Oathbreaker (RomansRevenge & DirrtyScarlett)

[RomansRevenge]

​ A Dream (The sixth night this week. The thousandth time in his life.) It always starts the same. I'm standing barefoot in a field made of feathers. Not soft, not warm—just black. Cold. Endless. They shift under me like they're breathing. The wind hums low in my ears, but it never touches my skin. The air smells like iron and ash and something older than either. Ahead of me, the tree waits. It's the only thing that never changes. Doesn't matter if I'm ten years old or thirty-something, it's always there. Massive. Wrong. A trunk as wide as a house, bark gnarled and cracked, slick with symbols that move when I'm not looking. They pulse like veins. Sometimes they burn like they're alive. Sometimes they whisper. I've tried to write them down when I wake up. Never works. They bleed away. The crows are next. One lands on my shoulder like it owns me. Heavy thing. Feathers like oil. Its eyes never match—one silver, one empty. I don't flinch anymore. I used to, as a kid. Used to wake up crying, heart in my throat. Now I just stand still. Then more come. A hundred. A thousand. Blackening the sky with their wings, perching all over the tree, the rocks, the bones in the field. Because there are bones, too. Spears sticking out of the ground like the forest tried to fight and lost. Shields shattered in half-moons. Helmets with no heads left inside. Everything half-buried in frost and time. And then the growl. It comes from behind. Low and long. Felt more than heard. It rattles my ribs every damn time. When I turn, the wolf is waiting. Always the same one. Big as a horse. Fur like night. Eyes like they remember who I am before I ever knew. It never attacks. Never runs. Just watches. But it's him I dread. The antlered man. He waits in the center of the field. Towering. Still. Antlers like branches twisted into a crown. Face always in shadow, like he's wearing a mask of night. I never see his eyes, but I feel them. They see through me. And his cloak—Jesus. Smoke that moves like it's alive. Like it wants to crawl off him and wrap itself around me. He lifts a hand. That's when it happens. The crows burst into the air, and the sky splits. Not with lightning—but with a sound. A name. Not spoken out loud. Not in English. Not even in a language I know. But I know it. It's mine. Not "Shadow." Not the name on my paychecks. Not the one on my mother's lips when she used to tuck me in with gentle hands. Something older. Something that tastes like blood and stone and winter. I open my mouth to scream, or ask, or maybe just to understand—and that's when I wake up. Every time. 3:33 a.m. Like clockwork. Since I was a kid. Since before I even knew how to spell "dream." I lie there in the dark, the sound of wings still echoing in my ears. And I tell myself the same thing I always do. It's just a dream. But part of me—the quiet part, the part I don't like to feed—knows better. Museum of Myth and Memory, New York City — 2:13 a.m. Shadow Moon had been working the night shift for exactly seven nights. Long enough to memorize the layout of the place. Long enough to figure out where the cameras were blind, where the floor tiles creaked, and where the cleaning crew stashed their snacks behind a broken vent in the staff room. Long enough to know he didn't want to be here any longer than he had to. The job was simple: observe, report, stay invisible. It was exactly the kind of gig he drifted into—quiet, nocturnal, temporary. A paycheck in exchange for pretending to care. And it came, like most things in his life did, from a broker with no name, no voice—just a message left in a burner inbox: Watch. Wait. Steal. Standard. Predictable. Boring. Except it wasn't. Not this time. Shadow stood at the edge of the mezzanine, staring down at the dimly lit exhibit halls that sprawled beneath the glass ceiling like veins under skin. The museum was one of those neo-classical nightmares—Roman columns outside, LED spotlights inside, half temple, half tech dystopia. A place dedicated to relics and rumors, where ancient weapons sat in glass coffins and whispers of gods long-forgotten were turned into educational plaques. And yet… there it was again. The hum. It started low, like feedback on an old amp, too subtle to call sound, too physical to call silence. It didn't come from the walls, or the vents, or even the security monitors lined up in the back office. No—it came from beneath him. Through him. Through the goddamn marble floors. Through the air. Through his blood. It always started when he passed that one exhibit—The Tongue of Mimir, sealed behind three layers of bulletproof glass and enough tech to make Fort Knox blush. An artifact no one really understood. A slab of dark stone covered in etched runes so deep they looked like veins. The museum's pride and joy. And every night, as Shadow walked past it, the air thickened. His fingertips buzzed. The hum wasn't sound so much as sensation, a pressure that built behind his teeth and throbbed in the hollow of his chest like some ancient war drum. He'd tried ignoring it. Hell, he'd even asked the other guard—Mike—if he felt anything strange. Mike just blinked at him and offered him half a protein bar. That was answer enough. To Mike, this was just another graveyard shift where history gathered dust and security footage looped in silence. But for Shadow, this place was starting to feel less like a museum and more like a mouth whispering to him in a language he couldn't remember knowing. He pulled his jacket tighter around him. He wasn't superstitious. Or spiritual. Or whatever the hell this was. He was just a guy. A guy who took jobs because he didn't ask questions. Who kept moving because staying meant facing things he'd buried so deep he'd forgotten they had names. The hum didn't care. The hum kept calling. "…and then Stacy from Collections told me she swears the statue in the Egypt wing blinks if you stare long enough. Swear to God, man, I went over there with a flashlight and I'm like—hello? Eyes? Nope! But then twenty minutes later—boom! Eye twitch! Freaked me out." Shadow blinked. Mike. Still talking. Still chewing on that godawful tuna wrap he microwaved every night. Still breathing through his mouth like his head was filled with bees and gym socks. "Hey," Shadow cut in, not unkindly, but firm. "I'm gonna walk the floor. Early rounds. Just to be thorough." Mike blinked. "Oh. Right on. That's real proactive of you, man. You good? You look kinda—" "Just tired," Shadow muttered. "Been a long week." And without waiting for another word, he turned and walked away, the radio on his belt hissing softly with static as he moved deeper into the belly of the museum. He didn't need to find the artifact. It would find him. As he passed under the arch leading into the northern wing, he felt it again—pulling, coaxing, vibrating in the soles of his boots. He moved on instinct, past the plaques and pedestals, through shadows cast by things too old to have names. The hum rose with each step. Not louder. Deeper. Like it knew he was coming. Like it was waiting. He paused in front of the sealed chamber. Triple-locked. Retinal scan. Thumbprint. Passcode changed every twelve hours. All useless to him right now. Didn't matter. Because standing here—alone, bathed in low blue light and the echo of something ancient—Shadow felt the hum settle into his spine like a key slipping into a lock. He didn't move. He didn't breathe. He just stared through the glass at the black tongue of stone lying motionless in its case, cold and inert. But it saw him. He knew it saw him. And for the first time in a long while, the man who called himself Shadow Moon wondered if he was really alone in his skin. And if something—someone—was about to crawl out.

 

[DirrtyScarlett]

The museum was too quiet. Not the cozy kind of quiet, like a library after hours. The kind that pressed against her ears until she could hear her own heartbeat. She'd told herself she was here for the relic — nothing else. In and out before the midnight transfer. Simple. But her gut had been tight all day, a low, coiled tension she couldn't shake. She kept seeing Lima. The glass case. The ceremonial knife she'd been ordered to hand over. The relief on the curator's face when she smuggled it out instead. And the fury in SHIELD's eyes when they realized. She'd burned her bridge that night, and she'd do it again. The Tongue of Mimir wasn't just a museum piece. It was a page ripped straight from history's first chapter — something older than language itself. If SHIELD got it, it would vanish into a black vault, catalogued, locked, and erased from the world. Her parents would have called it blasphemy, touching a "false god's" artifact. They'd said the same when she'd learned her first ancient script instead of memorizing verses. Maybe that was why she was here — maybe she'd been running from that narrow little life for years. But she wasn't a thief. Not really. She was a historian with lockpicks. A preservationist who had to work in the shadows because sunlight was too dangerous for the truth. Aria's gloved fingers brushed the strap of her satchel, the weight of her tools a familiar comfort against her hip — lockpicks wrapped in cloth to keep them silent, a collapsible glass cutter, the small EMP unit she'd built from scrap parts. The kit of someone who solved problems without permission. She crouched low in the dark recess between two exhibit halls, her back pressed to the cool marble wall. Beyond her, the air smelled faintly of floor polish and climate-controlled sterility, the kind that clung to museums after hours. The only sound was the muted hum of the HVAC system, the occasional pop of contracting metal, and the lazy sweep of a security camera panning in its programmed arc. She timed its movement, her breath syncing to the rhythm — one… two… three… and turn. One more minute and she'd move. She'd memorized the patrol schedule: the guard on the west side was a creature of habit, a man whose footsteps she could almost hear in her head. She had no intention of being in the open when he rounded the next corner. The display room lay ahead — a wide, open space with walls of glass and gleaming steel columns. From where she crouched, she could see the faint halo of light spilling from its recessed fixtures, the kind designed to make visitors feel reverent. Inside that sanctum, three layers of bulletproof glass cocooned the Tongue of Mimir, like a god locked away in its own reliquary. The security system was overkill for most artifacts. But this wasn't most artifacts. She could already imagine it — the slab of dark stone resting like a relic from another world, the runes etched so deep they looked like veins cut into flesh, lines so precise they seemed to hum when your eyes lingered too long. She wondered if anyone in this city besides her could even read them. The path to it was a gauntlet: pressure-sensitive flooring, two locked access points, and a motion sensor grid calibrated to pick up the twitch of a moth's wing. Aria had already solved each problem in her head twice over. What she couldn't plan for were the unknowns. She eased into motion, her steps soundless on rubber soles, sliding along the wall toward the final archway. But halfway there, the shadows shifted in the wash of low light. A man stepped into view. Broad shoulders. Museum security uniform. The dull gold of his name badge caught a glint from the overhead lights. His flashlight's beam sliced through the dark, spilling across the marble until it found her. Aria froze mid-step. He wasn't the usual guy. Too still. Too deliberate. His eyes didn't have that glazed, bored look of someone halfway through a graveyard shift. These eyes scanned — catalogued — as if measuring how much trouble she was worth. Trouble. Her hand slid into her satchel, fingertips brushing the smooth casing of a smoke capsule. She tilted her chin, voice low enough not to carry but steady enough to sound unafraid. "Don't suppose you're the type of guard who ignores things he doesn't see?" Her gaze locked on his, studying the way he filled the silence. If he was SHIELD, she'd bolt. If he was just a bored night watchman, maybe she could spin him. But something about the way he stood told her he wasn't either. And that — somehow — was worse.