Riven blinked—
And the world twisted.
The lake, the moon, the sky—all gone in the blink of an eye.
He was somewhere else now.
A space of stone and silence.
At first, it felt like a small cavern. Tight. Breathless. The walls pressed close like the inside of a clenched fist, wet with condensation and echoing with every heartbeat. But then—without warning—the space shifted.
The ceiling pulled away like vanishing smoke. The floor stretched into distant blackness. What once was a cave now yawned into an immense, open void. And yet, it was still a room. Still contained.
Dim lights flickered far above—barely there. Cold glimmers that only made the darkness deeper.
Riven exhaled slowly, letting his eyes adjust. The blackness around him moved not like night, but like something alive. Breathing.
He walked.
And walked.
Time unspooled around him. Minutes blurred. Hours lost their meaning. There was no sound but the echo of his own footsteps—dry and hollow.
It felt like a day passed.
And still—nowhere.
No end. No sign. No voice.
Then—he saw it.
A narrow tunnel etched into the stone wall ahead. Crooked. Uneven. Beckoning.
He didn't pause.
He stepped inside.
And walked again.
Five more hours slipped by.
The tunnel snaked endlessly through the earth like the spine of something ancient. The air grew colder. Thicker. Each breath Riven took felt like it had weight. Like the air itself didn't want to be breathed.
Then—something else appeared.
Scattered across the floor.
Bones.
Skeletons.
He stopped.
Some were human. Some were smaller—dwarves. Others taller—elves. Twisted spines. Shattered ribs. Dozens of species, some he had no name for.
Some with extra limbs.
Some with horns.
Some too large to belong in any world he knew.
A massive skull sat upright in one corner, jaw open in an eternal scream, its eye sockets filled with dried black vines.
Riven's stomach turned.
He gulped, but moved forward.
There was no turning back now.
He didn't know how he knew it—but the path behind him was already gone.
The tunnel pressed on.
More hours passed.
His legs ached. His mind dulled.
Until—
A pale blue light.
A glimmer.
An opening.
Hope surged in his chest.
He ran.
Fast.
Faster.
His heartbeat matched his footfalls until they were one.
And then—
He burst through the end of the tunnel.
And froze.
Before him—
Hung a rift.
A tear in the air itself.
Floating. Silent. Immense.
Beyond it—
A sight that broke every law of nature.
Thousands. No—millions.
Endless ranks of puppet-like beings stretched into a void that had no floor or sky. They stood still, unmoving—shaped like men but covered in darkness so absolute, it devoured the light around them.
They had no faces.
No eyes. No mouths. No features.
Just void.
And as Riven stared, every single one of them turned their heads—
To him.
Slowly. Unnaturally. Like marionettes pulled by a god's hand.
And even though they had no eyes—
He knew.
They were looking straight at him.
His breath caught.
His heart stopped.
And then—he felt it.
They weren't just looking at him.
They were looking through him.
As though his body was glass. As though his thoughts, memories, dreams—all of it—was being read.
Pierced.
Unraveled.
Riven's iris widened.
The silence roared in his skull.
These beings—
These faceless, ancient horrors—
They knew him.
Or worse—
They were waiting for him.
And he—
Was already known.
And then—
They changed.
A few of the voidlings stopped mid-charge. Their shadows rippled... shifted... and took form.
Not monsters.
But family.
His mother.His father.His friends.
Selira, Auren, Cairen, Arinelle—
Smiling.
Familiar.
Their voices—soft echoes of memories—called his name.
"Riven..."
And he froze.
His fists dropped.
How could he strike them?
Even if his mind screamed they weren't real—his heart knew them.
They stepped forward.
And then—they slashed.
A blade across his ribs.A claw through his gut.A dagger into his shoulder.
And one—straight into his left eye.
He screamed, not in pain, but in betrayal.
He collapsed to his knees, gasping, blood pouring into his vision.
The world twisted.
Their faces melted into the formless void again.
And something inside him snapped.
He stood.
Shaking.
Bleeding.
Rage rising like wildfire in his veins.
His breath trembled—but his will didn't.
The silence in his soul cracked open.
He would not fall.
He clenched his fists.
They charged.
No sound.
No scream.
Just the tidal wave of nightmares coming to erase him.
But this time—
He met them head-on.
His fist collided with the first.
CRACK.
It exploded into smoke and shattered shadow.
Then another.
Then another.
His knuckles split, skin tearing off in ribbons, but he didn't stop.
He roared like a beast lost to time. His arms carved arcs of fury. His boots shattered the ground. His body screamed in agony, but he moved like a storm, unrelenting.
And then—
His left eye lit up.
A blaze of purple fire.
The first stage of the Heavenly Eye ignited—
Ember Sight.
Chronarix's blessing awakened.
His wounds slowed.
His torn eye reformed—burned clean—and in its place, a glowing iris of violet flame spun with ancient sight.
The void flinched.
For the first time, it recoiled.
But he didn't give it the chance.
One against millions.
No spells.No swords.No armor.
Just rage.
And his fists.
They came in waves—faceless, formless, endless.
He tore through them, limbs moving faster than thought. He felt them before they struck. Ember Sight burned paths in his mind, and he danced through death.
He crushed skulls beneath his boots.He shattered torsos with bone-splitting strikes.He punched until his knuckles ground to bone.
Blood soaked his arms.
Not theirs—his.
Time lost meaning.
Hours.
Then days.
Each heartbeat was war.Each breath a rebellion.Each scream a song of survival.
Pain blurred into madness.
Madness fed the fire.
And when that fire could no longer be contained—
Both of his eyes turned gold.
The air bent around him.
His aura surged like a supernova. The void itself trembled.
He became the eye of the storm.
He tore the nightmare apart.
He built mountains from their corpses—jagged peaks of broken puppets and fallen silence.
Until finally—they stopped.
One figure remained.
Towering.Silent.Still.
It stepped forward—faceless, but heavy with presence.
Not an enemy.
Not a warrior.
A judge.
Riven understood.
This was never a test of strength.
It was a trial.
A sentence carved into his soul when the silence first spoke.
A reckoning from the ancient nothingness.
He stood tall.
Shaking.
Half-dead.
But defiant.
He clenched his fist one last time—
—and struck.
One punch.
A single blow that cracked reality.
The world screamed.
The void shattered like brittle glass.
Light exploded.
Blinding.
Absolute.
And Riven fell—
Down.
Through the void.Through the silence.Through the pain.
Into something beyond time.
He landed.
Not with a crash.
But a whisper.
He lay—not on earth—
—but on water.
The surface of a vast, endless ocean. But he did not sink.
The ocean refused to let him.
It cradled him like a mother to a wounded child.
His body was limp. His vision—blurry. His limbs barely moved.
He could feel his heart. Still beating. Still alive.
But only barely.
He floated there.
A dying ember adrift on a sea of stillness.
Then—
He saw it.
A tree.
A massive, ancient tree—growing from the ocean itself.
Its roots vanished into the water. Its branches scraped the stars.
It pulsed with light.
And above it, casting its glow across the world—
The Blue Moon.
Not a dream.Not a vision.Not a myth.
The Blue Moon.
The night of ten thousand years.
He saw it. Felt it. Understood it.
This—this—was what the silence carved into him that night long ago.
Not a prophecy.
A path.
And then—a presence.
A shimmer.
A ripple in the air.
And a man appeared.
Not in flesh—but as a projection, a ghost of light and memory.
Riven tried to lift his head—but his strength failed.
He couldn't even focus his vision enough to see the man's face.
The figure stood still.
Said nothing.
Gazed first at the tree.
Then at him.
Waiting.
Not to speak.
But to judge.