Wa'ada

Among the Menrasa, Wa’ada arose as the goddess of sworn word and spoken bond. She is not merely the patron of oaths, but the executioner of them, a divine witness whose memory never falters and whose justice never sleeps. Her name itself is a word for promise in the old tongue, and her earliest shrines were little more than stones marked with notches, each cut for a vow taken under her gaze.

In Menrasa legend, Wa’ada carries a jagged saw-blade, not a weapon of clean war but of punishment. With it she cuts her bote of flesh—the rightful due—from those who forswear the promises they made upon her name. A liar finds themselves marked, bleeding from wounds that no healer can mend until Wa’ada has had her share. Her devotees invoke this plainly: “It is not death she seeks, but payment. Every false oath must be paid in blood.”

As her cult spread across Southrun, Wa’ada’s worship became both feared and indispensable. Traders, chiefs, and kings alike swore their treaties before her shrines, each knowing that to invoke her was to stake their very flesh on their word. With the rise of Asharahlafillah, Wa’ada’s place was not diminished but amplified: she was declared the very Hand of Judgment in that vast pantheon, the keeper of divine law and enforcer of divine curses. To this day, those who swear by her name are bound as if by iron chains, and the breaking of such bonds is considered a crime not only against mortals, but against the order of heaven itself.

Wa’ada is depicted as a tall, stern woman with a veil over her hair and a great saw-toothed blade in her hand. Her hands are often bloody, not with rage but with justice carried out. Sometimes her eyes are painted as closed, to show she does not judge intention—only the keeping or breaking of the word.

Her rites often involve cutting palm or tongue with a blade, offering a drop of blood as token of the vow. Imprecations against liars are a central part of her liturgy.

It is said that once a chieftain sought to trick Wa’ada by swearing falsely in a tongue not his own. She split his jaw so that every language spilled from his mouth at once, and all men knew him as a liar.

Wa’ada is said to walk unseen among assemblies where great promises are spoken, her blade resting lightly against the throats of oath-takers.

When the world ends, her priests claim, Wa’ada will present a ledger of every vow broken and exact her due from gods and mortals alike. For no one escapes Wa'ada, her punishments are just and inexorable.