The road back to Valemire felt longer than the path to the breach.
Snow had stopped falling, but the cold still clung to Ryuji's cloak like a second skin. He walked with a steady pace, not fast, not slow, just enough to keep the weight in his chest from growing too heavy.
The folded cloth bearing the Ninth Oath's true sigil sat pressed against his side, wrapped carefully beneath his armor. It was more than fabric. It was proof. Of what had been hidden. Of what had been betrayed.
He did not yet know what he would do with it.
Not until he found the one who had left that oath behind.
By the time the gates of Valemire came into view, dusk had settled over the rooftops. Smoke rose gently from chimneys. Lanterns flickered to life along the narrow stone paths. The city looked as it always did, worn, quiet, gray with time. But something inside Ryuji had changed. The silence now felt less like peace… and more like a warning.
He passed through the guard post without trouble. No one looked closely at him. His cloak was travel-stained, but his face was familiar.
Too familiar, perhaps.
The oath-keeper's words still echoed in his mind.
"You carry the same weight the Ninth once bore. You still believe in what was lost."
But belief wasn't enough. He needed names. Actions. Truths hidden behind polished words and loyal smiles.
And there was only one place to start.
The old archives of Valemire.
The stone chamber sat beneath the eastern wing of the Citadel Hall, sealed behind bronze doors and watched by quiet, retired scribes. It was a place of order and forgetting. Ryuji had once trained here as a young captain, copying ledgers until his hand bled. Now he returned not as a student, but as a seeker.
The records keeper, Master Kelren, looked up as Ryuji entered. His eyebrows lifted in surprise.
"You've returned", he said softly.
Ryuji nodded. "I need access to the Ninth Oath's personnel archives. Sealed records. Year 163 to 165."
Kelren hesitated. "Those aren't… usually requested."
"I know", Ryuji said. He met the older man's eyes. "But I was given leave by someone who still remembers."
Kelren looked at him a long moment. Then nodded, slow and quiet. "Come with me."
They passed through tall shelves of brittle scrolls and quiet memory. Dust floated like old breath in the golden lamplight.
Kelren led him to a small table in the back and unlocked a heavy chest. Inside were folders, marked with the white sigil and wax seals now broken by time.
"Be careful", the scribe said. "Some truths… stay sharp, even when forgotten."
Ryuji gave a small nod and sat down to read.
Hours passed. The light shifted. Candles burned low.
Ryuji studied the names of those sworn to the Ninth, nine founders, thirty-seven secondary signers, and twelve recorded commanders. He looked for absences. For gaps. For any sign of misdirection.
And then he found it.
A redacted line.
A name blotted out, not by fire or age, but by design. Scrubbed from every instance. But the rank remained, Oath-Lord Designate.
He checked the others. All eight founding signatures were intact. The ninth was listed, but no name. Just a black mark, smeared across five pages.
Whoever had held that role… had once stood among them.
And then been erased.
He rose from the table, breath quiet, heart steady.
Someone in Valemire knew who the ninth had been.
And someone had helped hide them.
He stepped out into the night.
Valemire was quiet, as it always was under the moonlight. Snow dusted the rooftops. The bells of the watchtower chimed ten times.
Ryuji walked without speaking, past familiar paths, listening.
Every shadow now felt deeper. Every silence a question.
He made his way toward the outer district, where the older halls of military record-keeping still stood, long since left to rot under snow and silence. It was there the first oaths were once given, before the Dominion ever rose to full power.
He pushed open the old door, the hinges groaning.
Inside, everything was still. Dust on benches. Dry ink pots. Cobwebs in corners.
But someone had been here recently.
Footprints in the dust. Light. Careful.
Ryuji knelt, fingers brushing one set of prints. Narrow boots. No heel. Fast steps.
He followed them to a wall lined with metal plaques, names of commanders long passed.
One plaque was missing.
He reached behind the frame and found a hidden compartment.
Inside, a letter. Folded. Sealed with black wax.
He broke it open.
The handwriting was careful. Older ink.
"They buried me in silence. But I never left.Let the breach open if it must...The oath was never mine to begin with."
No signature.
Just a single phrase below the last line,
"We are not all bound."
Ryuji stood very still.
So the traitor still lived.
Not in the breach. Not buried.
Here. In the city.
And someone had helped them stay hidden.
He stepped out into the cold again, the letter tight in his grip.
He would have to move carefully now.
There were eyes in Valemire. Watching. Waiting.
The mirror beyond the breach had shown him a version of himself twisted by sorrow.
But here, among the stone walls and familiar faces, was something worse.
A betrayal that smiled. That saluted. That wore the same crest.
He turned toward the inner court.
Tomorrow, he would speak to Cael, one of the few left who had fought beside the Ninth's founders, and who now walked the Citadel halls like a man too tired to remember, or perhaps too afraid to speak.