The scream didn't belong to him.
That was the first thing Riven realized.
It echoed through the mind palace like a blade scraping across glass.
Sharp.
And furious.
The Spider Dew recoiled.
Then it pressed toward his soul again, pushing deeper toward the pale reservoir at the center of the mind palace.
Then—
Something else answered.
Violently.
The quiet depths of the mind palace exploded with motion.
A presence stirred beneath the surface of his soul like something waking from a long sleep.
Confusion followed.
Then anger.
Not his anger.
But the invading fragment of Spider Dew didn't stop. It pressed forward again, looking nothing like the healing remedy it was said to be.
The presence inside Riven's soul lashed out as the plum seal on it flared faintly.
The pale light of the mind palace warped violently as something surged outward. It didn't move like soul force.
It moved like instinct.
Fierce, defensive, and utterly unwilling to share its space.
The Spider Dew's fragment recoiled.
But only for a moment.
Then it pushed forward again.
This time the pressure was unmistakable.
Ancient.
Cold.
The dew fragment seemed to possess a will of its own. It pressed against Riven's soul and felt impossibly old, as if it had existed long before he was born. Even in its diminished state, its presence carried a quiet authority that did not belong in his mind.
But that wasn't the only will inside his head.
Riven felt two wills collide.
One ancient and alien.
The other young, soft—almost like a piece of himself that had only just begun to wake.
The mind palace trembled as they clashed.
The ancient presence pushed deeper, probing the reservoir of soul force as if searching for something.
Testing it.
Claiming it.
For a moment it seemed to succeed.
The pale light of the reservoir warped under the pressure.
Then the other presence surged.
Not with precision.
Not with technique.
With instinct.
The pale light of the mind palace erupted outward as the defending will lashed back, pushing the intruding fragment away from the soul.
But the ancient presence resisted.
Riven felt it clearly.
The fragment pressed forward again and again, each push colder than the last.
Except something was wrong.
The ancient will was strong.
Too strong.
Yet it was also… fading.
Every clash burned away more of it.
The fragment simply did not have the strength to remain.
The defending presence did not relent.
Again.
And again.
And again.
Each surge of resistance chipped away at the intruder until the ancient presence began to fracture.
The pressure weakened.
The cold authority behind it faltered.
Then—
The Spider Dew's fragment shattered.
Thin strands of light scattered through the mind palace before fading away entirely, the invading consciousness burning itself out against the soul it had tried to claim.
Riven's head throbbed violently as he clutched it with his hand.
Meanwhile the softer strand of consciousness that had defended his soul lingered for a moment longer beneath the surface of the reservoir.
Then it slowly sank back into stillness.
As if it had never been there at all.
"AHHH—!"
The scream tore out of Riven before he could stop it.
The moment the fragment shattered, the pain followed.
It wasn't physical.
It felt deeper.
As if something inside his mind had been ripped open.
Riven collapsed sideways onto the bed, his hand clutching his head as the world around him blurred. The mind palace still rang from the clash, the echo of those two wills colliding reverberating through his thoughts.
Then the pain intensified.
It felt like his soul had been stung by a swarm of wasps.
Not once.
Hundreds of times.
Thousands of times.
Sharp, burning pulses tore through his awareness, each one sending another spike of agony through his skull.
Riven rolled onto his side, teeth grinding together as he tried to keep the noise down.
The Spider Dew had not healed his soul.
If anything—
It had made the damage worse.
His body trembled as he struggled to breathe evenly, trying to ride out the waves of pain.
A moment later, footsteps approached outside the door.
"Riven?"
Brann's voice.
The door creaked slightly as if he was about to open it.
Riven forced himself upright despite the pounding in his head.
"I'm fine," he said through clenched teeth.
The words barely sounded convincing even to him.
"Just… cultivating."
Silence lingered for a moment.
Then Brann answered from the other side.
"…Alright."
The footsteps slowly moved away.
Riven didn't fully trust him yet.
He waited until the steps faded before letting himself slump forward again.
His body was shivering.
The pain still lingered, throbbing behind his eyes like a dull hammer striking the inside of his skull.
Eventually he passed out.
Woke up again.
Felt the pain.
His head getting ripped apart.
Then fainted again.
It felt like an eternity.
And the cycle kept repeating.
But eventually the worst of it faded.
He finally stopped passing out and could manage to string some thoughts together.
Still.
It was far from over.
His head hurt like hell.
His vision was blurry and he barely kept himself sane.
He knew he couldn't leave it like this.
But he also didn't know what to do.
Another Spider Dew wasn't an option.
Not after what had just happened.
And even if he wanted to try again, explaining why the first one had failed would be impossible.
Besides.
He wasn't sure the sect had nothing to do with this situation.
Before making sense of anything he could only search for alternate solutions.
For a moment he sat there, trying to think through the haze.
Eventually, while suffering through all the pain, a memory surfaced.
The manual.
The one he had taken from the Knight's Order girl.
If he remembered correctly…
It didn't only describe how to strengthen soul force.
There had been something else.
Something about repairing it.
Riven's eyes snapped open.
He reached for the spatial ring.
The moment he pushed his awareness toward it, pain flared again.
Using soul force while it was damaged felt like dragging broken glass across his mind.
Riven sucked in a sharp breath as the connection to the ring flickered.
For a moment it felt like his head might split open.
But he forced the thread of consciousness forward anyway.
The ring responded.
With a faint pulse of energy, the manual appeared in his hand.
Riven dropped it onto the bed immediately, before flipping it open with shaking fingers.
He needed to find that section.
Fast.
Riven's hand trembled slightly as he turned the pages.
Most of the manual described strengthening the soul through controlled projections and structural shaping — the skill he'd already tried out before.
But one section caught his attention.
Soul Damage.
The text was blunt.
A soul that had been wounded would usually recover on its own.
But it would take an enormous amount of time.
Apparently the manuals strengthening techniques would also help increase that speed, but with the amount of damage he'd taken it would still take a considerable amount of time.
Riven grimaced.
He doubted he could tolerate this pain for even a few days.
He kept reading.
Fortunately, the manual offered something else.
A way to accelerate recovery even more.
Certain materials could be absorbed directly into the mind palace, where their essence would reinforce and rebuild damaged soul force.
The text described them as soul nutrients.
Rare substances that nourished spiritual structures the same way qi nourished the body.
Riven's gaze slowly drifted downward.
Toward the empty vial sitting beside him.
In which the Spider Dew had been stored.
One of the described materials fit its description.
When the foreign will had shattered… what had once been the liquid had scattered throughout his mind palace.
The manual also warned that one had to be careful when absorbing soul nutrients. Powerful cultivators sometimes hid fragments of their will inside such substances, hoping to invade or even possess whoever absorbed them.
Riven guessed that that was what had happened to him.
But the text also explained that such a will required a stable vessel.
A complete fragment.
And now that the invading presence had already been destroyed—its remnants scattered and seemingly dissolved throughout his mind palace—there should no longer be any real danger.
That was, of course, assuming he could still reach those fragments.
According to the manual, soul nutrients would not simply dissipate.
So Riven assumed the problem was simply that his soul had been weakened too much to sense them anymore.
But that shouldn't matter.
The technique described in the manual did not rely on precise detection. It worked by drawing in essence from the entire mind palace at once, allowing the cultivator to absorb even fragments they could no longer perceive directly.
The only remaining risk was that the foreign will might not have fully vanished.
But Riven was willing to gamble on that.
He trusted the manual's explanation that a will required a more complete vessel to survive.
And he had felt it break apart himself.
Worst case, whatever had defended his soul earlier might appear again.
More than anything—
He simply couldn't endure the pain any longer.
Riven gritted his teeth.
All or nothing.