The road devoured itself as Aelric walked.
Every step dissolved iron links beneath his crystallized feet, the shattered chains falling into a starless void below. His shadow had grown skeletal, its hollow ribs scraping against the air itself to harvest residual oath-energy. The raven's voices now spoke through his cracking bones:
"Replace what's lost," hissed the dark tone as his left calf crumbled to black dust.
"Become more than flesh," urged the melodic voice as stolen oath-energy coiled around his knee.
Aelric seized a fading chain-link midair. Its engraved vows—to protect, to obey, to forget—burned through his palm as he fused it into his disintegrating leg. The metal slithered up his thigh, weaving itself into a lattice of living steel.
The road laughed.
It wasn't a metaphor. The remaining chains twisted into a gargantuan face that swallowed the horizon, its molten iron eyes dripping contempt.
"THIEF OF BROKEN PROMISES," it boomed, the sound peeling skin from Aelric's intact cheek. "YOU WEAVE NEW OATHS FROM STOLEN THREADS."
Aelric's shadow lunged, only to freeze as the face breathed contract-laden air.
"LET US BARGAIN PROPERLY."
The void birthed a scale taller than cathedral spires. On one plate sat Aelric's remaining humanity—memories of his mother's voice, the ache of hunger, the terror of his shadow's autonomy. On the other: a mountain of crystallized vows stolen from the banquet.
The road's voice softened to a lover's whisper: "Become fully oath-forged… or cling to dying flesh."
Linya's frostblade materialized at his side, its rust flaked away to reveal glowing sigils: Awaken the Sleeping. Shatter the Bound. Claim the Unmade.
The ravens hissed.
"Lies etched by dead gods!"
"Truths buried by living ones!"
Aelric gripped the blade. Its edge bit into his reforged leg, drawing not blood but liquid contracts that hissed: "Remember the Price."
Memories not his own erupted—
A moonlit crypt where the Ravens Three were not born, but forged from a dying god's last breath...
Linya's blade piercing a child's chest to extract their shadow...
His mother's hands weaving darkness into a swaddled infant—himself—as black ice bloomed in her veins...
The vision shattered as the scale tipped violently. His humanity plate rose, the stolen vows crumbling to ash.
The road roared. Chains exploded upward like serpentine teeth. Aelric's shadow fragmented, half consumed by the ravenous metal.
"NOW!" both raven voices screamed.
He plunged the frostblade into his oath-forged leg.
The world tore open.
Gravity inverted as the blade's sigils flared—not to awaken gods, but to unmake them. The road's iron face unraveled, its chains disintegrating into primordial runes that seared themselves across Aelric's bones.
"You… cannot…," the road gurgled as its essence drained into the blade.
"I don't steal vows," Aelric spat through melting teeth. "I repurpose them."
The void collapsed.
He fell onto sunbaked stone, the chain-road's remnants now fused to his skeleton. Linya's frostblade lay embedded in a weathered altar, its sigils glowing with stolen road-energy. Before him stretched a desert where dunes moved like breathing beasts, their sands whispering in his mother's voice.
"Come home, oathbreaker."
The raven's laughter echoed from all directions. Aelric's shadow—now more machine than flesh, its joints grinding with chain-links—dragged him toward a distant shimmer.
As they walked, his reforged leg began sprouting iron feathers.