35:59:00
For the first time, Riven stood across from someone who shared his exact face, his exact voice, and yet none of his soul.
The Perfect Riven—what the gods had intended. A being of serene power, sculpted to obey divine order, a creature of elegance and righteousness. Clad in golden light, his every movement resonated with celestial rhythm.
Riven saw himself reflected back, but it felt like staring into a mirror that lied.
> [Trial Stage 2: Confrontation Initiated]
Opponent: [Perfect Concept: Riven, Divine Edition]
Victory Condition: Destroy the false self.
Failure: Conversion into god-forged entity.
Time Limit: 3 hours.
The chamber dimmed. All shards vanished, leaving only a circle of void and the two versions of Riven at its center.
The Perfect Riven spoke first.
"Why resist?" His voice was calm, melodic, as if forged from choir songs. "You were meant to be me. Unflawed. Controlled. Safe."
Riven cracked his knuckles. "You talk a lot for someone made to obey."
The golden one smiled.
"No. I speak because I was designed to convince. To reason. To lead. Unlike you, who is ruled by chaos."
A flick of his wrist and divine energy crackled in perfect arcs. Symbols of divine law shimmered around him—Authority, Justice, Order.
"Your rebellion is noise," the Perfect Riven said, stepping forward. "I am the silence after."
---
35:57:18
The fight began.
The golden Riven raised his hand, and law bent reality.
> [Ability: Perfect Authority - World bends to the system-approved will.]
The air warped. Gravity reversed. Riven felt himself flung upward, crashing against an invisible dome of energy above the chamber. He twisted midair and dropped like a meteor, slamming back down with enough force to crater the stone.
Pain bloomed.
But his body held.
Riven rolled to his feet. "Neat trick."
"You haven't seen anything yet," the god-forged version replied.
> [Ability: Divine Rewrite - Convert target's abilities to their lawful versions.]
Suddenly, Riven's Absorption Core—a fragment of the Custodian's power—glitched.
System error messages flickered in red.
> WARNING: Power Anomaly Detected. Purging...
"No," Riven growled. He clenched his fist, willing the core to stabilize. "You don't get to take that from me."
> [Override Rejected. Anomaly Stability = 87%]
He surged forward, closing the distance in a blink. Shadows laced his limbs as he dodged a barrage of law-bound chains and retaliated with a punch that could split stone.
It connected.
But the golden Riven barely flinched.
"Strength without harmony is just destruction," he murmured, grabbing Riven's wrist mid-strike.
> [Counter: Divine Echo]
Reflects damage scaled to emotional instability.
The blow rebounded.
Riven staggered back, clutching his chest.
---
35:43:01
This wasn't a physical fight.
It was conceptual warfare.
Each blow was philosophy. Every strike, a judgment.
The Perfect Riven wasn't just attacking—he was correcting.
"You see chaos as freedom," he said, conjuring radiant swords of purified law. "But freedom without direction creates monsters."
Four swords hovered around him. Each hummed with ideology.
> Sword of Peace
Sword of Unity
Sword of Submission
Sword of Eternity
He launched them like commandments. Riven dodged two, blocked a third, but the fourth—Submission—scraped his shoulder, and he felt something in him tug.
For a moment, his limbs slowed.
His will… weakened.
But then the thought of Lysara screaming in the prison cage returned to him.
The thought of being shackled for breathing wrong.
The thought of a world that only loved the useful version of you.
And he roared.
Shadow exploded from his back in jagged wings. Not beautiful. Not divine. But raw.
Real.
> [Aspect Activation: Half-Divine Form — Chaos Ascendant]
Inverts law-based damage
Grows stronger under pressure
Immune to conversion-based effects
The tide turned.
Riven shot forward, slamming into the golden version with feral speed. His punches now ignored resistance. His body blurred, untethered by system logic.
He didn't fight like a god.
He fought like a force.
---
35:17:00
The Perfect Riven coughed—bloodless, but staggered.
He looked at Riven with something approaching… fear.
"This is why you must be erased," he said. "You do not follow the equation. You disrupt the plan."
"Yeah?" Riven grinned. "Maybe the plan sucks."
His hand ignited with a swirling spiral of unstable energy.
> [Custom Skill Created: Spiral of Rejection]
Converts divine concepts into unstructured chaos
Can only be used once per confrontation
Riven flung it.
The spiral smashed into the golden Riven's chest and disintegrated the symbols floating around him. The swords vanished. His aura flickered.
The world trembled.
And the system issued a warning.
> [System Breach Detected. Divine Template Unstable.]
> [Anomaly has exceeded permitted conceptual limits.]
[ADMIN NOTICE: Intervention Pending.]
The chamber cracked.
Reality itself fractured at the edges of the fight.
But Riven was already moving.
---
35:03:11
Their final exchange was brutal.
Fists. Fire. Words.
"You were a mistake," the Perfect Riven hissed, half-broken.
"No," Riven said, raising his arm for the last strike.
"I'm a warning."
He brought his fist down.
The golden version shattered like glass.
> [Stage 2 Complete.]
[Verdict: Individual chosen over concept.]
[Anomaly Level: Elevated.]
[Final Trial Stage Unlocking…]
---
34:59:59
The chamber went dark.
No more mirrors.
No more thrones.
Just a single glowing pathway ahead—lined with flowing, living script. The letters twisted like snakes, each one whispering a different name for him.
"Savior."
"Tyrant."
"Anomaly."
"God."
Riven stared.
Lysara emerged from the shadows, sword drawn, her eyes wide.
"I felt it," she said. "You beat it."
"Barely."
She stepped beside him. "What now?"
The air answered before he could.
> [Final Stage: Judgment of the World Itself.]
> Location: Origin's Cradle
Commencement in 24 hours.
Escape is no longer possible.
[All surviving gods will be summoned.]
[Ruling factions will determine your fate.]
[Only one path remains: Transcend, or perish.]
---
As the ground beneath them began to rise, lifting them toward the final destination, Riven felt the weight of the last six days press down.
Not just the power he'd stolen.
But the truth.
He wasn't fighting for his survival anymore.
He was fighting to redefine what survival even meant.
And across the system, gods began to stir.