The wind howled across the empty plains as the Ravens gathered under the fractured moonlight. Their black cloaks rippled like restless shadows, each movement whispering of old vows and untold sins. They were more than soldiers, more than a brotherhood—they were bound by an oath so ancient and terrible that none of them could remember a time before it. They called themselves the Ravens, and their loyalty was said to be as unbreakable as iron. But tonight, the oath would be tested in ways that would shatter everything they believed.
For centuries, the Ravens had guarded the northern realms, protecting the borders from invaders and keeping the peace through blood and silence. They were the sword and the secret of the crown, loyal to no one but the code they swore upon. Each man carried a black ring engraved with the mark of the Raven’s Eye—a symbol of devotion, but also of binding. Once you wore it, you never took it off. The penalty for betrayal was death, not only of the flesh but of the name. History would erase you. Memory would forget you.
Their commander, Lord Auren Kael, stood before them, his face carved with years of battles and loss. His voice carried like thunder over the moors. “Brothers,” he said, his eyes sweeping over the assembled Ravens, “tonight, the oath demands more of us than it ever has. The king is dead. And in the halls of power, lies breed faster than crows on corpses. We have one duty—to find the truth. Whatever it costs.”
The words hit like steel against stone. A murmur rippled through the ranks, some whispering prayers, others curses. The death of King Halric was a wound no one expected. Found poisoned in his own chambers, the official story spoke of an assassin from the east. But among the Ravens, the rumor was different—darker. Some said it was one of their own who slipped the toxin into the goblet, under orders that came not from a foreign court, but from within the kingdom itself.
And so the Ravens’ Oath began to unravel.
Auren’s second-in-command, a fierce woman named Seris Vale, stood apart from the others, her gaze fixed on the horizon. She had been with the Ravens for fifteen years, the first woman to ever take the oath and survive its trials. Rumor said she killed her own brother to prove her loyalty. Others whispered she never had a brother at all—that she killed the man who trained her instead. To Seris, the truth didn’t matter. Only the oath did.
When the Ravens dispersed into the night, Auren called Seris to his tent. The firelight flickered against the canvas walls, throwing long, shifting shadows. “It’s begun,” he said quietly, pouring two cups of dark wine. “The council is calling for blood. They want a name before dawn.”
Seris didn’t blink. “They always want a name before they want the truth.”
He studied her. “You think it’s one of us.”
“I think,” she said slowly, “that whoever did this wants us to tear ourselves apart trying to find them.”
Outside, the night deepened. A storm was coming.
By dawn, one of the Ravens was dead.
They found him near the riverbank, his throat cut and his ring missing. No sign of a struggle, no tracks except his own. Auren stood over the body, rain soaking through his cloak, and felt the weight of something larger than treason pressing on his shoulders. The dead man’s name was Kaelric, one of the youngest of the order, a boy who believed too fiercely in honor. He had been Auren’s squire once. The cut was clean—merciful. A Raven’s blade.
That meant only one thing: the killer was one of them.
The Ravens gathered again that morning, silent and grim. Seris looked from face to face, searching for guilt. Each man’s eyes were a mirror, revealing nothing but the reflection of their fear. Auren’s hand tightened on his sword. “Until we find the truth,” he said, “no one leaves this camp. The oath binds us still.”
But oaths are only as strong as those who keep them.
As night fell again, whispers spread like sickness. The Ravens had always been united by trust, but now suspicion gnawed at every glance. Some accused Seris, saying her loyalty had always been to herself. Others pointed to Auren, who had been closest to the king, and might have known too much. There were even those who believed the oath itself was cursed—that the spirits of the first Ravens were reclaiming their own.
On the third night, Auren summoned Seris to the old chapel on the edge of camp. It was a ruin, roof half-collapsed, the air thick with the scent of rot and rain. There, on the altar, lay a parchment sealed with crimson wax—the sigil of the king’s council.
Auren broke it open. The message was brief: Deliver the traitor before the next moonrise. Or face extinction.
“They mean to dissolve us,” Seris said flatly.
“They mean to bury us,” Auren replied. “Alive, if they have to.”
Seris stared at him. “Then what do we do?”
He looked down at the oath carved into the altar—words so old that no one alive remembered who wrote them. In shadow, we serve. In silence, we endure. In blood, we are bound.
