The First Vow

The sun rose over a burning Thrime.

The sky, as if mourning the screams of children, wore a veil of smoke. Black tendrils slithered down the mountainside like wounded spirits fleeing the fire. Embers swirled in the wind like falling stars. Beneath them, small feet ran — some barefoot, some bleeding, all trembling. The soil was hot. The air, thick with ash and screams. But the miracle was simple: all eight... lived.

Alaztuğ had lost his brother — not to fire, but to silence. The kind that settles between two heartbeats and never leaves. His fists had been clenched since the moment he let go of that hand. He never forgot the warmth that faded.

Ayserin watched her mother dragged away by faceless men wrapped in black — a silence deeper than death settling in her chest ever since. The scream never left her throat. It simply made a home there.

Korkut had hidden in a collapsed coal shaft, breathing in dust and darkness, the only witness to the slaughter he could not stop. No one had found him… not even the killers. That made him feel both lucky — and cursed.

Albörü, high on the northern slope, had seen it all. Flames. Smoke. Blades. And through it, a man — an old one — standing in defiance while others fell. His hair was wild, his cloak scorched, but his eyes held fire: a myth in motion. Erdenay.

Erdenay had once been a knight of ancient magic — a Kut Guardian, protector of sacred knowledge from a time when stars still whispered to those who could hear. But the years had turned him into a joke.

He drew runes in the dirt, circled trees in ash, muttered to the moon.
He spoke of falling stars, of children marked by fate, of a fire that would return.

“His mind is trapped in forgotten chants,” they said.
“Just a fool dancing with shadows.”

The villagers chuckled. Children giggled. Some mimicked him. Others threw stones.

But on that night... no one laughed.

When the invaders of the Ak Corridor breached Thrime’s heart, Erdenay did not flee.

He stood in the center of the square — cloak fluttering, staff in hand — and whispered words in a tongue the world had forgotten. His voice trembled not with fear, but with awe, like a prophet remembering the sound of God.

Then, he struck the earth.

The soil cracked open.

A spiral of glowing runes surged skyward, wrapping the children in a cocoon of divine fire. The symbol of Kut — ancient, shifting, alive — pulsed in the air like a heartbeat.

“Kut protect you, children of Thrime,” Erdenay spoke.
“With every spark left in my soul, I will shield you.”

And in that moment, the eight vanished in a blinding flash — hidden from death, from time, from fate itself.

Erdenay did not fall.
But his knees buckled, and he tasted blood.
Still, he stood.

And he swore to the stars above and the shadows below:

“I will raise them.
Not as weapons.
But as keepers of what the world tried to erase.
As children of Kut.”

That night, Thrime was lost.
Its stories burned. Its people silenced. Its soil soaked in memory.
But the eight lived.

By dawn, the smoke had thinned — and the survivors stood atop a ruined hill shrine, overlooking the ash. The air still glowed faintly. Among the rubble stood a stone... ancient, warm, pulsing with an unseen rhythm.

They said it was the first seal of the Kut Scriptures — placed before the age of kings, written before the concept of names.

Erdenay, scorched but standing, turned to the children — no longer trembling, no longer crying.

“This stone is not ordinary,” he said, voice hoarse but certain.
“It remembers. If you vow upon it, Kut will hear you.”

One by one, the children stepped forward.

Tengir. Alaztuğ. Ayserin. Korkut. Albörü. Temir. İlteriş. Sırmaya.

Their hands met in a circle.
Not a ritual — a rite.
Not a symbol — a scar.

Their voices, barely more than breath, laced the stone with meaning.

“We vow,” they whispered.
“To remember.
To rise.
To return.”

Erdenay watched them.

“You are no longer alone,” he said.
“You are no longer weak. But vengeance is not swift. You must learn. The runes. The winds. Each other.
Fight, yes — but do not burn alone.”

He raised his staff one last time.

“I am Erdenay. The last guardian of Kut.
And now… your shadow.”

And from that moment forward…
a legend began again.

No longer merely children.
No longer just survivors.

They were the flame left behind in the ashes.
Bound by vow. Chosen by Kut.
And fated to burn their names into the stars.