The fog over Spireline Ridge wasn't natural.
Riven could feel it in his bones as the academy transport skimmed the cliffs, silent on its hover-treads. The windshield pulsed faint red as it scanned the terrain, but the mist beyond didn't move. It clung to the rocks like a memory that refused to fade.
"This breach wasn't here last week," Instructor Vex muttered, flicking data projections between her fingers. "It ruptured in silence. No quake. No energy spike. Just appeared."
Riven didn't respond. He was staring at the valley floor, where a thin crack split the land like a scar in skin. Something about the silence down there pressed against his temples, like it wasn't just absence of sound — but rejection of it.
---
The drop zone was simple: ancient stone steps led down into the breach like some forgotten amphitheater. Moss climbed the walls, but the air was dry. Uncomfortably dry.
As they descended, Vex kept glancing at her scanner.
"No ambient energy," she said. "No beasts. No anomalies."
But Riven knew better.
The air was too still.
They reached a flat platform cut into the slope. Ruins surrounded them — not natural formations, but deliberate carvings. Glyphs laced the walls in circular patterns that pulsed, very faintly, with golden light.
He stepped closer.
The glyphs didn't just glow.
They reacted.
To him.
---
A memory, uninvited, bloomed in his mind — golden rings spinning in the void, a voice echoing in a language older than stars. And fire. Endless, silent fire.
He stumbled back.
"You alright?" Vex asked.
He nodded, quickly.
Too quickly.
---
At the base of the breach, the walls folded inward into a dome-like structure. The glyphs disappeared, replaced by mirrors.
Not reflections.
Windows.
Each pane of silver showed flickers of something else. A girl crying in an alley. A soldier dragging a broken blade. A child reaching for a hand that never came.
Riven's hands clenched.
One of the mirrors shimmered.
It didn't show someone else.
It showed him.
But not now.
Not Riven.
A version with golden eyes and a voice like thunder wrapped in sorrow.
He stood on a throne of ash, a crown of flame on his head.
And in that image — he smiled.
---
[Emotion Sync: 52% – Fragment Recognition Triggered]
---
The world bent.
Vex screamed.
For a moment, Riven saw her — not in armor and tech gear — but kneeling, bound in chains of glowing sorrow. And Kael Dross above her, shrouded in feathers, eyes cold and unseeing.
Then it passed.
Vex collapsed to one knee, gasping.
"What... what was that?"
Riven didn't answer.
Because behind her, one of the mirrored walls was cracking. Not shattering — splitting. Something was pushing through from the other side.
Golden light poured out, but it wasn't warm.
It was hollow.
Like the smile of a god who had lost everything, and burned the sky just to feel again.
---
Then the mirror spoke.
Not aloud. Not even telepathically.
It simply remembered, and forced Riven to feel it.
"You are not born again. You are simply no longer asleep."
---
He turned to Vex.
"We need to leave."
But the breach wouldn't let them.
The fog outside thickened.
Something moved within it.
Not a beast. Not a monster.
A shape.
Like a man. But wrong.
It walked with limbs it hadn't earned, a mask of cracked porcelain fused to its face. Behind the mask — gold.
Vex raised her weapon.
It didn't work.
The shape didn't even flinch as she fired.
The air bent around it like memory refusing to be relived.
---
Riven stepped forward.
The shape paused.
It tilted its head, then dropped to one knee — bowing.
Vex stared in horror.
"Why… why did it bow to you?"
Riven didn't speak.
Because in his chest, something had shifted.
He didn't just recognize the shape.
He remembered giving it life.
And its name.
"Sorrowborn."