The ruins moaned beneath the weight of a dead sky.
Shattered towers clawed at the clouds like the ribs of a broken titan. Ash drifted on the wind, coating everything in a dull gray sheen. Somewhere in the distance, a siren screamed—a relic from the old world, looping endlessly with no one left to hear it.
Riven crouched beneath the jagged lip of a collapsed metro overpass, fingers pressed to the cold stone. His breath came slow, deliberate. He wasn't hiding from the wind.
He was hiding from them.
Soulhunters.
Six shapes moved through the ruins ahead. Five carried long staffs crowned with flickering soullight lanterns, which burned a ghostly blue against the dark. Each wore a pale mask etched with binding sigils and bone-gray robes that rustled softly as they walked.
The sixth didn't carry a light.
She didn't need one.
She walked through shadow like it was a second skin. Her presence made the others seem lesser—shadows next to a storm.
Her mask was smooth and mirror-like, but spiderwebbed with veins of silver that pulsed faintly with life. No eye slits, no mouth. Just pure, polished silence. The air bent subtly around her.
Even the Soulhunters didn't speak in her presence.
A Veiled.
Riven's stomach twisted.
He reached into his pouch and touched his mask—the Shattered Mark. A cracked thing of white porcelain and old runes. One eye slit jagged and uneven. It pulsed faintly—like a dying heartbeat. Every time he wore it, he felt more... but it still wasn't enough.
He was still just Firstborn.
The beginning of a path most never finished. The mask whispered, yes—but not in words. In instincts. In fear. In fragmented shadows.
A Firstborn stood no chance against a Veiled.
He should run.
She sees you, the mask whispered from within. The voice was faint, like a memory in the rain.
She sees what you hide under your skin.
He clenched his jaw.
He didn't want to fight. He didn't want to die.
But someone had to slow them down.
He slipped the mask on.
---
The world didn't change—it deepened.
Shadows thickened. His heartbeat slowed to a thunderous rhythm. His breath synced with the echo of something older. The runes along the edge of the mask flickered faintly, responding to his will.
But there was no voice. No full awakening.
Just instinct.
Just Firstborn.
He moved.
A blade in hand, he darted across the courtyard toward the rear hunter—silent as wind through bones. His dagger sank into flesh. The hunter dropped without a sound.
The second turned. Too late.
Riven's knife caught him below the chin. Another fell in a flash of movement.
Two down.
The others reacted. Soullight flared.
"Behind us!"
He leapt. Spun. His movements sharper than any unmasked man could track.
But not sharper than her.
The Veiled moved.
Not quickly—inevitably.
One step. Two. She blurred through the air and reappeared just a few paces from him.
Riven turned just in time to see her hand rise.
Chains of light snapped from her palm.
They caught him mid-air, freezing him like an insect trapped in glass. The bindings weren't physical—they were runes, written in the air, pulsing with power older than language.
He crashed to the ground, paralyzed.
His mask cracked.
The Veiled approached in silence, robes sweeping behind her like ink in water.
Riven groaned, his vision doubled. The mask's glow dimmed.
She crouched beside him, tilting her smooth mask.
"Firstborn," she said, voice low, layered, impossible.
"You have no business standing against me."
Riven tried to rise. The chains burned against his skin.
"You hear it already," she continued. "But it does not yet hear you."
She touched the cracked cheek of his mask. The red rune there sputtered.
"Your bond is weak. Your voice... unformed."
"Who—who are you?" Riven gasped.
Her mask shimmered with hidden runes.
"I one who became Veiled. I have seen the end. And I know what you are."
She leaned closer.
"Hollowborn."
Then, the world fractured.
Darkness poured through his vision like ink, and the last thing he felt was the chains tightening—not just around his limbs—but his soul.