araya~
After the storm, time stopped behaving like it was meant to.
The first thing I learned about oaths is that they are not spoken.
They are felt.
They are written into bone. Into pulse. Into marrow.
They crawl into a person the same way rot does — quietly, invisibly — until one day you breathe and realize the air belongs to it now, not you.
The night the sky split open, I thought it was thunder. I thought God was angry. I thought we had finally drawn the attention of something holy.
I was wrong.
It wasn’t heaven that answered us.
It was something much older.
Something far less merciful.
Lucien ran ahead of me through the forest, branches clawing at his cloak, the darkness parting for him like it recognized its own. Lightning forked through the sky, illuminating the fury on
