The Vow

Rain fell in unbroken torrents as Jin slipped through the shattered arcade bordering the western courtyard. The storm had become a living thing, each gust carrying a charge he could taste on his tongue.

Lightning flickered across the rooftops, outlining the ruined keep in stark white and shadows.

Every heartbeat throbbed with the Circuit's pulse. Each step sent tiny arcs crackling between his fingers and the wet stone. The power was growing—its integration unspooling through him like roots sinking into fertile soil.

[Integration: 22%.]

He had not meant to leave Renji alive. A clean kill would have been simpler. But something in him had hesitated, and he didn't know whether to call it pity or cowardice.

No. He clenched his jaw. It was neither. It was strategy.

Renji would crawl back to the patriarch.

He would carry news of Jin's awakening.

And the Arashi would come for him in force.

Better that than shadows and whispers. Better an open war than the slow erosion of his spirit.

He moved swiftly, sticking to the deepest shadows. The clan's guards were gathering in the main hall for the end of the rites—no one expected trouble on a night of remembrance. He slipped between columns, past crumbling walls, until he reached the collapsed wing.

It had once been a library, before the fire twenty years ago. Now, only splintered beams and blackened shelves remained, and no one patrolled its charred husk.

Jin stepped over a fallen lintel, boots sinking into ash. The storm's wind rattled the timbers above his head, sending brief showers of debris into the darkness. He paused, letting the familiarity of ruin steady him.

He had hidden here often as a child, when the weight of Renji's disdain and the patriarch's silent contempt became too heavy to bear. Among these blackened shelves, he had dreamed of a power that could not be denied. A power that would raise him above every scornful gaze and whispered slight.

Now that power burned in his veins.

And it was tearing him apart.

He sank to one knee, clutching his chest. The integration had accelerated since his clash with Renji. The Circuit's filaments were no longer content to slumber—they prodded every corner of his mind, mapping every nerve, every memory.

Visions flickered behind his closed eyes:

—a battlefield wreathed in stormlight, bodies strewn across broken earth—

—a woman in dark robes standing atop a mountain of corpses, her hands raised in silent triumph—

—a throne of white iron, its occupant faceless, crowned in lightning—

He gasped and forced the images back. They were not his memories. They belonged to the Circuit—to the Sovereign line that had died centuries before.

But the Circuit did not care about the boundaries of flesh. It would remake him in its image, if he allowed it.

[Integration: 26%.]

His pulse thundered. He needed time. Time to understand what was merging with him, and how to bend it to his will.

He dragged himself to a shallow alcove behind the collapsed shelves. When he was young, he had hollowed the space deeper with stolen tools, shaping a hiding place no one else knew. He slipped inside, pressing his back to the cold stone.

For a few precious moments, he simply breathed. The storm's roar dulled to a distant murmur. His heart slowed. The lightning that crawled across his palms dimmed to a faint glimmer.

I am still myself.

The thought was an anchor. He clung to it, refusing the Circuit's pull.

He let his gaze wander across the darkness, and memories surfaced unbidden:

Renji standing in the training yard, sword in hand, his smile cold as winter.

The patriarch's voice—dispassionate, final—when he declared Jin unfit to inherit any meaningful responsibility.

The years of silent resentment, the way every hall in the keep seemed to whisper that he was lesser, unworthy.

He pressed his palm flat against the floor. Lightning pulsed under his skin.

Never again.

He would not content himself with scraps. He would not crawl for approval. If the Circuit offered him power, he would claim all of it. And then he would break every structure that had ever sought to keep him in chains.

A sound stirred beyond the fallen lintel.

Boots in the rain. Multiple pairs.

His head snapped up, senses flaring open. Through the walls, he felt the ripple of qi in trained bodies—soldiers, not mere household staff. Their energy signatures were muted but unmistakable.

Search parties.

His brother had survived long enough to send word.

Lightning flickered across his knuckles as he exhaled. Part of him had hoped for more time. But perhaps this was better.

He rose in a single fluid motion. The Circuit's awareness fanned outward, charting every moving form within thirty paces. He counted six signatures—too many to fight cleanly in the open courtyard.

But he didn't need to fight them head-on.

He slipped from the alcove, careful not to disturb the loose debris. Moving with a predatory calm he didn't fully recognize, he circled behind the patrol. Their lanterns cast jittering cones of yellow light over the wreckage, their shadows flickering across the broken walls.

One guard stepped ahead of the others. Jin saw the man's posture—the uncertainty in his shoulders, the way he kept glancing back at his companions.

That one first.

He extended his awareness through the air itself, feeling the electrical potential in every droplet of rain. The Circuit lent clarity to the sensation—a lattice of charge woven through the storm.

He reached for it.

Power answered.

Lightning leapt from his outstretched hand, a silent thread of incandescent force. It struck the lead soldier at the base of the skull, dropping him before his comrades registered what had happened.

The others shouted, spinning toward the corpse.

Jin moved.

He was among them in three strides, the Circuit humming a dirge of conquest through his limbs. His hand snapped forward—an instinctual gesture. Arcs of blue-white light flared from his fingers, branching into each opponent in a crackling web.

For an instant, all five men convulsed as one.

When the lightning faded, silence swallowed the courtyard.

Jin stood alone, rain hissing across the smoldering bodies.

The Circuit's pulse settled. He took a ragged breath. He felt no satisfaction, no triumph—only inevitability. This was the path he had chosen. There would be no retreat.

He turned his gaze to the highest tower of the keep. From this angle, he could just see the ceremonial hall's broad windows. Warm light flickered beyond them—his father and the elders, still reciting the old prayers.

They would emerge to find half their sentries dead.

And realize that Jin Arashi had become something they could not cage.

He raised one hand. Lightning danced across his palm, a promise forged in defiance.

"I will not kneel," he whispered into the storm. "I will not beg. And I will not be forgotten."

The rain swallowed his words, carrying them into the night.

He turned and walked away without lookin

g back.

[Integration: 31%.]

Far above, thunder cracked like a war drum.

And the Sovereign Circuit pulsed in answer.