The sky cracked open without lightning.
No thunder followed.
Just silence — the kind that comes before something ancient breaks.
Riven stood at the edge of the ruins, wind tugging at his cloak, blade humming softly in its sheath. Below, the valley that led into Eldermoor writhed — not with life, but with memory. Phantoms drifted over broken cobblestones, wearing faces long dead.
"You feel it, don't you?" Aria whispered behind him.
"Yes."
"The city remembers us."
By dawn, the camp was a battlefield of decisions.
Kaela gathered her blades, face blank. She no longer questioned the madness of what they were about to do — only the cost. "Three entrances," she said. "Main gate is a slaughterhouse, the sewers are cursed, and the sky bridge is half-collapsed."
Riven looked at Sol. "You still have the flight glyphs?"
"Three. Maybe four if I bleed for it."
"Don't. We'll take the sewers."
Aria raised an eyebrow. "Suicidal. I like it."
Kaela didn't smile. "There's something down there."
"There's something everywhere," Riven said quietly.
Before they descended, Riven addressed the army.
Not with speeches.
Just truth.
"We won't all come back."
They watched him, silent.
"But if we don't go," he said, "none of us matter."
He raised his blade.
"Don't fight for me. Don't fight for the past. Fight so that when this ends, someone remembers you chose to stand."
He didn't roar. Didn't rally.
But when he turned, the army followed.
Because conviction doesn't always need noise.
Sometimes, silence is the loudest scream.
The descent into Eldermoor's underbelly felt like falling into a throat.
The walls pulsed — not literally, but close enough to unsettle even Kaela.
The air was thick with rot and memory.
Bones lined the path.
Some old.
Some... recent.
Sol stopped at a collapsed altar, touching a faded sigil. "Order of Ash. They once guarded this sewer with spells that made men forget they existed."
Kaela drew both blades. "Clearly didn't work."
"No," Aria said, stepping past a gnawed skull, "it worked perfectly. Until someone wanted to be remembered."
The first attack came at the Hour of Echoes.
No warning.
Just shadow that moved.
Riven's sword leapt from its sheath as tendrils of darkness surged through the tunnel, wailing like infants, striking like razors.
The front line held — barely.
Kaela moved like death incarnate, every strike silent, every kill precise.
Sol unleashed a pulse of flame from her obsidian heart, vaporizing shadows but nearly collapsing.
"You'll kill yourself," Riven hissed.
She smirked. "Then we're even."
"Don't be stupid."
"Too late."
They reached the Catacombs of Silence by the second hour.
Here, magic died.
Every flame flickered out.
Aria murmured, "This place was built to bury gods."
And the gods buried here weren't dead.
Just... sleeping.
Riven heard the voice again.
The one from the mirror.
"YOU CARRY RUIN. YOU DARE WAKE THE CHAINED."
He didn't reply.
He walked forward.
And the walls trembled.
Not in fear.
In recognition.
When they emerged into the inner sanctum beneath the city, they found it waiting.
Not a beast.
Not a general.
But a girl.
A child.
Pale as moonlight, with hair like unraveling shadows, and eyes the color of forgetting.
She smiled.
"I've been waiting, Riven."
He froze.
"You know me?"
"I know your soul."
She held up a mirror — small, hand-sized, cracked.
"I saw what you gave up."
"And I saw what you'll become."
Kaela raised a blade.
Aria hissed, "Don't. That's not... mortal."
The girl giggled. "No. I'm not."
She stepped back.
And behind her — the city moved.
Not buildings.
Not stone.
But Eldermoor itself.
The city was alive.
It had been waiting.
And it was hungry.
Riven stepped forward, ignoring every protest, and said, "You want ruin?"
He drew his blade.
"Then you'll choke on mine."
The girl's smile vanished.
Her body convulsed, cracking like porcelain.
And from it — a beast rose.
Massive.
Unknowable.
Screaming not with a voice, but with a chorus of lost cities.
The army fought like legends written in real time.
Steel met shadow.
Magic met madness.
Blood became prophecy.
Riven cut a path to the heart of the beast, blade humming with names he no longer remembered — each swing reclaiming a piece of the soul he'd shattered to survive.
Aria held the circle — channeling forbidden glyphs that rewrote space itself.
Sol tore her heart open, unleashing fire so hot it burned memory.
Kaela was a blur — death incarnate in dancer's form.
But it wasn't enough.
The city screamed.
And then...
It remembered.
The soul-mirror cracked.
And from its shards, a new light rose.
Not fire.
Not magic.
But Leila.
Not dead.
Not gone.
Her soul, bound in the ruins, awoke.
She reached for Riven.
He reached back.
And in that moment, time stilled.
They stood in the field of stars — the in-between space of soul and silence.
"Riven," she whispered, "you were never meant to save me."
"I know."
"But I wanted you to."
"I still do."
They kissed — not lips, but souls.
When he returned, the city was burning.
The beast was gone.
The girl was ash.
And Riven...
Riven stood taller.
Older.
The eye of ruin now a full flame.
Eldermoor had been claimed.
But the war had just begun.
Because beyond the city...
The gods had noticed.
And they were not pleased.