Chapter 4The Warden's Burden

The beast's charge ate the clearing in three heartbeats.

Cinder dove left, the girl pressed against his chest. Rotting claws tore through the space where he'd stood, splintering a sapling into wet shards. The thing's momentum carried it past, skidding on dead leaves, but it turned before he could breathe—those hollow eyes already tracking, already hungry.

"Put me down," the girl whispered.

He didn't. He ran.

Sera had pulled herself upright, one hand pressed to her Mark. The black lines had crept higher since the sewer—now they licked at her jaw like dark ivy. She threw something: a flash of green light that struck the beast's flank and sizzled against corrupted hide. The thing didn't even flinch.

"Sera, move!"

She rolled as the beast swiped, its arm gouging the earth where she'd been. A tree crashed down between them, pinning her leg. She bit through a scream.

The girl's heartbeat thrummed against Cinder's ribs—slow, wrong. One beat every three seconds. Like a drum underwater.

His HUD flickered.

**[SYSTEM DAMAGE: 3%]**

**[1 in 33 activations may fail]**

Before he could process it, the display shattered into static, and for a half-second he was somewhere else.

A stone chamber. Torchlight. A man on his knees, stripped of his tunic, while a priest pressed a branding iron into his chest. The flesh bubbled and hissed. The man didn't scream—he only stared ahead, lips moving in a rhythm that might have been a prayer.

The brand took shape: **Warden**.

And then the man's eyes met Cinder's across the memory, and he said, *"The vessel is never alone. When she calls, we answer."*

The vision snapped away as the beast's claw slammed down inches from Cinder's face.

He scrambled backward, the girl still in his arms, and saw it: the glow in the beast's chest. A pulsing Oath remnant, rotten and dim, but *there*—the same shape as the brand. The same word burned into its heart.

*When she calls, we answer.*

The girl had been calling. This thing had come because she was here.

"Sera, get clear!"

She was dragging herself from under the tree, blood soaking her pant leg. "Cinder, what are you—"

He set the girl down. "Stay behind me."

The beast lunged.

Cinder raised his hand and willed the skill—the one that had cost him a strand of hair, that had cracked his system, that had let him reach inside Kael's Oath and *twist*.

**[SKILL: OATHBREAK (INCOMPLETE)]**

**[TARGET: CORRUPTED OATH REMNANT]**

**[ACTIVATING...]**

Nothing.

The system hiccupped. A red flash.

**[SKILL FAILURE]**

**[SYSTEM DAMAGE INCREASED TO 4%]**

The beast's jaws closed around Cinder's arm.

Pain exploded up his shoulder. Teeth—jagged and black—sank through his sleeve and into flesh. He felt the bone grind. Heard Sera scream. The girl's hands grabbed his leg, tiny fingers digging in, and the beast pulled, yanking him off his feet.

He hit the ground hard. The thing's weight pressed down, its breath a stench of rot and old curses, and its eye—its one remaining human eye—found his.

The Warden inside it looked out.

*"You are already mine."*

The voice wasn't the beast's. It came from everywhere and nowhere, layered and ancient, and Cinder felt something *stir* in his chest—the Heartstone shard, the fragment that had fused with his system, pulsing like a second heart.

The girl's heartbeat sped up. Once. Twice. Then settled back into its slow, drowning rhythm.

Cinder's other hand found the beast's throat.

**[SKILL: OATHBREAK (INCOMPLETE)]**

**[TARGET: CORRUPTED OATH REMNANT]**

**[ACTIVATING...]**

This time, the system obeyed.

He *pulled*.

The Oath remnant tore like wet paper. Light flooded from the beast's chest—white and blinding—and the thing convulsed, its jaws releasing his arm as it reared back and *screamed*. Not a beast's scream. A man's. A Warden's.

And in the light, Cinder saw him.

A man in his thirties, dark-haired, with the brand still fresh on his chest. He stood in a field of wheat, watching a child run through the stalks—a girl with braids and a laugh that carried on the wind. He was smiling.

Then the scene splintered. The field burned. The girl was gone. The brand on his chest blackened and spread, and the Oath System whispered *Forsaken*, and he felt himself *falling*—

The light died.

The beast collapsed. Its body crumbled into ash and dust, and where its chest had been, nothing remained but a faint scorch mark on the earth.

Cinder lay on his back, gasping. His arm wept blood. His system buzzed with warning alerts he couldn't read.

The girl knelt beside him and placed her small hand on his forehead.

"Your heart is loud," she said. "It sounds like hers."

Sera limped over, dragging her injured leg. "Cinder—your arm—"

"I'll live." He sat up, cradling the wound. The girl's fingers were cool against his skin. "What did you mean? 'Like hers'?"

The girl tilted her head. "The one who made me. Before she broke. Before she became the whisper."

"The entity," Sera breathed. "She's talking about the entity."

The girl's eyes—too old, too knowing—locked onto Cinder's. "They're coming now. The ones who made me. They felt the Warden die. They felt you use the skill." She paused. "And they will take you too."

Above the trees, the sky darkened.

Not with clouds.

With wings.

A formation of Oath-constructs glided over the forest canopy—humanoid shapes of woven light and sigils, their eyes burning white, their formation precise. A dozen. Maybe more.

And at their head, a figure in black armor, with a banner that bore the crest of the True Order.

Cinder's HUD flashed one final warning:

**[NEW QUEST OBJECTIVE: EVADE PURSUIT]**

**[DISTANCE TO SAFE ZONE: UNKNOWN]**

**[HUNTERS: 13]**

The girl took his hand.

"Run, Warden."

They ran.