Chapter 28: The Threshold Calls

The room felt like a wound in reality.

Every breath Riven took felt wrong, like he was inhaling something that wasn't air—something thicker, something ancient. The presence before him, the dark figure shifting and twisting at the edges, wasn't just a shadow. It was something far worse.

"I am the Threshold," it whispered again, its voice scraping against the inside of Riven's skull. "I am the line between what was and what will be. And you... you are standing at the edge."

The sound reverberated, a deep, bone-rattling hum that made his stomach churn. He could feel it in his teeth, in the marrow of his bones. It was like the world itself was rejecting him, telling him to turn back.

But he couldn't.

He wouldn't.

Riven clenched his fists, trying to steady his breathing. He had faced monsters before. He had seen horrors that most people couldn't even dream of. But this? This wasn't something he could just fight.

The Monarch's influence had always been distant, a whisper in his mind, a slow creeping rot. But this... this was present.

This was here.

---

"Riven—!"

Vera's voice snapped him out of it. She had stepped forward, her weapon drawn, her body tense. But she wasn't aiming at the figure—she was watching him.

"You're slipping," she said, her voice lower now, edged with something dangerously close to fear. "Do you feel that?"

He did.

He hadn't noticed it at first, but his body felt... unmoored.

Like he was standing on the edge of something vast and endless, his feet barely touching reality. His fingers twitched as if they weren't fully his. His mind struggled to focus, to hold on to what was real.

The Monarch's touch had always been inside him.

But now it was pulling.

Riven gritted his teeth, shaking his head violently, forcing himself to stay grounded. "I'm fine."

"Bullshit."

She didn't lower her weapon, but she didn't move closer either. There was hesitation in her eyes—distrust.

The Monarch had tried to erase him once. Had tried to replace him.

What if he wasn't entirely Riven anymore?

---

Vex was already moving, recalibrating his equipment, trying to get a reading, trying to do something that would make sense of this madness. His fingers danced over the holographic interface, his face grim.

"Guys, I'm picking up fluctuations in the data stream. This thing—whatever it is—it's not just distorting reality. It's... it's overwriting it."

"Overwriting?" Vera shot him a look.

Vex exhaled sharply. "Like a program replacing old code. This thing is shifting what's real into something else."

That was enough to send an uneasy silence through the group.

Vera turned back to Riven, gripping her weapon tighter. "And what if it's already started with him?"

---

The Threshold figure laughed. A low, rattling sound that felt less like amusement and more like a declaration of inevitability.

"You have already changed."

Riven didn't react at first. He didn't want to give it the satisfaction.

But he could feel it.

Something had changed.

His heartbeat was off-rhythm. His skin tingled like something was crawling just beneath the surface.

The worst part?

He couldn't tell if it was him or the Monarch pushing through.

"There is no escaping this," the Threshold whispered, stepping closer, the shadows around it thickening. "You are not the first to stand where you are. And you will not be the last."

That sent a jolt through Riven.

"...What?"

He didn't mean to say it aloud, but the words slipped from his lips before he could stop them.

The Threshold figure tilted its head, studying him in a way that made his stomach twist.

"Did you think you were unique?"

The air froze.

---

A sharp, gut-wrenching static filled the space, the world around them shifting violently. The walls of the old safe house flickered, transforming from crumbling brick into something else—something smooth, unnatural, almost... sterile.

Not ruined.

Not old.

New.

And then—

A hallway.

Not theirs.

Not from their world.

White walls. Fluorescent lights flickering overhead. A sound—familiar and yet impossible—hummed in the background.

It was a facility.

A research lab.

A place that shouldn't exist.

And standing there, frozen in time, was—

Riven's own body.

Lying on a medical table, wires connected to his chest.

Eyes closed.

Not dead.

Not alive.

Just... waiting.

---

The others reacted immediately.

Vera cursed under her breath, her eyes flicking between him and the body on the table, her grip on her weapon tightening. Vex stumbled back, his face pale, his mouth moving but no words coming out.

The Threshold stepped forward, towering over them now, its voice like a low, vibrating hum in the bones of the universe.

"You are not the first Sentinel."

Riven's breath caught in his throat.

"You are merely the next."

---

He felt something break inside him.

The room wasn't just an illusion.

It wasn't a trick.

This was real.

This was a place that had existed.

And this was him.

Not an alternate version. Not a doppelgänger.

It was him.

A past he didn't remember. A reality he had never been told.

A truth that had been erased.

Vera took a sharp step back.

"Riven," she said carefully, "tell me that's not you."

He couldn't.

Because it was.

The moment he looked at the figure on the table, something inside his head snapped. A flood of fragmented memories, of places he had never been, of people whose names he should know but didn't, poured through him like a tsunami.

He staggered, gripping the edge of the table, his breathing shallow.

The Monarch had never tried to erase him.

It had tried to overwrite him.

And it had succeeded before.