The Lampward Covenant

The Lampward Covenant is spoken wherever Vaelorn keeps a harbour lamp burning against fog. It promises shelter to the dispossessed, but its mercy has iron underneath. A family admitted beneath the light receives bread, clean water, healers, and a place to sleep; then its names, wounds, weapons, relics, debts, and oaths are entered before witnesses. The Covenant was born from old ruin and keeps the smell of funeral smoke inside its grace. It is beautiful because it remembers the desperate. It is feared because no one may live under its lamps and remain politically weightless. Its oldest clauses were written after ships of the wounded arrived without enough surgeons, and the Covenant still remembers that mercy without pilots, guards, stores, and disciplined routes can become another road to slaughter.