The Final Oath
A day and a half had passed since Rene stopped returning. Vera lay there, his breaths ragged as if they might snap at any moment, staring blankly at the ceiling.
…She’s gone.
She had left. The thought surfaced. His dazed mind dredged it up. Wasn’t that the case? It had been nearly a fortnight. She hadn’t eaten a proper meal even once a day, tending to his broken body all the while—it was only natural she’d reach her limit.
For a moment, he let out a wheezing chuckle at the thought, but then a stab of pain pierced his chest with every breath, choking him. Now it was unmistakable. The faint ember of his life was flickering out. At last, this wretched existence was drawing to a close.
A faint smile tugged at Vera’s lips once more. The slum’s wretched scavenger, the slaughterer of the sewers, the Empire’s mad dog, the continent’s festering tumor—he was finally meeting his end. The sinner destined for the deepest pit of hell was dying alone in this filthy corner of the slums. Wasn’t this the greatest tidings the entire continent could hope for?
As he lay there chuckling at the notion, his laughter suddenly cut off with a thud. It wasn’t by choice. An image flooded his mind.
A wretched figure caked in filth, her skin melted away by burns. Rene. The woman who echoed his every word only to turn it on its head. The one who had shown mercy even to a monster like him, conjuring the word nobility in a form that stirred regret. She came to mind.
Even now, as he belittled her in this moment, Vera knew the truth. In the brief time they’d shared, she was no one who would abandon him. She hadn’t fled. If she meant to run, she would have done so long ago, worn down by hunger. No one knew the agony of starvation better than he did. And so he understood how grueling it must have been for her to hide her own hunger for a full fortnight.
A woman who had endured such torment wouldn’t bolt for that reason now. …She must be dead.
She was the type who ignored warnings, so she must have crossed paths with the scavengers and met her end. Her corpse would be rotting somewhere in the slums.
Vera’s unfocused gaze fixed on the ceiling as he pictured her body submerged in the muck. Then a surge of inexplicable emotion made him grit his teeth.
He couldn’t name it. A feeling he’d never known in all his life. It resembled regret, pity. It wore the shape of guilt, yet wasn’t quite that. It might pass for terror, but it was more like a faint, spreading spark than overwhelming dread. Gratitude, perhaps. Or shame. A tangled mess.
His body shuddered under the onslaught. More complex than anything he’d felt, it squeezed his chest tighter than the chronic pain that had tormented him, leaving him breathless.
And so Vera twisted his entire frame, forcing his unmoving body into motion.
“Keurgh…!”
Pain radiated from his fingertips through his whole body. Moving his arm next brought a boiling surge of blood from within. But he couldn’t stop. The dizzying vertigo of that emotion left no room to heed the agony.
He hauled himself upright.
“Cough…!”
Blood sprayed from his mouth. His body collapsed with a thud. Even then, Vera craned his neck toward the half-open plank door of the shack.
He stretched out an arm. Propped himself on it, trembling violently, and dragged forward. A pitiful sight no one could bear to witness—he crawled like that.
Out the door, hands sinking into the mud, onward aimlessly, crawling for what felt like ages. Blood bubbled back up his throat and trickled from his nose. Each extension of his arm brought the crunch of bones grinding. Yet he couldn’t stop. That strangling tightness in his chest wouldn’t let him.
Vera crawled like a madman, directionless, until he spotted a figure sprawled in the mud from another corner of the slums.
He knew instantly who it was. Rene. The burns melting her skin, the white hair streaked with filth, the dim blue pupils half-veiled by lids—all told him so.
The surroundings were drowned in dark, ashen hues. The colors of death. The same pallor that clung to the dying in the slums. The muddy gray of congealed blood and sewage.
Seeing it pooled around her, Vera halted. He froze in his wretched, mud-smeared crawl.
Over the strange emotion that had plagued him, another layered itself. This one he knew intimately—the feeling that had ruled his childhood.
Despair.
He didn’t know why it arose. Only that instinct told him this new emotion wore despair’s shape.
Vera stared at her corpse for a long while, face smeared in blood and filth, then crawled slowly toward her. Just far enough for his hand to brush hers.
Having burned his life’s final sparks to reach that point, Vera gazed at Rene with a face on the brink of death.
Even in what must have been excruciating agony, her expression was serene.
“What an ugly end.”
Wheeze. Wheeze. His words came ragged with labored breaths.
He studied her face a moment longer before continuing. “What did I tell you? You’d die.”
He tried to smile, but lacked the strength to lift the corners of his mouth. His eyelids grew heavy. Breathing grew impossible. Feeling the true end closing in, Vera examined her face.
What a selfish woman. She’d shattered his vow to bear his karma alone and die miserably, then slipped away with that peaceful look. She’d planted this nameless regret in him without even explaining it, then dozed off.
Strength drained from his body. His thoughts sank like sodden cotton.
Half-lidded eyes on Rene, his lips moved of their own accord. “…Do you know?”
Speaking to a corpse was absurd, he knew, yet he couldn’t stop. “I have an incredible gift. It’s what let a worthless scavenger become the continent’s worst monster.”
Gathering every last ounce of strength, he clasped her muddied hand.
Beneath the rolled-up sleeve of his ragged shirt, on his forearm, a tattoo formed an interlocking circle of eight curved strokes.
“They call it a Stigmata. I have one.”
Vera chuckled hoarsely. It was ridiculous—baring his lifelong secret, never shared with a soul, to a corpse.
“The Oath’s Stigmata. From the God of Oaths. With it, I can give weight to my words.”
He didn’t know why. One day, it simply appeared on his arm. Stigmata were miracles bestowed on gods’ favored, so he’d found it baffling. He didn’t believe in gods, nor wished to serve their will.
So he’d used it solely for his own greed.
“I make a vow, stake a price on it, and gain power in proportion.”
With this gift, this miracle, he’d gripped half the continent. Bent every shadow upon it to his heel.
“Of course, there’s a penalty. Fail the vow, and you lose what you staked—plus an equal share of your soul is shaved away.”
Only once had he broken a minor vow. He still remembered the pain vividly: existence tearing apart, cold sweat at the mere thought. More terrifying than any moment in his life. That was the agony of breaking an oath.
He’d sworn never again. And yet…
“But because of you, I broke another one.”
The vow he’d staked his life on—no regrets in living. To gladly bear punishment for all his sins. You made him shatter it. Meeting you, your light—it made him regret his life.
Now his soul would be whittled away. Maybe a speck would remain. Probably not even that.
As the thought crossed his mind, Vera gazed blankly at Rene, replaying their scant fortnight together. A wretched montage, the low point of his miserable life. Yet, ironically, the moment he’d felt most redeemed.
Savoring the fleeting memories, he peered at her through vision too blurred to discern shapes.
His lips twitched again. “…You lived for me. That’s how you lived. But listen.”
Not deliberate words. The nameless emotion compelled them. To the one who’d forced regret upon him, he wanted to say it.
“If there’s a next life, and some shred of my soul remains…”
Since you shook me like this…
“Then I could live for you. Being with you… I think it’d be a life without regrets.”
By your side, even a monster like me might live something worth calling a life.
With those words, Vera invoked the Stigmata for this life’s finale.
“Yes, that’ll do. Not much left, but… if any soul remains, I’ll stake it all on that vow.”
The Stigmata blazed gold.
Now, etch the oath. As always, Vera inscribed it upon the glowing mark.
“Should a next life be granted to me, I shall live it… for you. So I vow.”
To seat you in the highest glory, guarding your side. He etched that oath into his soul.
As it took hold, his body thrummed. His soul burned. An abstract sensation, but intimately familiar after a lifetime with the Stigmata.
Confirming its activation, Vera slowly closed his eyes.
So, I’m finally dying. As the thought formed—
Tick-
A clock’s hand ticked in Vera’s ear.