When gods die, the world remembers in scars.
The battlefield was afire with moonfire.
Ash fell like snow over the shattered helmets and broken banners. The sky above Ardent's Valley was split in half one side lit by the dying sun, the other swallowed by an unnatural eclipse.
Riven Kael's fist clenched on his sword hilt, the breath raw in his throat. The army of the Empire stood behind him, thousands strong, but every man's gaze was fixed upon that black circle devouring the sky. The air hummed alive, wrong, whispering.
"Hold the line!"
General Korrin's voice cut through the chaos.
"The rebels have nowhere left to run!"
But Riven barely heard him. Beneath his skin, his pulse thrummed like thunder. His right arm felt heavy veins burning, glowing faintly beneath the flesh like threads of molten silver.
He shook it off.
Not now. Not again.
The enemy charged, wild and desperate. The earth shook from clashes of blades, the shattering of spears, and the screams of the dying. Riven fought like a machine-efficient, precise, merciless. Until a spear grazed his arm.
Pain seared through him like a lightning bolt. His blood struck the dirt-and the earth glowed.
Everybody froze. The wind stopped.
Then the world erupted.
A blinding surge of silver light erupted from Riven's body, tearing through soldiers and armor alike. Screams vanished under the roar of divine energy. When the glow faded, nothing stood around him only drifting ash and the faint shimmer of his own reflection in the silver-stained ground.
"Riven."
A voice. Soft. Impossible.
He turned.
Through the haze came a girl, barefoot, with hair that flowed like moonlight. The eclipse above framed her in pale fire. Her eyes shone with the quiet of a place that had seen millenniums pass.
"You've killed again," she said softly. "You always do whenever the eclipse returns."
Riven stumbled backward, her sword shaking.
"Who are you?"
The girl smiled faintly sorrowful, knowing.
"I am Lyra Vale," she whispered, "the one your soul has been running from since the gods fell."
The silver veins in Riven's arm flared brighter, pulsing in time with a heartbeat.
He fell on one knee, gasping as whispers flooded his mind thousands of voices crying, Kill her. Save her. Destroy the Veins.
The last thing he saw, before the darkness swallowed him, was Lyra's hand reaching toward his face; her fingers were glowing with the same light that burned inside him.
"Wake up, Riven," she murmured. "Your god remembers you."
And the world shattered into white.
When the light finally died, silence claimed the valley.
The air shimmered with fading echoes of divine energy - fragments of light twisting and dissolving into the cold night. Every breath that Riven took seemed to scrape fire through his lungs. The metallic taste of blood coated his tongue.
Bodies were gone.
Not fallen - gone.
Vaporized into dust by whatever had just torn through him.
His sword lay half-melted at his side, still humming faintly. He stared at his trembling hands-veins glowing faintly beneath the skin-silver, alive, whispering.
What am I becoming?
The earth cracked beneath him, black veins spreading outward from his boots like spiderwebs. The very ground rejected him now the same soil he had sworn to defend.
Then he heard her again.
"You weren't supposed to wake it yet."
Riven spun. Lyra stood a few paces away, her white hair stirring in a wind that didn't exist. Moonlight clung to her like a living aura, her bare feet untouched by the bloodstained ground.
"Who are you?" he demanded, his voice raw. "What did you do to me?"
Lyra tipped her head to one side, her face inscrutable. "I didn't do this to you, Riven Kael. The god inside you did.
He stared, trying to steady his breathing. "The gods are dead."
"They were," she said, husky, stepping closer. "Until you bled silver."
Riven's pulse thundered in his ears. Every instinct screamed run, but her gaze rooted him in place. There was something ancient there - pity, power, and something else. Recognition.
"You've forgotten," she said softly. "Your soul once stood beside mine when the heavens fell."
The rumble of the sky seemed to underscore her words, the eclipse above them pulsating as if it too held weight to her words in its shadow. Fragments of broken light rained down-not stars, but embers of memory.
He clenched his fists. "I don't know you."
Lyra had stopped a few steps away. "No," she said. "But you will. Because the god inside you"
Her eyes lifted toward the dark sky.
"is waking again. And when he does, he'll burn this world the way he did the last."
A cold wind rushed through the valley, whirling ash into eddying rings. Somewhere far off, a bell tolled - the Empire's call to arms.
Riven's chest ached, the silver light pulsating faster now, burning through his veins like molten chains.
"Help me stop it," he said, his voice cracking. "If you know what this is, help me control it."
Lyra looked up at the fading eclipse, then back at him. For the first time, her calm cracked sadness darkening her eyes.
"You can't control it," she whispered. "You can only choose which world it destroys next."
The wind roared. The silver veins in Riven's arms flared brighter than the moon.
And far above, the eclipse spread just as if some invisible god had opened his eye.
The world held its breath.
The valley, earlier filled with men and steel, was now a grave of glowing ash.
Only two figures remained-one trembling under the weight of something ancient, the other standing calm against a storm of divinity.
Riven fell to his knees.
The glow in his veins became brighter, spilling out through cracks in his skin. His heartbeat thundered like war drums, each pulse sending waves of silver light rippling through the air.
"Make it stop," he gasped. "Make it stop!"
Lyra didn't move. Her eyes were steady, serene but her voice carried a note of sorrow.
"You're fighting against something that was never meant to be human."
Riven's breath hitched. Never meant to be human?
He gritted his teeth as flashes tore through his mind visions not his own: a city built of light; gods walking among stars; a blade piercing a sun. And then a woman's scream her scream echoing through eternity.
He collapsed and covered his head.
Lyra knelt beside him, pressing a cool hand to his temple. The burning pain eased at once, like ice poured over fire. The glow in his veins dimmed.
"What did you see?" she asked quietly.
Riven's voice was hoarse. "A war… and a voice. Calling my name. But it wasn't mine."
Lyra's lips arced faintly. "That's because it belongs to the god sleeping inside you."
Her hand lingered near his jaw, a soft light emanating from her fingertips.
"His name was Kaelith the God of Destruction. The last god to fall. When the heavens burned, he shattered his soul to survive. Part of him was lost to time…"
Her gaze lifted to him. "And the rest found you."
Riven drew back, his face contorted in incredulity. "You're insane."
"Maybe," she said simply. "But your heartbeat disagrees."
Before he could speak, the ground had violently shaken.
From the far ridge, horns blared the Empire's scouts had returned. Torches flared in the distance, growing brighter by the second.
Riven forced himself up, wiping the blood from his mouth. "They'll kill us both."
She didn't flinch. "No. They'll kill you. I'm already dead."
He turned to her, ready to argue, and then he saw it-her body shimmered faintly, half-translucent under the moonlight, as if she were fading from existence. Her feet didn't leave prints in the dust.
"What are you?" he whispered.
Lyra's expression softened, almost tender. "A memory. A curse. The last echo of the moon goddess your god once loved. The words hung in the air like a blade. First, an arrow cut through the night toward his chest before he could process what was happening. Time slowed. Lyra's eyes flashed silver; her hand rose instinctively. The arrow turned to ash in midair. "Run," she said. "I'm not leaving you." Her smile was sad, knowing. "You don't have a choice." She raised her hand and the air above them seemed to warp, folding in on itself. The light exploded again, consuming the valley completely. ۱ When it faded, the battlefield was empty again. No soldiers. No Lyra. Only the echo of her last whisper, on the wind: "Find me when the next eclipse rises." And when Riven's eyes finally opened to a dark forest miles away, the silver veins still pulsing faintly beneath his skin, he knew he could feel her heartbeat inside his own.