A vow, once broken, doesn't just disappear.

Its echo gets trapped in the stars, waiting.

It becomes a debt the world has to pay, a crack in the great Web of Resonance that connects all things.

People forget the promises that built their world, but the Web always remembers.

Tonight, that echo fell to earth.

It came with a storm that felt like cosmic grief, and it came with a man running for his life.

He was a ghost from a fallen golden age, a time when the Sun's logic and the Moon's dreams held the world in a miraculous balance of machine and magic.

But one vow was broken. Not with a shout of war, but with a whisper of doubt, breathed by a loved one at a king’s side.

Betrayal wearing the face of family.

In that moment, the promise holding two realms together shattered. Across the world, the great Oath-stones cracked. Blessings turned to curses. A world that had once touched the stars began to bleed.

The man ran through the forgotten lands between nations, a wasteland of broken history. He scrambled over the collapsed spine of a fence line, his boots sinking into the mud of a flooded rice field. In the distance, a watchtower stood like a skeleton against the storm-wracked sky.

Ahead, the Dominion border shimmered. A cruel, beautiful fence of pure vow-light, humming with resonance wards that would boil the soul of any normal man who dared touch it.

He didn't challenge it. He ran toward a smugglers' breach, a blind spot where the shimmering wall flickered and died for a few feet near an old, forgotten pipeline.

Behind him, the blue arcs of vow-lamps swept the fields. They came not from soldiers on foot, but from the optical sensors of Dominion drones, their low hum a promise of discovery.

Further back, the heavy thump-thump of a mecha patrol echoed, each footfall a hammer blow against the wet earth. They weren't flashy war machines, but heavy, squat exo-suits, their every joint radiating a faint distortion; the sickening non-energy of vow-suppressing emitters.

He slipped through the breach, trading the desolate fields for the darkened backstreets of Greyfield.

The storm had killed the power grid.

Neon signs guttered and died. Deep shadows bled between the townhouses.

He dove into the rusted carcass of a scrapped earth-mover as a drone passed directly overhead, its blue searchlight cutting a sterile cone through the rain. The light swept over his hiding spot, hesitated for a half-second, and moved on.

In the choking dark of the machine’s guts, surrounded by the smell of rust and decay, he allowed himself one moment. He pulled back the wet wool, revealing the infant’s face, pale and perfect in the gloom.

“You must live,” he whispered, his voice a raw, broken thing. “Even if I fall here, you must live.”

A shout from nearby forced him out. He burst from the wreckage and ran deeper into the maze of streets, but his luck had run out.

A dead-end alley.

He spun around as three soldiers moved in, blocking the only exit.

“Nowhere left to run, traitor,” one of them sneered, slamming his fist on the wet ground. A wave of crackling energy shot up the walls, lighting the alley in an electric blue glow.

The man didn't draw a sword. There was just a flicker, a blur so fast it was like the world had skipped a beat.

A wet, slicing sound, and the first soldier's head slid from his shoulders.

The second soldier’s body just… fell apart, sliced cleanly into three pieces.

The third crumpled, his spine severed before he could even scream.

The burst of power left the man shattered. His hands trembled uncontrollably. A trickle of blood seeped from the corner of his lip. A thin wisp of smoke curled from the seams of his cloak, smelling of ozone and burnout.

His vision swam, the world tilting as if the Web itself wanted to cut his thread here.

He had to keep going. The sound of boots grew closer. Above, a drone’s blue eye locked onto his heat signature. The thump-thump of the mecha was turning toward him.

He was out of time.

He was out of strength.

Through the sheets of rain, he saw it. A single light from a modest Greyfield townhouse, its lamp flickering weakly in defiance of the blackout.

With the last of his strength, he staggered forward, raised a bloody fist, and struck the door.

The storm itself seemed to still as his fists struck the wood. The sound wasn't a plea, but a debt crashing against the door.

A final, desperate vow being passed from one soul to the next.