Arin and Riven

Character Focus: Arin and Riven

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Arin Vox

Age: 20

Role: Frontline Brawler / Tech-Enhancer

Weapon: -

Personality: Energetic, reckless, loyal

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Arin grew up in the "Low Breach"—the crumbling slums built along the cracked remnants of Old City walls, where the air smelled of oil and lost dreams. His mother fixed broken tech for the poor. His father was a nobody, lost to raids when Arin was six.

From a young age, Arin learned two things:

How to fix anything that sparked, smoked, or bled power.

How to fight to keep it.

He wasn't born with special bloodlines. No ancient warrior soul. No secret past.

Just stubborn fists, fast hands, and a mind that refused to quit.

He built his first weapon when he was twelve—a broken mining gauntlet reforged with scraps and stolen cores. By seventeen, he could punch through steel doors. But every time he won a fight, stronger enemies came knocking.

When New Echo started recruiting, he wasn't their first choice.

He fought for it.

And when he put his hand on an ancient Echo relic during trial admission—and it didn't reject him—they took notice.

The relic didn't shine or sing or whisper.

It just accepted him.

That was enough.

Arin isn't the strongest or smartest.

But he refuses to lose.

And somehow, that scares people more than any legend.

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Riven

Age: 22

Role: Shadow Operative / Whisper-Tamer

Weapon: -

Personality: Quiet, calculating, intensely loyal (to very few)

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No one knows where Riven was born.

Not even him.

Records show he was found wandering the Dead Loop—an isolated zone wiped clean during the Genesis Event, where even machines refused to work. He should have died out there. Instead, he survived, completely alone, for years.

When an Echo patrol finally found him at age ten, he wasn't speaking. He wasn't even entirely human anymore. Something in the Loop had changed him.

Not mutated his body—but shifted his presence.

Machines reacted to him.

Lights dimmed when he passed.

Dead Echo tech sometimes blinked awake near him—then died forever after.

Echo researchers feared him. Some wanted to destroy him.

But one woman—one legend—didn't.

Ada Wong.

She fought for him to be trained, not discarded. Gave him a name: Riven.

He learned fast. Too fast.

But his strength isn't flashy. He doesn't smash walls or summon storms.

Instead, he listens.

He can hear "resonances"—the leftover vibrations of fear, violence, and memory in a place. He can track what's hidden. Distract, sabotage, mislead.

Where Arin charges into danger, Riven makes sure danger never sees him coming.

He fights with twin resonance blades—short, wicked, meant for speed, not brute force.

Riven is not invincible.

He bleeds.

He feels fear.

But unlike others, he understands that fear is a weapon, too.

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Arin, Kaela, and Riven are not heroes yet.

They are scars given shape.

And soon, the world will need scars more than heroes.