Riven carefully placed all the items he had brought onto the ground, arranging them into a small pile behind the ruins of a burned war chariot. The battlefield was cloaked in a heavy silence, broken only by the whisper of the night wind weaving through corpses and bloodstained steel. Holding his breath, he crouched low and crept behind the large body of a man clad in black armor who lay motionless on the ground.
That corpse—or what he thought was a corpse—had just moved.
With sharp eyes, Riven watched.
The crest of the Arkham Kingdom was still etched clearly on the charred breastplate of the man. His body was scorched in many places, blackened wounds marring skin and flesh, making him look like living charcoal. And yet, despite it all, he moved. Just a little. His breathing was shallow, barely audible. His eyes were half-open, blinking slowly as if waking from a nightmare.
Riven didn't react immediately. He simply observed.
It took a few minutes for him to be certain the man posed no threat. He crept closer, brushing the ground as he moved to avoid making noise. Their eyes finally met.
The soldier's gaze was clouded, but a trace of awareness lingered. His eyes bore into Riven's, as if to say, "Do it."
His mouth parted slightly, but no sound came. His throat was too dry, as if exhaling would be enough to end his life.
Riven exhaled. Cold air filled his lungs. He edged closer until he was just an arm's length from the man's broken body.
"All right," he whispered, voice soft as a prayer. "I'll kill you. Now, pray to whatever god you believe in."
The man closed his eyes. Not out of fear, but acceptance. As if this end was the last mercy he could hope for in a world far too cruel.
Riven drew a dagger-etched steel dagger from inside his cloak—a weapon he had taken from a corpse not long ago. Gripping it tightly, he leaned down slightly.
"I'll kill you on the count of three," he warned.
"One…"
His hand remained steady.
"Two…"
And before he could say "three," he drove the dagger straight into the man's chest. Right into his heart.
Warm, thick blood spilled onto Riven's hand. The man went still. His final breath slipped out in a faint exhale, almost inaudible. No scream. No struggle. Just… silence.
Riven pulled the blade free without expression. He didn't clean it, merely slipping it back into his cloak as if storing away a handkerchief.
This wasn't the first time he'd done this.
He had seen many soldiers like this one. Poor souls who had survived only to suffer longer. Their bodies broken, their spirits flickering, and the only mercy left was death.
Once, he would have felt sick. He still remembered clearly—the first soldier who begged him with a raspy voice, "Just finish it."
He had trembled. He had cried afterward.
But now?
Now, he felt only calm.
"Am I cruel?" Riven wondered in silence. "No. I'm just being realistic. I'm helping them escape this hell."
This world had long ceased to make room for naive compassion. If he didn't do it, they'd suffer longer. Or worse, be eaten alive before dying. No. What he had done wasn't evil. It was kindness wrapped in blood.
He didn't feel guilty.
He wasn't disturbed.
Once, the nightmares came. But now he slept peacefully—because he knew he had only done what had to be done.
And that was enough.
Riven rose to his feet. The hem of his cloak rustled against the dirty ground. He looked down at the fallen Arkham soldier one last time, then turned away.
There was still work to be done.
He resumed his search. Checking corpses one by one, extracting weapons, examining shards of armor, opening pouches. His eyes were sharp, like a predator hunting prey. He wasted no time.
"Reinforcements from the nearby cities will probably arrive by morning," he thought to himself. The sun was gone. The night air was biting. "Looks like I'll be pulling an all-nighter. Hah… even in another world, I still have to work overtime."
He gave a thin, bitter smile. Then kept moving.
He'd seen for himself—there were only a few soldiers left defending the fortress, due to the sudden onslaught from Arkham. There was no way they'd be able to clean up the corpses right away.
Riven moved through puddles of blood and heaps of mangled flesh. The night deepened, but his mind stayed alert. Every body he flipped was a new possibility—a weapon, a few coins, or maybe just a usable pair of boots.
When he turned over one body clad in light armor, he sighed. Nothing. Just a pierced chest and rotting hands.
Muttering under his breath, he moved to the next—someone who once wore ornate armor, now dented and half-burned. Yet even in its ruined state, the armor looked different from the rest. A mix of black and silver metal with thin lines that might once have glowed.
On impulse, Riven turned the body over—and then he saw it.
A sword.
Half-buried beneath the corpse, its hilt extended outward, gleaming faintly. Riven's breath hitched. His hands froze.
That sword… wasn't normal.
The blade was long and slender, forged from spotless silvery metal. Along its length were fine engravings that pulsed faintly with dim light—like a slow heartbeat in sleep. Every detail was art—too perfect to have been made by any ordinary craftsman. In the center of the blade, he saw a pale blue core crystal embedded in the metal, surrounded by a ring of tiny runes that seemed to rotate slowly.
For a moment, Riven nearly forgot to breathe.
"No way…" he whispered, barely audible.
He scanned his surroundings quickly—panicked, like a thief afraid of being caught stealing royal treasure. But the graveyard remained silent. Only corpses and the cold night wind.
...With trembling hands, he reached for the sword's hilt.