Ash and Arrival
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The palace bells rang long before dawn.
Not for celebration.
But for war.
---
Riven burst through the secret passage with Lyra and Kael at his heels. The Vault's shattered echoes followed them like ghosts—his heart still burned, both from the Seal and the truth now carved into it.
Four Seals now.
Four scars.
And behind them, the Eclipse moved.
---
Outside, the royal guards were already fighting in the halls. Screams echoed off marble. Magic scorched the air. Someone shouted about betrayal. Someone else wept for the king, though the king had died years ago in all but name.
Kael ducked a bolt of crimson fire. "They're not taking prisoners!"
Lyra grabbed Riven's arm. "Which way?"
He closed his eyes.
The Seals pulsed in sequence—each one guiding him like a compass.
"This way."
---
They ran.
Through forgotten corridors and bloodstained memories.
Guards fell. Shadows rose. The palace that once crowned empires now fed on itself.
Riven didn't look back.
He couldn't.
---
They reached the service tunnels—narrow veins of stone that led beneath the city like broken arteries. Only Liora had dared map them. Only she knew which ones hadn't caved in.
Kael kicked open a rusted grate and motioned them through.
Just as the ceiling behind them collapsed.
Not from explosives.
From something worse.
---
A figure stepped through the smoke.
No Eclipse robes.
No weapon.
Just silence.
And glowing veins beneath skin that was no longer entirely human.
Lyra whispered, "That's not a mage."
Kael raised his blade. "That's a vessel."
---
The creature moved with unnatural calm.
Each step cracked the marble underfoot.
It didn't run.
It approached.
Deliberate. Like it didn't fear anything.
Because it didn't.
Riven stepped between his friends and the vessel.
"I'll hold it."
Lyra grabbed his wrist. "You can't beat it alone."
"I don't plan to."
---
He closed his eyes.
The Fourth Seal burned.
But it did more than that.
It remembered.
And now, so did he.
---
His voice changed.
No longer just his.
It echoed.
> "By the blood of the broken throne…"
> "By the crown that was never mine…"
> "I unbind this pain."
The Seal answered.
The room exploded with shadowlight.
---
The vessel screamed—not in pain, but resistance.
It charged.
Riven met it mid-stride, his hand glowing with inverted light. The Seal didn't strike—it unraveled. The creature's body warped, flickered, tore itself apart from within.
Kael pulled Lyra away.
The ceiling cracked again.
Stone rained down.
Riven turned—eyes blazing—and shouted:
> "Run!"
---
They burst into the tunnels just as the passage collapsed behind them. For a moment, silence.
Then rubble.
Then dark.
---
They limped through the sewer veins in silence.
Riven was the last to speak.
Until Lyra grabbed his cloak and spun him around.
"You almost died."
"I knew I wouldn't."
"You didn't know. You hoped."
He didn't argue.
Kael leaned against a wall, coughing. "Next time you do something that suicidal, give me a five-second head start."
---
They emerged from the underbelly of the city just past dawn.
Smoke curled from palace spires.
The east district burned.
Elaren was under siege—from within.
The Eclipse didn't need armies anymore.
They had influence.
And vessels.
And secrets.
---
Liora waited for them at a safehouse two blocks from the edge of the Hollow Quarter. Her expression darkened the moment she saw them.
"You've triggered it, haven't you?"
Riven nodded. "The Fourth Seal's awake."
She closed her eyes.
"Then the Fifth is next."
---
Kael dropped onto a cot. "What's the Fifth Seal? Another sword? Another ghost? Another dead god?"
Liora looked to Riven.
He answered.
> "It's not a place."
> "It's a person."
Silence.
Then Lyra's voice, barely a whisper:
> "Your sister."
---
That night, as the city roared and bled, Riven sat on the rooftop alone.
The stars were quiet.
The Seals pulsed one by one—beneath his ribs, in his spine, across his skin.
Each one a price.
Each one a promise.
---
Far beyond Elaren, in a chamber built from bone and silence, Seris knelt before a massive gate formed of silver root and petrified flame.
She pressed her hand to it and spoke a single name.
> "Lyssa."
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