17. Ashes Between Us
Chapter Seventeen: Ashes Between Us
Some bonds don't break when severed. They burn hotter, wilder—until they consume everything.
Riven couldn't breathe.
He hadn't slept since the explosion.
Since the ash.
Since Kael disappeared into the fire.
The others had tried to stop him—Lira, Thorne, even the old priest with shaking hands—but Riven pushed past them all, out into the dead forest where the temple once stood.
Now there was only a crater.
A black wound in the earth, still smoldering.
He knelt at the edge, hand curled into ash, fingertips brushing the place where Kael had stood—where he'd screamed Riven's name before the fire swallowed him.
Riven didn't weep.
He couldn't.
The pain had gone too deep for that.
Now there was only a hollow ache, and something darker beneath it.
Rage.
Not at Kael.
At himself.
For letting him go alone.
For surviving.
"You promised," he whispered into the ash. "You said we'd leave together."
The wind didn't answer.
But the earth did.
It shuddered.
Faint, almost imperceptible—but there.
Riven blinked.
Then looked down.
The ash beneath his palm glowed.
Not orange.
Not gold.
White.
Then—
A flicker.
A pulse.
Heartbeat.
Riven's eyes widened.
He scrambled back as the ash cracked open, light spilling from the fracture. Magic curled upward in ghostlike tendrils—smoke, fire, memory—and something inside him snapped.
He felt it.
Kael.
Not dead.
Not gone.
Burning.
Alive.
"Kael…"
Riven surged forward—but the light surged back, slamming into his chest like a wave.
And then—
He saw him.
Not with his eyes.
With his soul.
Kael, standing in a field of flame. His body cloaked in ash and gold, eyes burning, a crown of smoke behind him. Not a god.
Not a man.
Both.
Riven's knees buckled.
Kael turned.
Their eyes locked.
Neither spoke.
But in the space between them—everything changed.
He woke gasping.
The vision gone.
But the presence remained.
Kael was coming.
And Riven wasn't ready.
Not for what he'd become.
Not for what it meant.
Because deep in Riven's chest, the spark Kael had left behind was changing.
Growing.
And he didn't know if it would save him—or destroy them both.
I APOLOGISE FOR THE SHORT CHAPTER !!!