Time passed and after half an hour and with nothing happening, Mack finally heard the voice of the pilot. “We reached our destination. Prepare to land”.

Hearing his report on the main hall, Mack quickly gazed outside the window and saw a small island just like any tiny island from Earth.

After a few minutes, the transportation vehicle landed, and they exited the ship, facing a hot sun and plants akin to coconut trees but with clear shades of wood and smaller fruits, it really seemed like a paradisiacal island in the middle of nowhere, the beach had white and clean sand and the waves clashed against the shore forming small foam waves.

Mack almost wanted to just lay there and enjoy the life, after all, life was about this. To enjoy it.

Unfortunately, they were on the run, otherwise Mack would probably disregard any concerns and just lay there and bath on the hot sunlight.

Seeing he was already way behind everyone, Mack shook his useless thoughts and followed the crew of the ship.

After a small walk they reached a small cave that barely could fit two persons side by side, and entered, Mack guessed it was some kind of bunker, but after walking a few meters inside the cave he saw a huge room that spanned for about a few hundred meters and in the middle of it, a huge magic circle, that now Mack could recognize its workings, albeit only the idea behind, ‘A teletransportation magic circle’.

Once everyone entered the room, the overseer said, “Before we can leave this planet once for all, let’s proceed with the Oath”

Mack gaze turned serious, as he hated the idea of being bound by an oath, anything that restricted his actions was something to avoid in his mind, if there was one thing that he valued above all was his freedom, ‘but unfortunately, I can’t dodge this’, thought Mack while thinking about his goals and plans.

Suddenly Mack’s gaze went to the healer, as he noticed him taking off a tiny box from his pockets, the action was not worth any concern, but the way the healer proceeded made Mack ponder, ‘So the mysterious item was always with the healer? Brilliant, If I was someone going for it I would have thought the one keeping it would be the overseer’, and just as Mack made his guess, the healer said, “Everyone gather around, some of you are new to this, but in a trial there is an additional oath to be made by everyone, to ensure secrecy of identities because eventual information is bound to leak during a trial.”

As the healer said his words, the group of people gathered around him and waited for his orders, the healer opened the tiny box, and from its inside he took a small eyeball, the size of a normal human eye but fully covered in patched scars. Seeing that everyone was around him and paying attention, the healer seemed satisfied and said, “Once I finish chanting, you all must repeat the same words as mine. If you don’t repeat, the overseer will take action. You can guess the consequences.”

A few people nodded as if understanding the meaning, but Mack stood still, looking at the patched eyeball in the hands of the healer, he seemed to feel a faint connection with it, as if he had already seen it somewhere, like a déjà vu, the feeling was there, but Mack didn’t recall seeing this eye, or anything close to a ‘patched eye’ before.

After a few moments, Mack shook those feelings from his head and paid attention to the ritual. The healer was already chanting incompressible words that even the translator didn’t know the meaning of or could not translate it.

As the chanting went on, Mack noticed the eye subtly moving on its own, as if had come alive above the healer’s palm, the eye gazed around slowly as if coming from a long sleep, and started to look at everyone around, that, until he met Macks gaze.

The eye froze in its spot and didn’t bother looking at the rest of the people as its gaze was locked on Mack. Even his iris now looked different, changing from its color to light red and its pupils turning vertical. All of the sudden, Mack felt a chill in his spine, ‘this feeling again…’

No one noticed the abnormal behavior of the eyeball as they thought the item was already mystical to start and their focus was on the chanting, only the overseer seemed to not understand what was happening as his gaze subtly shifted from the healer to Mack, but was so subtly done that no one noticed.

After a few seconds of chanting the healer stopped and said in a now ‘comprehensible’ language, “We oath to never provide any information about every single person in this room, unless the person in question, give us a clear approval to do so.” And just as everyone was instructed to do, they repeated the same words aloud.

Once the words faded, the overseer looked around and said, “With a drop of blood, I pay the tribute of this oath” as he said he put his left hand over the eyeball and the overseer came close to it and slightly pressed a knife against his thumb, a drop of blood from the healer hand fell on the eye, and the overseer repeated the same words and also gave a drop of blood from his hand. He then looked around and motioned to all of them to do the same.

When Mack’s turn came, he felt dubious about giving his blood to the eye, but still proceeded, and seeing that nothing weird happened, he felt more at ease. He also remembered that Harlack also did this and if something weird were to happen, he would probably advise Mack before coming to the trial.

After everyone proceed with giving their own blood, the healer covered the eye with both of his hands and said, “It’s done.. Now let’s proceed with the oath of the new members.”