Chapter 113
The Oath of the Wounded Heaven
Heaven, once whole, now bled light.
From the fracture in the sky came not fire, nor fury, but awareness. Ancient, shamed, and unhealed.
The gods had called the question. The child had answered.
But Heaven had not braced for recognition.
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Across the realms, all who held even a whisper of divine blood heard it: the shatter-song. A hum woven between realms that bent knees and broke illusions. Birds of prophecy fell midflight. Seers tore out their own tongues. Even stars seemed to hesitate in their orbit.
And in that stillness came a vow.
Not from the child.
From the broken firmament itself.
A voice neither masculine nor feminine, neither warm nor cold, flowed down like silver rain:
"We, the Wounded Heaven, remember."
"We, who once exiled our future, now face him."
"We, who struck down the child of flame and dream, now rise in fractured accord."
"Let it be written in winds and wounds: we shall not touch the Valley again."
A shockwave pulsed outward. Forests bowed. Rivers reversed. For a moment, time stuttered.
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In the valley, Errin dropped to one knee—not in submission, but in grief. He had heard that voice before. Long ago, in dreams before dreams, when he too was not meant to be. He had been denied, forgotten, erased. Until the Valley.
Until Lauren.
She had once told him that the heavens feared most what they could not claim—free will. And now, that same force stood as a boy not yet ten winters old, staring into the eye of the storm, refusing to kneel.
Behind him, the Valley sang. A soft, pulsing hum—alive.
Ka'il'a stepped forward, her palm glowing with the energy of the Fifth Root. "Is it… over?" she asked.
Echo's voice shook. "No. It's beginning. That wasn't a surrender. That was an oath. And oaths made by Heaven…"
"…are binding," whispered Ka'il'a.
"…and sometimes, they break."
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Nayel did not flinch as another ripple passed over him.
He saw it now. Not just Heaven's oath, but the truth buried beneath it: a memory older than any realm, sealed behind twelve broken dreams. He saw himself—not as a boy, not as a god, but as a question written into the core of reality.
He was the child of flame and choice. He was the dream of mortals unspoken. He was unwritten—and therefore, unwounded.
For now.
He stepped forward into the air. The Valley responded—not with wind, but with space. A path of golden mist unfolded from beneath his bare feet.
He walked not upward, but inward.
Toward the center of the oath. Toward the part of Heaven that had never healed. Toward the place where they hid the truth of why they had once feared Errin.
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Far beyond, in the Celestial Hall of Final Witness, the Enforcers gathered. Their eyes—planets. Their thoughts—galaxies.
"He walks," one murmured.
"The oath is spoken," said another.
"But will he find the wound?"
"No," said the one they all turned to. "He is the wound."
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In the core of the Valley, beneath roots that pierced dimensions, Lauren stirred from where she had vanished.
She was not dead. Nor dreaming. She had become the valley. Her breath was its breeze, her pulse its rivers. And now, as the boy approached the ancient heart—she wept.
"Heaven has remembered. But does it repent?" she whispered.
Only the trees answered, and even they sounded uncertain.
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As Nayel walked toward the place where Heaven's regret was buried, his small hand opened. In it lay no sword, no sigil, no seal.
Only a single, glowing petal—fallen from the first tree he touched upon birth.
The symbol not of power, but of life.
And so the boy who was neither god nor mortal, neither question nor answer, began his journey into Heaven's wound.
Not to fight.
But to ask:
"Why?"
And the heavens held their breath.
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