The Vowbreaker's Night

Long ago, in the age when the Domes still shone without dimming, one dome strayed from the Path of Light.
Some say doubt first entered their hearts when a wanderer returned from the dark lands speaking in the voice of another.
Others claim Dark walked beside him, unseen.

Whatever the truth, the people of the Vowbreaker Dome withheld their Child when the year of Offering came.

Thus began the Vowbreaker Night.
The radiance waned day by day, until warmth fled their walls and the twilight outside grew colder than memory.
For the first time since the Second Blinding, the world knew true night.

When Light beheld their silence, His sorrow became wrath.
He withdrew His hand from the Vowbreaker Dome,
and His radiance leapt elsewhere,
to warm the faithful and forsake the untrue.

In that hour, the Vowbreaker Dome was stilled.
No cry escaped its glass.
No warmth remained.

Only statues of those hit by Light's wrath in their final breath —
twenty-five thousand souls caught between fear and pleading —
stand now between Montelume and Lorelume,
a field of stone remembering the price of broken vows.

Scholars speak of the Vowbreaker's last confession, carved into a shattered panel found among the ruins:

“What answered me in the shadow was not Light.
I listened to another’s whisper.
I believed a lie, and my people will scream for eternity because of me.”

Since that day, Traders walk with unease between the domes.
For they alone can witness the fate of the faithless dome,
And the memory of their silence weighs on every step they take.
Through the Vowbreaker's dome, the city of twenty-five thousand faithless souls.