The storm had passed, but the sky still wept.
Riven awoke to the soft drumming of rain against steel bars. His body ached—every bruise blooming into fire with the slightest movement. His wrists were raw, crusted with dried blood where the bindings had bitten into flesh. He lay curled in a cage of rusted iron, barely large enough to crouch, far too small to stand.
Water pooled beneath him—cold, ankle-deep, and unmoving.
He shifted. The puddle stirred.
That's when he saw it.
A face stared back at him.
His face.
But not as it should be.
The reflection wore his features—but stripped bare of life. His black hair hung in damp strands over hollow cheeks. His eyes were wide, sunken, pitch-black, like twin pits carved into his skull. From their corners ran dried streaks of red, as though he'd wept blood. Deep shadows circled his eyes like bruises of sleepless nights and quiet screams.
It didn't blink.
Didn't breathe.
Didn't feel like him at all.
Riven jerked back. The water rippled. The image broke.
And when it settled again… it looked normal.
Almost.
Chains clinked in the distance. Firelight flickered through the cracks of patched tents made from scavenged canvas and soul-thread. The camp breathed like a sleeping beast, exhaling smoke and silence in equal measure.
He wasn't alone.
There were others.
Firstborns—twenty-two of them, he counted. They were Soulhunters. Their masks were crude things, cracked and chipped, etched with veins of dull light. Most were silent. One whispered lullabies to the rain. Another laughed without humor. A few simply stared into nothing.
Then there were the Veiled.
Three of them.
They drifted through the camp like shadows wrapped in silk—unhurried, unbothered, inhuman. Their robes whispered as they moved, stitched with patterns too ancient for words. Their masks were smooth, sealed, and pulsing with veins of living silver—no eyes, no mouths, no expression. Only presence.
One stopped.
Her.
The one who had taken him.
She moved with purpose. Not grace—something colder. A stillness wrapped in movement, like a predator that didn't need to chase. She stood before his cage in silence, head tilted ever so slightly, as if studying a puzzle she already knew how to solve.
Then she reached up.
Her fingers curled around the edge of her mask, and in one smooth motion, she removed it.
Riven forgot to breathe.
Her face was carved from moonlight—pale skin, flawless and unfeeling, marked faintly with runes that glowed like dying embers. Her silver hair spilled down her shoulders like a blade's edge, untouched by the rain. But it was her eyes that held him.
Normal. Human.
And somehow that made it worse.
They were a calm, storm-gray—clear, steady, and unblinking. No spirals. No cosmic patterns. Just eyes that looked. And when they locked with his, it felt like being dissected without a blade.
She crouched, robes pooling like liquid night.
"You look disappointed," she said, voice low and quiet. Not cold—just… controlled. "Did you expect something monstrous beneath the mask?"
She tilted her head again. Watching him.
"You want to know what's worse than a monster, Firstborn?" Her lips curled into a faint, dangerous smile. "A person who chooses to be one."
She tapped a single finger against the cage. It shivered with the sound of strained metal.
"You are the beginning," she said, tone like a lullaby. "The flicker before the flame. Do you know what happens to flickers, Riven?"
He said nothing.
"They burn out."
She rose, slow and deliberate. The cage seemed to shrink around him.
Then she glanced at the puddle.
The reflection had returned. His own face. Dead-eyed. Smiling now—faintly, mockingly.
She studied it for a moment, then looked back at him.
"So tell me…" she said softly. "When you look down there… which one are you?"
Riven looked. And the reflection smiled wider.
"I don't know," he whispered.
Her smile vanished.
"Good," she said. "That means it's starting."
She slid the mask back over her face.
And just like that, the woman was gone—Veiled once more.
Only the echo of her words remained.
And the reflection that didn't blink.