Faith is Earned 1, page 25
He tapped his chest, once.
"My Class used to be [Sworn Captain]. I held the Ninth Gate in the roots of mountains during the War of Shame. My company was tasked with defending it while the city above evacuated that whole quarter. That… wasn’t so bad. We’d trained for that. But… then came the second order."
He looked up, face half-lit by firelight, half-shadowed by years.
"They told us to wait. Told us the treasury vaults still needed clearing. That we were to buy them time, said the gate would hold. Said we were dwarves. That holding lines was what we did and we were sworn to do."
His fingers closed, slowly, around his flask. He didn’t drink. Just held it like something warmer than the truth.
"But they were dying. My soldiers. Lad, I- I loved them like my own! I knew their children, I blessed their unions. I fought and trained with them, drank and ate. I knew some of them since they were wee lads, younger than you! And they… they were getting torn apart in waves. Troggs. Thousands of them, we never found out how many. They moved like stones falling, digging through sheer stone and mineral with their claws, climbing each other like stairs. Every hour, I lost another brother or sister. And every hour, the carts didn’t come."
He drew in a breath through his nose.
"I held as long as I could. Long enough for every dwarf in the lower halls to get out. Every child, every smith, every broken old veteran who couldn’t lift a shield anymore. That part I’m proud of. I held. We all did."
A pause.
"Then I gave the order to pull back. We would all die willingly for each other and for dwarves. But not… not for riches. Not for the same disease that sits unconquered at the heart of our people."
He didn’t look at Luke. Just at the edge of the fire.
"I told the last three who stayed they didn’t have to. But they wanted to. I respected that. We heard their hammer blows echoing through the shaft long after the gate had fallen."
His knuckles were white.
"I lost command the moment I returned. The Council called me a deserter in all but name. My rank was removed, my company disbanded. My oath… judged broken."
He blinked slowly. Once.
"And the System agreed. It gave me a new Class."
Luke’s eyes reflected the flame. He didn’t interrupt.
"[Oathbreaker Captain]. That’s what I’ve been ever since. The worst part is, I didn’t even know the Class existed. But the System knew. It saw the cracks in me and made them into walls."
Brag’s voice cracked, but he pushed through it. He was close to weeping, but Luke gave him the honor of pretending not to see it.
"The men and women I travel with now? They were part of my original company. The ones who obeyed the order to retreat. They carry their own shame. Not one of them got promoted after that. Some of them drank too deep for too long. Others just drifted. But none of them bear what I bear."
The silence stretched between them.
"That’s why I’m here. This hill, this claim. The veins beneath it could start a new mining town. A real one! If I clear it, if I survive… maybe I don’t get forgiven. But maybe I can make something again. Maybe the name Brag doesn’t just make other dwarves spit on the floor."
He looked at Luke then, fully.
"I don’t expect you to understand. And, lad, I don’t expect you to approve either. But that’s what your Skill saw in me. It wasn’t evil or… I hope not. Just… failure. Carved into my very bones."
He tried to laugh, but it was a rasp.
"Truth is, lad, I’d do it again. I saved lives. I know I did. But sometimes I wonder if it was only my life I was saving. If I’d been braver, maybe I’d have died holding that gate. Maybe… maybe that would’ve been enough."
He wiped at his face once. Then again.
"But I didn’t. And I’ve been carrying it ever since."
His shoulders began to shake.
The first sob wasn’t loud. Just a sudden, sharp breath through clenched teeth. Then another. And another.
Brag didn’t weep like a child. He wept like a mountain cracking. Quiet. Shaking. The kind of grief that had waited too long to be seen.
He leaned forward, face in his hands, shoulders hunched over the firelight like a penitent at a shrine.
And said nothing more.
Luke understood then. Why his Skill had been screaming. His Class was in antithesis with Brag’s. The one who keeps vows and oaths, versus the one who breaks them. No wonder [Sense Sin] saw him as a monument of filth. His very Class screamed his treachery, didn’t it?
Bullshit. I don’t know if it’s the System or just you, Xelreth, but bullshit.
If that’s how it interprets Sin, then the Skill is not as reliable as I thought.
But he did have other powers. His Class might not be perfect, but for this…? Yes. Here is a wrong that could be made right and Luke felt his Class singing.
So he spoke, in as measured a voice as he could, the words coming out as bare whispers.
“Do you know what my Class is about, Brag?”
“What? Er… yeah. You’ve mentioned, lad. Righting wrongs, right?”
“And witnessing vows.”
Brag was looking at him, still confused, still broken. But with a slow dawn of understanding on his face.
“Kneel.”
“Luke, I, I don’t deserve it yet, I-“
“Kneel. Whether you deserve it or not is for my God to judge. But it is also for me to offer. So, kneel!”
Brag did, though it was more of a collapse than a conscious action. How someone like him could tremble before someone as young and low-Level as Luke, he did not know, but it did not matter either.
This is what I have sworn. To right wrongs and keep my vows and others’. No matter if it is in front of Gods, armies or monsters.
“Who are you? And what is your vow?”
“My- my name is Brag. Brag Kru-Dau. F-former [Sworn Captain] of the Ninth Gate- Ninth Gate under the Mountain. Current… current [Oathbreaker Captain]. Leader of those who fought and ran. Friend to those who died. Traitor to dwarvenkind. And I vow- I… I vow…”
Luke waited, but he did not wait for long. Because whatever pain Brag had hidden for so long, masked with cheeriness and pure duty, it was being burned out of him by the fires of conviction.
“I Vow to claim this hill for the dwarves I once swore to protect. I Vow to reclaim my honor, mine and that of those who follow me. I Vow to once again have our names sung in the halls in the deep and when we die, have our bodies laid by the tombs of our forebearers! And… I VOW that should I live to see it, I will clear the infestation, crack back the invasion and RECLAIM MY HOMELAND BACK FROM THE ABYSS!”
[Vow Witnessed: Redemption Through Stone]
[Vow Witnessed: The Mountain Fights Back]
[Vows Accepted]
Chapter 27
The fire hadn’t moved since the last confession, but the night had changed.
It wasn’t just the flicker of heat against stone or the quiet rhythm of dwarven armor creaking as bodies settled into rest. It was the way they gathered, far from a warband holding formation and not like broken men and women clinging to silence either. They came slowly, almost shyly, as if unsure if the new warmth at the fire was meant for them.
But it was.
Luke didn’t stand when they approached. He just looked up, face lit with gold and red and the hint of a welcome. One by one, they took places around him. No one gave orders. Brag said nothing. The old weight was simply gone instead of lifted, burned down like coals that had finally flared out.
Someone fetched the ale. What little was left.
One of the dwarves muttered, holding up a battered tin flask as if in apology.
"This is the last of it."
"Then it's a good thing we earned it, ain’t it?"
Brag rumbled, settling in with the ease of someone who no longer had to pretend he carried nothing.
They passed the flask. Each took a pull, wiped the rim, and handed it on. Luke hesitated when it reached him.
"Not really one for drinking".
"We know. That’s why it’s funny."
He took a sip. It was awful. He coughed, naturally they laughed.
The sound cracked something open. Not at all loud or raucous. Just a little laughter that spread out like warm water through cracked stone. One of the dwarves, a woman with braids wound tight against her helm, nudged Brag with the edge of her boot.
"He didn’t mention you cried."
"I didn’t."
"You shook like a damned cliffquake."
"A dignified cliffquake."
More laughter and Luke let himself smile.
They told stories after that, starting out quietly. Some with stutters, others with only half-finished thoughts. But they spoke of the gate, of the last orders and of the silence that followed. One dwarf remembered the smell of blood and torch-soaked stone, while another remembered the hammer blows of the last three who stayed.
"I thought I was a coward. For years! Thought I'd never be anything else. But hearing Brag say it, the way he said it… I think I was just loyal. Loyal to the wrong part of the oath."
Luke nodded with understanding. They turned to him eventually.
"What about you, lad? Where’d you come from before this madness?"
He told them. He wasn’t willing to share everything, but enough for it to matter.
Of Farrowend and the hill, of the Monastery drenched in Sin, of… a girl with gold hair and shadowed eyes. Of bandits with names it hurt to recall.
"She wasn’t evil. Just broken. Like the rest of us."
That silenced them a little.
"What’s it feel like?"
"Being a [Votary]?"
"No. Uhm, being you. I mean… when the vows settle in. When the System watches?"
Luke took a breath.
"Like... someone else breathing with me. Like I say the words and something far older hears them and agrees. It doesn’t judge, exactly. Just... listens. And if they’re true, it gives me the strength to carry them. Even when I don’t want to."
A quiet hum of thought passed through the circle, the fire popping being the only sound for a time.
"Do you think we could make one? A vow?"
The dwarf who spoke had a ragged beard and fingers that trembled when they weren’t wrapped around his cup. He didn’t meet anyone’s eyes. Luke looked at him gently.
"You can always make a vow."
"Even us? After all this?"
"Especially you."
No one asked for permission. They didn’t stand, nor kneel. They just... spoke.
Some said it clearly.
"I vow to climb this hill and plant a flag not for glory, but to prove we still live."
Others whispered.
"I vow to earn my family back. One day."
Some just grunted or nodded after hearing the rest.
Luke didn’t question any of them. He only listened and somewhere in the firelight, in the wind that wrapped round the ridge and whispered over their bowed heads, something unseen took notice.
[Vow Witnessed: Redemption Through Duty]
[Vows Accepted]
No other signs, no trumpets, no glowing marks. But they sat differently afterward, straighter. Or maybe just lighter.
The dwarf who’d spoken first wiped his eyes with the back of a thick glove.
"I never thought I'd say one again. Not after the disgrace. Not to mention after everything they said about us."
"You didn’t say it for them. You said it for yourself. That’s the only one that counts."
The fire crackled down to coals, as the flask made its last pass. Brag leaned back against a rock, eyes half-lidded.
"We’re not ghosts anymore."
No one spoke after that for some time, but then again, no one left either. They sat until the stars turned and the wind stopped biting. Until the quiet no longer felt hollow and the fire burned low and the night felt like something new.
[Votary – Level 12]
[New Skill: Minor Blessing: Radiance]
Huh. Could be useful.
They were breaking camp when Suth called out with a sharp grunt and a muttered curse, the kind that meant something had snagged his eye. He’d wandered toward the edge of the plateau with bedroll still tucked under one arm, half-awake and swearing about the cold. Now he stood at a slant in the rock wall, squinting.
Brag walked over with his helm under one arm and Luke followed, fastening the last buckle on his vambrace.
“See that line? Doesn’t match the rest of the stone.”
It was barely visible. A seam in the rock, just wide enough to slip a finger into. Unlike the jagged natural strata, this line was clean, intentional.
Brag brushed at it, stone dust flaking away. He frowned, then stepped back and drove the butt of a warhammer against the wall.
The sound rang strange. Hollow.
They brought tools and torches. It took little effort, less than it should’ve for humans, to loosen the outer stone. What fell away was a false wall, weathered to match the surrounding cliff, but behind it lay a tunnel.
Narrow, sloped inward. The top curved like a keyhole instead of rounded like most natural formations. And though time had worn it, the shaping was too clean to be anything but worked. Dwarf-made, perhaps or something else.
Brag ran one hand along the edge. Luke could see the shift in his posture, wariness, as opposed to fear.
“We go slow. Torches lit, weapons ready.”
They entered in pairs. Brag and Luke first, then Suth and Jerri, with the rest filing in behind.
The air shifted immediately, becoming cooler and drier. The torchlight caught on old stone supports at intervals along the wall, half-eroded braces, their carvings faint but deliberate. Some held runes, most worn to illegibility. The dust here hadn’t been stirred in decades, maybe longer.
They walked in silence with even the usual dwarven muttering giving way to reverence.
Then the stone changed. Iron, silver, glittering streaks in the wall. One young dwarf, Tavrik, Luke thought, reached out and touched a vein running from floor to ceiling, his mouth parted like he was about to whisper a prayer.
“It’s real. I think this is silver. Deeps be good… is that starsteel?”
The others crowded closer. Luke stayed near Brag, who kept his hammer ready but down. There was no sound beyond their breath, no scuttling, no groaning timbers. Just the faint drip of distant moisture.
Tool marks ran along the walls, old and deep, from chisels and hand-picks. Whatever this was, it had been mined long ago.
“Look here.”
Suth’s torch had caught on a panel of smoothed wall. Names, carved by hand in a tidy grid and below them a short prayer in Old Dwarven script.
Luke leaned in. He didn’t read the language, but he recognized structure when he saw it mostly due to the repetition. It wasn’t graffiti, it looked like a record. Maybe a blessing of some sort.
Something fluttered at the edge of his senses.
Not… quite Sin. It didn’t have the same weight of guilt or darkness. But something adjacent to it. As if the stone remembered what had happened here and was still waiting for someone to ask about it.
He touched the wall. A sharp breath, then nothing.
“You alright?”
“Fine. Just… the air feels different here.”
Brag nodded slowly.
“Aye. Not cursed, I don’t think. But it’s not clean either.”
Further in, they found what looked like a mining alcove, a wider chamber where old supports had collapsed, half-burying the floor in rubble. As they stepped in, a chunk of stone shifted underfoot and clattered into the darkness. Everyone froze.
No follow-up sound was heard and no echoing rumble of collapse sounded of. Just the thud and the silence that swallowed it.
That can’t be normal.
One of them laughed, too loudly and everyone exhaled at once.
Luke glanced back down the tunnel. Their torchlight stretched in long shadows, flickering along the floor like waves. He did not like the way it moved.
The deeper they went, the more he felt it. It did not have the signs of a monster, but a history that hadn’t quite been laid down to rest. Just… watching.
Still, nothing moved and no threats came, while they continued to find more veins, more traces of value, more and more.
“We could mine this. Set up proper supports, run carts back to the surface… this is almost easy.”
“We mark it. But then, we climb. This is proof the hill is worth the claim, aye, but the summit comes first, always. Not to worry, all this just means we made the proper call to come here.”
They understood Brag. That they weren’t here to settle, at least not yet, but the call to riches could still be heard, like a disease, in each and every one of them.
Guess it can’t be easy for them, being dwarves.
Near the far wall, someone scratched a series of runes into the stone, small, almost childish. A simple message.
We were here.
They stood for a moment, just looking at it. Then began the walk back.
Luke lingered a moment longer, his fingers brushing the edge of the carved names. There was something sad about them. Almost sorrowful, a bit tired. A memory left in stone, as if someone had once wanted to be remembered and time had almost erased them.
Brag waited at the tunnel’s mouth.
“Anything?”
“No Sin. Just something old and worn-out.”
“Good enough for me.”
They emerged into light.
The wind was harsher now, the sky above the plateau having gone pale with midday cloud, but the tunnel behind them felt darker than it should have. When Luke glanced back, it felt smaller, more distant. Like it was already closing behind them.
He shook the feeling off and rejoined the others. In no time, they finished packing up camp. Brag led the way to the next slope, where the incline narrowed again into switchbacks.
They would climb first, the summit still waiting for them.
And the tunnel would have to wait behind them.
They climbed steadily that day, boots scraping against loose stone, the air thinning with each step. The slope rose in switchbacks, narrow in places and steep in others, until their legs burned with each ascent. Behind them, the plateau shrank to a rough-edged memory. Before them, the summit stood like a broken crown, jagged but unmistakable. A few more hours, maybe less and they would stand at the top.
