The nightmares returned—except now, they followed Riven into waking hours.
He stood in the Tower of Seers, surrounded by flame-forged walls and hovering crystals that recorded the echoes of fate. Yet the visions clawing at his mind weren't from any prophecy. They were memories. His.
"I was in a garden of glass," Riven whispered. "The sky was bleeding. The stars were screaming."
Leila sat cross-legged a few feet away, a circle of null-sigils drawn in chalk around her. She didn't interrupt. She knew better now—Riven wasn't just remembering past lives. He was stitching together the seams of something older, something buried.
"It wasn't a vision," he added. "It was the first time I died."
A breeze swept through the tower, unnatural, salt-tanged, as if blown from an ocean that no longer existed. The mirror-crystals shivered.
Leila's voice was gentle. "What killed you?"
Riven's silver eyes glowed faintly. "Not what. Who."
And then he collapsed.
When he woke, he was not in the tower.
He was underground—far below the academy—in a hidden sanctum known only to three people in the empire.
All of whom were standing over him.
High Chancellor Lys.Professor Kael.And the red-glass woman from the ruins of Othren Vale.
Riven jerked up, breath sharp. "You—"
"She is here under my protection," Lys said coldly, gesturing to the glass-veiled figure. "And she has answers."
The woman stepped forward. Her eyes were like obsidian mirrors. "You are a Key," she said softly. "Not to power. But to memory. To the truth before the first lie."
Kael placed a cube-shaped device on the table beside Riven. "This is an Eidolon Vault. It stores unformed truths. You've triggered one of the oldest."
Riven narrowed his eyes. "Then unlock it."
They did.
And the vault didn't reveal a prophecy or a weapon.
It revealed a map.
A map of the empire—not as it was, but as it had once been. Entire regions swallowed by void. Cities lost to time. Names erased by divine decree. And in the center, beneath the very foundations of the capital, a spiraling structure:
The Labyrinth of Null.
The birthplace of the Eidolons.
That night, Riven stood on the academy's rooftop, the map burned into his memory.
Leila joined him silently.
"They built the empire on top of it," he muttered. "On top of the grave."
"A grave?"
Riven nodded. "The Labyrinth isn't just where they were made. It's where the First Eidolon was killed."
Leila's voice trembled. "Then why would they hide it?"
He looked at her. The moonlight made the mark on his chest pulse faintly.
"Because he didn't die."
She took a step back. "You mean...?"
Riven nodded. "I think he's waking up. Through me."
The air shifted. A hum vibrated in their bones.
And from the city below, from the buried labyrinth no map dared name, came a whisper:
"Return what was severed."
The wind died. The stars blinked.
And the Door Beneath the World opened a little more.