Ruins of Vaelspire – early dusk, ashfall sky
The wind screamed.
Not whistled. Not howled. It screamed
a high-pitched, soul-grating wail that spun through the ruins of Vaelspire like a grieving ghost. It carried ash. Ash from the bones of old gods and forgotten kin.
Riven Kaelthorn stood in silence, his boots sinking into a shallow bed of grey dust. The remains of his people. The Vaelmarked. Gone. Burned beneath divine fire thirteen years ago.
He tightened his grip on the handle of the blade sheathed across his back—a fractured weapon of black steel that pulsed faintly beneath his touch.
Ashveil.
The blade hummed. A low, rhythmic throb like a second heartbeat echoing under his skin.
thum… thum… thum…
Riven's grey eyes scanned the horizon. Empty temples clawed the sky like skeletal fingers. Blackened statues wept molten tears. Wind twisted around him again—sharp this time, cutting past his cloak, whispering forgotten names against the steel collar clasped around his throat.
He didn't flinch.
This place had nothing left to take from him.
---
A soft crunch broke the silence.
Bootsteps. Not his.
Riven moved instinctively, drawing Ashveil with a hiss of steel and flickering emberlight. The blade was chipped, warped, barely a weapon—but in his hands, it was death waiting to unfold.
click… clack… click…
A figure emerged through the curtain of drifting ash. Hooded. Wrapped in faded prayer-robes. Gloved hands held a rusted censer. The stench of blood-mixed incense curled through the air.
"A lone flame walks Vaelspire…" the priest rasped, voice sharp like broken glass. "Do you carry a spark, or seek to snuff it?"
Ashmarked speak in riddles.
"I carry memory," Riven replied coldly.
"That's enough."
The priest's smile cracked wide.
"Then remember—the bounty upon your cursed blood doubles with each breath you dare take beneath the gods' silence."
Dozens more figures stepped into view, surrounding him. All bore the same garb. The Ash conclave. Fanatics who worshipped silence and called the massacre of Riven's tribe "divine justice."
Riven didn't speak.
He simply shifted his stance.
Left foot back. Weight even. Blade low.
Ashveil answered with a sharp hum, sparks crawling up the edge like fireflies waking from slumber.
---
Riven unsheathed the blade
Shing!
Censer smoke thickening
whoomph… whoomph…
Ash crust cracking under boots
crrk-CRRK!
---
The first priest lunged.
Riven pivoted with a twist of the waist and brought Ashveil upward in a diagonal arc.
SLSHHHRK!
A scream. Half-cut. Half-choked.
Blood hit the ash like rain on the snow—brief, then gone.
The priest's body hit the ground twitching, blade embedded through his jaw to skull.
Another rushed in from behind.
Riven ducked, rolled, then swept his blade in a low crescent slash. Three legs gave out. More screams followed. He didn't stop moving.
Each strike sent a shard of memory flashing through his mind—the burning homes, the cries of children, the crushing weight of helplessness.
But he buried those ghosts beneath steel and fury.
They came in waves—SIX,TEN, TWENTY.
But Riven danced.
---
He was no longer a boy.
No longer the trembling child who watched his people burn while clutching a dull kitchen knife.
He was the last Vaelmarked.
And he would not die forgotten.
---
Ashveil pulsed in his grip, each kill feeding it. The blade drank rage. Memory. Pain. Sparks flared brighter now—tiny tongues of ember trailing each strike.
The ashstorm thickened.
Riven's cloak flared behind him as he leapt through a wall of smoke, blade spinning, teeth clenched.
CLANG—!
He blocked a twin-sickle slash, locked the priest's weapon, and shoved his forehead into the man's faceplate.
CRUNCH!
The priest dropped. Blood gushed from a caved nose.
Riven snarled. "You want silence? I'll scream it into you!"
---
By the time the last Conclave zealot fell—gurgling and blind from melted ash—Riven stood alone, surrounded by steaming corpses. His breaths were ragged. His hair clung to his cheeks in damp strands.
But Ashveil… hummed louder now.
Thummmmm… thummmmm…
"More awake than usual," he muttered, wiping blood from the blade's crooked edge. The weapon twitched. Hungry. Almost eager.
"You've not earned my name, blade. Not while you bite like a beast," he warned, as if to a misbehaving child.
The sword went still.
Just for a moment.
---
Suddenly, a faint sound echoed across the ruins.
Not wind. Not ash.
A voice. Soft. Singing.
"…the last flame lingers in the dark…"
He turned sharply, eyes narrowing. A figure stood at the far edge of the ruin—a girl cloaked in pale blue rags, face hidden beneath a veil of white linen. She was barefoot, unarmed. And yet the ash around her seemed… to avoid her.
Like the world bowed gently at her passing.
Lyra.
The girl who never spoke. Only sang.
The girl who had once walked into a battlefield of dying and simply wept—and the wounded healed where her tears fell.
Riven lowered his blade, heart slowing.
He said nothing.
She stepped beside him, laid a hand over the bloodied grip of Ashveil.
And for a moment, the weapon went still. Warm. Peaceful.
Riven looked away, muttering, "They're sending stronger ones."
She tilted her head.
"No. I'm not backing down. Not yet."
She nodded. And sang one more line, barely audible:
"…the hunger grows, but so does the flame…"
—------
Inner Sanctum of Vaelspire – deep dusk, broken sky, shardlight bleeding through cracks in the heavens
---
The sky above Vaelspire fractured.
Lines of eerie cobalt light slithered across the clouds like glowing veins, casting jagged shadows across the ruin. These were not lightning. No storm brewed here. They were the Shardlines—remnants of the Cataclysm that shattered the heavens when the gods fell screaming.
Riven Kaelthorn stood at the threshold of the Sanctum of Bones, the deepest ruin beneath Vaelspire. A monument sealed in silence for over a decade.
Until now.
Ashveil pulsed on his back like a drumbeat in mourning.
thumm… thumm…
Lyra stood beside him, her linen veil fluttering softly in the cold, unnatural wind. She had not spoken. Only hummed—a soundless, almost holy vibration that seemed to slow the air around them.
The girl made the world hold its breath.
And that scared Riven more than blades.
---
whooooo… (cold wind swirling through broken archways)
hum… (deep resonance of sanctum gate trembling)
TINK… TINK… (bits of old stone crumbling)
---
The Sanctum's door was not made of metal.
It was made of bones.lots of bones.
A massive plate of fused ribs from something titanic—maybe ancient—stood sealed with nine crimson seals scorched into the marrow. Runes flickered faintly across the surface.
One had just broken.
Riven didn't know how.
Lyra looked up at him, eyes unreadable behind the veil. She raised her hand—and paused.
"I'm not ready," he muttered, more to himself than her. "Whatever's beneath this place… it's not meant to wake."
She gently placed her fingers on the second seal.
The rune shattered like glass.
KRKSSHHHH!
Dust exploded outward. The bone-door split with a shriek that made even Ashveil flinch in its scabbard.
A chill rushed out from the darkened passage. Not cold. Empty. As if all warmth and color and memory had been drained from that space and buried within something ancient and starved.
Riven stepped inside.
---
The corridor sloped downward—deeper than he expected. Smooth walls etched with mural fragments depicted giants impaled on blades of light. Eyes gouged out. Tongues torn. Beneath it, words burned into stone:
"The Flame Must Choose Whom It Consumes."
He grimaced.
"Cryptic, dramatic, and useless. Typical."
Lyra's soft footfalls trailed behind him. She hummed again.
A low melody, like a song sung underwater.
Ashveil twitched in response.
---
The corridor ended in a domed chamber.
The Shard Sky loomed above—an illusion of the sky projected onto the curved ceiling, but wrong. Split. Fragmented stars floated like broken glass. A pale monolith rose in the center of the chamber, surrounded by swords—hundreds of them, all embedded blade-first into the black stone floor.
Not random.
A ritual.
Riven approached warily.
Each blade was unique—some ceremonial, some grotesque. A few wept blood. One still smoldered with frozen fire. But none hummed like Ashveil.
When he neared the monolith, a voice—not Lyra's—echoed inside his skull.
"You return, Forsaken Flame."
He froze. "I don't know you."
"Yet you carry one of us. The Eater-Blade. The Ashveil. You walk our bones, draw breath in our tomb. You are already claimed."
Ashveil suddenly pulled forward, vibrating violently.
Riven gritted his teeth, yanking it free from its sheath just as a shockwave erupted from the monolith.
BOOOOM!
Blades shattered. The sky above cracked deeper. Lyra stumbled back, veil torn half from her face—revealing a single tear trailing down her cheek, glowing faintly gold.
From the broken floor, something rose.
Not a monster.
Not quite.
It looked like a man—but forged of polished obsidian, eyes like molten coins, and blades embedded through his body like armor. A giant's grin split his face. His voice was razors on silk.
"You bring the flame to my resting place, child. How generous. Shall I test your worth?"
Riven didn't wait for an answer.
He attacked.
---
KSHHH—! (blade clashing against stoneflesh)
FWOOM—!! (monolith's energy pulse)
CLANKK! (obsidian blade arm blocking)
---
The obsidian being moved like oil through steel. Graceful. Fast. Impossible to predict.
Riven struck low. The figure vanished.
Behind.
Riven spun—Ashveil catching a blow just in time, blade locking against a jagged shardarm shaped like a crescent axe.
SKRRRKKTT!
Sparks burst. The floor cracked beneath their feet.
"You fight with grief," the entity said, smiling. "Not power."
Riven shouted. "I fight because no one else lived to do it!"
He broke the lock, feinted left, and drove his knee into the creature's chest. It didn't flinch. But Ashveil pulsed again—
VMMMMMMMM!
—and seared through the air with a new edge. Smoother. Sharper.
Riven drove it upward—
SLAAAASHHH!
The creature reeled back, ichor spilling from the wound like smoking tar. Its smile widened.
"Very well," it whispered. "Let the First Trial begin."
---
The world fractured again.
The monolith exploded in a burst of shardlight, and the ground fell from beneath Riven's feet. Lyra's scream echoed in the collapsing chamber.
Riven plummeted into darkness.
Ashveil's voice—real now, not imagined—whispered in his mind for the first time.
"If you live, you will hunger. If you fall, you will be forgotten. Choose."