NARAK: The Blood Covenant

The Origin of the Oathbound Flame

Avici did not return.

When the sigil seal closed, it did so without his fire.

Vicki collapsed back into the real world, gasping, trembling.

But inside the Third Sigil, Avici remained.

Not bound.

Not trapped.

But... drawn.

Something deeper had called him back.

Something older than curses. Older than gods. Older than the truth.

Avici still with his calm face even while his mind still think about Vicki in real world.

"You want a story?"

"Here's one you won't find in any holy book."

"Before I was flame... I was just a man."

And then Flashback.

The first thing Avici ever remembered was silence.

Not peace.

Emptiness.

A village on fire. Corpses still warm. And him, sitting in the middle of it all—unburned, untouched.

His name had not been Avici back then.

He had another name.

A softer one.

He never spoke it again.

Because after that night, the flames stopped being something that happened to him.

They became something he was.

They called him blessed. Then they called him cursed.

Then they tried to kill him.

Because enlightenment always looks like madness when you're the only one who survived it.

He wandered the mountains for years, eating silence and drinking grief.

Until one day...

He heard the whisper.

Not from outside.

From within.

"Would you burn the world if it meant protecting what's left of it?"

He said yes.

Because no one had told him that answers have consequences.

He studied.

Learned from monks, witches, and things that weren't technically alive.

He read scripture older than language.

He sat still for 300 days without blinking.

He bled into circles of salt until his soul learned how to leave his body politely.

And one day, on the edge of death and divinity—

He met it.

The Door.

Not a real one. Not metaphorical either.

Just... the threshold between forgetting and knowing.

Behind it?

Narakasura.

"It spoke to me in a language I didn't know I remembered," Avici murmured.

"It didn't lie. Gods don't need to."

"It told me the world was breaking. Not now. Not soon. Just... eventually."

"And someone had to be awake when it happened."

So he made a deal.

Not with Narakasura.

With himself.

He burned his name. Carved a new one into his soul. One that couldn't be erased by memory or time.

AVICI.

The name means "without waves".

The lowest realm of hell.

How poetic.

Because that's where he decided to stand.

The Oath was written in blood.

His own.

The script was etched into his ribcage.

Each line said the same thing, over and over:

"Guard the seal. Guard the blood. Guard the name."

And just like that, he was bound.

Not to power.

But to duty.

The kind that outlives love, reason, and even regret.

And when the Arana bloodline was born—

He watched them.

All of them.

For centuries.

Never interfering.

Never speaking.

Just... burning quietly in their veins.

Until Vicki.

Until the boy who didn't forget.

"You want tragedy?" Avici said, smirking in the dark.

"Try being immortal and emotionally available. It's exhausting."

"Try watching every generation choose ignorance over instinct."

"Try waking up in the body of a sarcastic teenager who thinks trauma is a personality trait."

"Actually… that one's kinda fun."

Then he felt it.

The walls of the Third Seal throbbed.

Not in pain.

But in preparation.

Something had heard the story.

Something was listening.

And it wasn't satisfied.

Because now… it wanted more.

Back in the present.

In the Whisper Archive, Anata Dharma looked up.

His tea boiled over, untouched.

He wrote three sentence into his ledger:

"Avici did not return."

Then, beneath that:

"Fourth seal murmuring."

Then, smaller:

"His soul is flaring."

Meanwhile, in the depths of Naraya Dharma International School...

Narayana stared into the black-slicked glass of a sealed coffin beneath the gym.

His reflection blinked back wrong.

He whispered:

"Your Oathburner is slipping."

"And if he breaks..."

He didn't finish.

He just turned.

And walked toward the Fourth Seal.

Back inside the Third—

Avici sat alone.

The fire around him died to embers.

His fingers traced the glyphs on his own chest.

And far, far above—

A new sigil flickered to life.

Not red.

Not gold.

Bone white.

It whispered a new name.

Not Arana.

Not Narak.

Just...

"Dharma."

The whisper rolled across the Sigil Realm like silk dipped in acid.

Avici stood slowly.

His hand hovered over his chest, where the name still glowed beneath scorched flesh.

This wasn't a memory.

It wasn't a hallucination.

It was a summon.

"That name should've died with the pact," he muttered.

"So why the hell is it speaking to me now?"

His thoughts drifted—unbidden, unwanted.

To a face.

A man draped in gray robes, eyes like split obsidian, and a smile that always came two seconds too late to be sincere.

The original Dharma.

A name even Avici tried to forget.

"We made an agreement," Avici whispered into the dark.

"You said you'd seal the knowledge, and I'd seal the flame."

"So why… are you still burning?"

[FLASHBACK: 427 YEARS AGO]

A chamber beneath a temple, older than any map.

Lit only by memory-fire and truth-glyphs.

Avici stood face-to-face with a younger man—Anata Dharma's ancestor.

"You're going to bind yourself to the Arana line?" the man asked.

"They're impulsive. Reckless. Full of holes."

"Exactly," Avici said. "They feel."

"And you want me to handle the Archive?"

"You and your bloodline were born to remember what no one should know."

"That's not comforting."

"It wasn't meant to be."

The two shook hands. One bound himself to flame, the other to truth.

Thus was born the balance:

The Arana: Flamebound bloodline, the key to the seals.

The Dharma: Memory binders, observers of history.

The Oathbound: Avici caught in between, forever burning for both.

Back in the present. Third Sigil Realm

Avici clenched his jaw.

"That name… wasn't supposed to return."

"So why now?"

Another gust of nothingness answered him.

But something shifted.

The realm around him—the Third Sigil—began to shrink.

The walls curled inward like a closing eye.

"Someone's pulling the memory in," he realized.

"Someone outside is rewinding the pact."

And he had a name.

"Anata…"

Anata Dharma stood alone in the Whisper Archive.

The seals glowed around him like silent judges.

He wasn't smiling.

He was reading.

And for once… he looked afraid.

"This page shouldn't exist."

It was a ledger. Dated before the first seal.

The ink was dried blood.

The author?

Avici Narak.

"We never made this deal."

He looked up.

Eyes wide.

"He lied."

Back in the Sigil Realm, Avici fell to his knees.

The sky cracked.

Another voice joined the whisper.

"You were never the only guardian."

[FLASHBACK: UNKNOWN TIME – THE FORBIDDEN ROOM]

A second Oathbound.

A silhouette lost in soot and silence.

Eyes white-hot.

Chains around its mouth.

But its presence was undeniable.

It stood across from Avici... once.

Before time was counted.

Before the Arana line even existed.

"We made three. Not one," the Dharma voice had said.

"But only one survived the fire."

"You."

Avici's breath caught.

"There was another..."

The glyphs around him began screaming.

A new name flickered into existence—blinding, furious, unstable.

But just for a second.

Then it was gone.

Erased.

"No."

"You weren't erased."

"You were sealed."

Somewhere far above, Vicki sat upright in his dorm.

He didn't know why.

He just... remembered something that was never his.

A boy.

A sword.

A name he couldn't say.

He whispered anyway:

"Are you... still down there?"

The Third Sigil flared.

Avici looked up.

His time here was ending.

The realm would eject him soon.

But not before one final whisper bled through the cracks:

"If the Oath is broken…"

"...the Ashen One will rise."

The words rang inside the Sigil Realm like prophecy wrapped in venom.

Avici stood still.

Silent.

But not calm.

Not anymore.

Because before he could face the storm… he had to remember why he was even here.

[FLASHBACK: THE ARANA BLOODLINE]

There are many who carry the Arana name.

But only two ever burned bright enough to summon him.

The first—An old man with eyes full of storms and fingers inked in glyphs. Once a boy who grew up in a house full of mirrors and made peace with his reflection.

Vicki's great-grandfather.

The first true Vessel.

He found Avici in the fire. Carved the Oath into his bones. Said the name with understanding, not fear.

"AVICI NARAK," he once whispered, cradling a dying village in his arms."If you must burn… then let it be for the ones not yet born."

And then came the betrayal.

Arvanu Shura.

He wasn't always twisted.

He was one of the first Watchers tasked with protecting the Arana bloodline from corruption tied to Narakasura.

He and Avici… were brothers in duty.

Bound by flame and memory.

But duty is a brittle thing.

And Narakasura whispers beautifully when no one else is listening.

Arvanu turned.

He broke the pact.

Not suddenly.

Quietly.

One word at a time.

And when he struck it wasn't the bloodline he killed first.

It was trust.

"Why him?" Avici had asked, kneeling inside mind realm of Vicki's great-grandfather's corpse.

"He believed too much," Arvanu had said. "I've simply corrected the lie."

That night, the glyph that held Avici's bond began to fade.

The Arana line nearly forgot him.

He nearly ceased.

But someone interfered.

A boy , or he looks like a boy, with sharp eyes and an even sharper mind.

Not an Arana.

But a Dharma.

Anata.

He didn't come with armies or spells.

He came with information.

He smuggled a shard of the Oath into the newborn Vicki's soul.

Quietly.

Without asking permission.

"I'm not a hero," Anata had said. "I'm just... curious to see what happens next."

And that, somehow, was enough.

Avici survived.

Just barely.

Enough to whisper. Enough to wait.

[BACK TO PRESENT – SIGIL REALM]

Now the realm was breaking.

Not collapsing. Just... rejecting him.

The Seal had no more memories to give.

But the whisper of the Ashen One still pulsed through every crack.

"Who are you?" Avici asked the silence.

It replied:

"The one you forgot."

Then:

"You left me in the fire."

Avici's eyes widened.

"No…"

But the Seal pushed him out before he could finish the thought.

[REAL WORLD – NARAYA DHARMA HALLWAY]

Raka stood guard near Vicki's body that suddenly become unsoncious.

Nayla paced furiously nearby, muttering equations and arcane logic under her breath.

"If he's not back in 5 minutes I swear I'm rewriting the summoning sequence from scratch—"

Suddenly—

A burst of flame.

A pulse of Oathbound energy.

Chains of light shot from the broken glyph on the wall.

Vicki's body jerked—

Raka shouted, "He's back!"

But then…

Nothing.

Vicki stayed down.

And instead—

Nayla froze.

Her eyes turned RED.

A ring of sigils burned into the floor beneath her feet.

She levitated six inches off the ground.

And a voice—not hers—spoke from her lips:

"...what the hell?"

She blinked.

Looked down at herself.

"Why do your perfume smells like impossible math equation, Vic?!"

Raka's jaw hit the floor.

"OH NO. BRO?!"

Nayla (Avici?) spun toward him, eyes wide.

"BRO WHAT THE ACTUAL F—"

"YOU'RE POSSESSING NAYLA?!"

"I MISSED!"