Bonds-of-shadow_and_Fate

He didn't go to another world seeking power.

He went to the hospital to say goodbye to his mother.

What happened after that — the betrayal, the framing, the rain, the shrine at the edge of the city — doesn't matter anymore. What matters is the sword.

It found him at the worst moment of his life. Ancient, broken, and hungry in a way that has nothing to do with steel. It absorbs the souls of those it kills. Their strength becomes his. Their memories become his. Their darkness becomes his.

The system calls him a Vessel.

He calls it a problem he can't put down.

He wakes in a world he's never seen, carrying a weapon he doesn't fully control, with a countdown in the corner of his vision telling him he has forty-eight percent of his mind remaining before the souls inside the blade finish taking the rest.

He doesn't know the language. Doesn't know the rules. Doesn't know why a broken sword chose a broken engineer from a world that has nothing to do with magic or destiny or chosen ones.

What he knows is this: there are people in front of him who are about to be hurt by something he might be able to stop.

So he stops it.

And then he does it again.

And again.

Until stopping things is the only identity he has left — and the sword is the only thing keeping him whole enough to keep doing it.

This is not a power fantasy.

Every kill costs him something. Every victory leaves a mark. The blade doesn't care about his survival — it cares about being used. And the longer he carries it, the harder it becomes to remember which thoughts are his and which belong to the dead.

Dark. Cinematic. The kind of story that gets heavier the further in you go.

Start with Chapter One. See if you can stop.

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Three types of readers land here:

The first reads the description and Follows immediately.

The second reads Chapter One and Follows.

The third finishes Chapter Three, looks up, realizes it's 2am, and Follows.

All roads lead to the same place.

Might as well start now.

🙂