Black.
Not just absence of light—this was a void that devoured meaning. No up or down. No warmth. No sensation of time. The only thing that existed was the soft ticking of a floating hourglass, each grain of sand louder than thunder in the silence.
Riven stood barefoot on… nothing. His breath did not fog, his heart did not echo, yet he was alive. Tense. Awake.
And he was not alone.
A figure stepped forth, not from shadows, but from the fabric of discarded fate.
He was tall. Lean. Dressed in the tattered remains of what was once celestial armor. But more haunting than his appearance was his face—or lack thereof.
A mask of bone covered it, carved with seven open eyes, none blinking.
The mask smiled—though it had no mouth.
And then it spoke.
"You are... the new mistake."
---
Riven's fingers twitched.
"Who are you?" he asked.
The masked figure tilted his head.
"I was like you. Long ago. A flaw. A spark of will where there should have been compliance. I refused the divine mold. I rejected the throne offered to me. I stood where you stand now."
He stepped closer.
"And I lost."
---
> [Opponent: Designation - Epitaph]
Class: Forbidden Echo
Origin: Erased Timeline
Status: Perpetually Dying, Permanently Remembered
Warning: This enemy carries fractured system authority. Combat may violate cause-effect principles.
---
"Why send you?" Riven asked.
Epitaph slowly raised a skeletal hand. "Because your kind is too dangerous to leave unattended. And too... inspirational to allow survival."
He gestured toward the hourglass.
"If you live two hours, you ascend. If I kill you, you vanish, and the system resets its 'tolerance' for errors like you."
He pointed a finger.
"I kill you not for vengeance. I kill you because you're better than I was. And that terrifies them."
---
The duel began.
Epitaph vanished.
Riven's instincts screamed—and he twisted mid-air as a scythe made of severed timelines slashed across his back.
Pain exploded.
[HP -27%]
But he retaliated fast. Shadows burst from his hands, forming a blade of void-glass.
Clang.
The two weapons met. Neither fully real. Both entirely lethal.
---
The arena shifted with each blow.
Epitaph's strikes shattered reality: one blow forced Riven's body to relive his worst memory—his mother begging a priest to spare her son.
Another blow aged his body forward by thirteen days. Hair grayed. Cells decayed.
But Riven fought back.
Every strike he landed forced Epitaph to remember his failure. Each cut made Epitaph flash with guilt, sorrow, desperation.
> [Passive Activated: Echo Feedback Loop]
Riven's attacks generate recursive emotional fractures in entities bound by regret.
"How are you doing this?" Epitaph hissed, staggering.
"I'm not bound by fate," Riven replied, blood dripping from his mouth. "I'm writing a new one."
---
Then, Epitaph stopped.
"Tell me something," he said. "If you win—if you become what I could not—what will you do?"
Riven blinked.
And remembered:
The cage.
The priests.
The pain.
The empty promises of gods and systems and 'divine plans'.
"I'll burn it all down."
Epitaph laughed—a cracked, brittle sound.
"Good answer."
Then he ripped off his mask.
---
Beneath it wasn't a face.
It was a screaming universe.
A swirling mass of dead stars, aborted lives, rewritten destinies.
He opened his arms.
"Then let me test your resolve."
And the final battle began.
---
[Phase Shift: Godkiller's Wrath Initiated]
The hourglass cracked.
Time flooded the void like a tsunami.
Epitaph attacked with fate inversions—moments stolen from possible futures.
Riven bled from cuts that hadn't happened yet.
His thoughts began to fold backward.
But then—
> [Anomaly Core: Sovereign Layer—59% Stabilized]
New Skill Awakened: Thread Override
Allows user to temporarily sever incoming narrative constraints (once per combat phase)
Riven roared.
And the chains of time snapped.
He surged forward and impaled Epitaph with a blade made from his own discarded fate.
The Forbidden Echo staggered, gasping.
"…So this is what success feels like."
He smiled.
"I envy you."
And vanished.
---
> [Victory Achieved]
Forbidden Echo Neutralized
Core Stability: 73%
Time Remaining: 1:04:12
Riven dropped to one knee, panting.
The void pulsed.
It was not over yet.
---
But something else stirred.
A new presence.
Not a god.
Not a system.
Not a remnant.
A being cloaked in white static stepped forth.
And it spoke without voice:
"You killed him. You severed the echo."
Riven looked up.
The figure reached forward—placing a hand over Riven's chest.
> [Warning: Intrusion Detected]
Foreign Authority attempting overwrite
Entity Class: EXILED NARRATOR
And suddenly—
Riven's story began to change.
He screamed as his memories were rewritten.
The cages became palaces.
The priests became friends.
The pain was being erased.