The city slept under a blanket of mist, its cobblestone streets slick with rain and secrets. Lanterns flickered in the fog, casting long, broken shadows that danced around Riven and Maelis as they moved through the alleys like ghosts.
Every step they took brought them closer.
Closer to the manor.
Closer to the kill.
Closer to the point of no return.
Riven's hand hovered near the hilt of his blade, but it wasn't instinct that made it twitch—it was dread.
"He'll be in the upper hall," Maelis whispered. "Always is this time of night. Drunk. Alone."
Riven grunted. "What about the guards?"
"I took care of them. A whisper, a bribe, a dose of dreamroot in their wine."
He glanced at her. "You were always better at subtle."
"And you were always better at surviving."
They reached the manor wall. Riven scaled it with practiced ease, Maelis right behind him. The moment his boots hit the balcony stone, the air thickened.
He felt it immediately—a soul pulsing on the edge of death.
Not the noble's.
Something darker. Watching. Waiting.
He froze.
"Do you feel that?" he murmured.
Maelis paused. "Yes. Something's wrong."
The door to the study creaked open without resistance. Inside, the noble lay slumped in his chair, goblet fallen from limp fingers.
Dead.
But not harvested.
Riven stepped forward slowly. The soul was still there, flickering—trapped.
Before he could react, the room darkened. Shadows slid across the walls, coiling around the corpse like smoke.
Then… a voice.
"Late, little Reaper."
Riven's blood ran cold.
The Abyss had sent something back.
Riven stepped in front of Maelis, hand tightening on the hilt of his blade. The voice slithered through the room like oil over water, too smooth, too knowing.
The shadows pooled near the corpse, thickening, churning—until something began to rise from the floor.
It had no true form.
No face.
Just darkness with a pulse.
"You carry death like a crown," the voice hissed. "But you are not its master."
Riven didn't flinch. "What are you?"
The thing laughed. Not from its mouth—if it had one—but from inside his head.
"A herald. A whisper. A reminder. The Abyss never forgets its debts."
Maelis drew a dagger etched with sigils of warding, her voice steady. "Back. Now."
The shadows lunged.
Riven's blade flashed. Steel met smoke—but this wasn't just shadow. It shrieked when cut, recoiling, re-forming. Riven slashed again, not to kill it, but to keep it at bay.
"Maelis! The soul—can you sever it?"
She darted forward, palm glowing with Harvesting light, and reached for the noble's soul—
Too late.
The shadow wrapped around the soul and devoured it.
A pulse of cold slammed through the room. Lights burst. Glass shattered. Riven dropped to one knee, gasping.
It was gone. The presence had vanished.
Only silence remained…
And the noble's soulless husk.
Maelis's hands trembled. "That wasn't just a Wraith. That was a Bound."
Riven stood slowly. "A Bound?"
She nodded, eyes wide with dread. "Something that broke free from the Abyss—but stayed tethered. That shouldn't be possible."
Riven's jaw clenched. "Then we've got a bigger problem than the Order."
She met his gaze. "We have a war coming, Riven. And I don't think the Order is ready."
The manor felt colder now, as if the creature had taken more than just a soul—as if it had stolen the warmth of the world itself.
Riven exhaled slowly, then turned toward the shattered window. "We need to leave. If more of those things are coming..."
"We won't survive the next one," Maelis finished, voice tight.
They vanished into the night, melting into the alleyways as silently as they'd arrived. But silence didn't ease the tension in Riven's chest. The weight of the failed harvest—of what they'd witnessed—pressed heavier than steel armor.
By dawn, they reached the outpost: a ruined chapel nestled in the bones of the old city, where stone and time had made a pact to forget.
Inside, a lone figure waited.
Arin.
He didn't look surprised to see them, but the sharpness in his eyes told Riven he already sensed the mission had gone wrong.
"Well?" Arin asked.
Riven hesitated.
Maelis stepped forward. "The noble is dead. But the soul was consumed before we could harvest it."
Arin's brow furrowed. "By what?"
Riven answered this time. "A Bound. Shadow-wreathed. Spoke from the Abyss."
That made Arin's mouth go tight.
Maelis pressed, "You've heard of this before."
"I've heard rumors," Arin admitted. "Whispers from failed Harvests. Reports sealed by the High Reapers. But I've never seen one myself."
"What do they want?" Maelis asked.
Arin looked between them, the shadows beneath his eyes deepening. "Not what. Who."
Riven's spine stiffened. "What do you mean?"
"The Bound are drawn to power—unclaimed, unstable, corrupted. They don't seek prey. They seek... conduits."
Riven's blood chilled.
Maelis's voice dropped. "You think it was after him."
Arin didn't reply. He didn't need to.
The silence confirmed everything.
And from somewhere far beyond the mortal veil, deep within the Abyss...
Something smiled.
Riven stepped back from the altar, every nerve taut.
"So that thing… it was after me?"
Arin didn't answer at first. He turned toward the broken stained glass behind him, where fragments of forgotten saints caught the dawn light. "It could've been after the noble. But no. It lingered. Spoke to you." He looked over his shoulder. "It knew your name."
Maelis blinked. "How is that possible? The Bound shouldn't be able to access memory."
"They shouldn't even exist outside the Abyss," Arin said grimly. "But if they're crossing over now, it means something has changed. A seal broken. A gate cracked."
"A conduit…" Riven murmured. "If it's drawn to unstable power, maybe it sensed—"
"The Void Consumption," Maelis finished, voice barely above a whisper.
Riven went still.
He hadn't told anyone outside the Initiation Hall what he could do—what he had done to survive that mission. Not even Maelis. But the truth had always been there, circling just beneath the surface like a beast waiting to be named.
Arin's gaze sharpened. "You've consumed more souls than your trials allowed, haven't you?"
Riven didn't reply.
That was all the answer Arin needed.
"I should report this," Arin said. "The Council—"
"No." Riven's voice was iron. "You do that, and I'm marked the same as that noble. I'm not letting them erase me over something they don't understand."
Maelis stepped between them, eyes hard. "He didn't ask for this. And if the Bound really are coming, we'll need him more than they want to admit."
The silence stretched.
Finally, Arin sighed. "You've got three days."
Riven raised a brow. "To what?"
"To find out why the Bound are targeting you."
Arin's voice dropped into a growl.
"And to figure out if the Abyss is calling you back… or sending you forward."
Riven's jaw clenched, his fingers flexing at his sides.
Three days.
Again.
It was always three days with the Order—just enough time to feel hope, never enough to act without risk.
"I don't need a leash," he muttered.
Arin raised a brow. "Then prove you're not a threat."
Maelis stepped between them, her voice calm but sharp. "That's enough. We're wasting time. If Bound are surfacing, if they're tethering themselves to souls, the Order needs more than reports. It needs people who've seen it firsthand."
Arin studied her, then Riven. "Fine. But if anything happens—if you lose control—I won't hesitate."
Neither of them replied. They didn't need to.
The moment passed, and Arin disappeared into the shadows of the chapel, leaving Riven and Maelis alone.
For a while, neither spoke.
Finally, she turned to him. "You should have told me."
"I wanted to," Riven said. "But how do you explain something you don't understand?"
He glanced down at his hands—steady, calloused, stained with souls he couldn't forget.
"When I consumed that first soul… it was like falling into a storm. Pain. Power. Hunger. And then silence. Like something inside me stopped screaming."
Maelis placed a hand on his arm. "You survived. That's more than most."
"But I'm changing," Riven said, his voice hollow. "I can feel it. Every soul I take—it lingers. It whispers. I don't know how long I can keep pretending I'm still the same man."
Maelis didn't flinch. "Then don't pretend. Fight it."
Riven looked at her. For the first time, her presence steadied the weight inside him.
He nodded slowly.
"We find out what the Bound want. We stop them—before the Council decides to stop me."
Maelis's eyes glinted with resolve. "Then we better move fast."
As the morning sun broke through the ruined glass above them, casting fractured colors across their faces, one truth settled like a brand on their souls.
The Abyss had stirred.
And it was not done reaching for him.
Later that night.
They rode in silence beneath the cover of darkness, the wind sharp with winter's bite. The city gave way to the outskirts—abandoned temples, broken statues, forgotten graves. This was where knowledge went to rot, where the Order buried what it couldn't control.
Their destination: the Archive Beneath, an off-limits crypt sealed by decree of the High Reapers.
"You're sure it's still here?" Maelis asked as they approached a crumbling stairwell hidden beneath a shrine.
"I'm sure the Order wanted it forgotten," Riven replied. "Which means it's exactly where we'll find what they're afraid of."
The descent was steep. Each step deeper into the earth felt like slipping into another realm. The air grew colder, thicker, heavy with the stench of old parchment and power long sealed.
They reached a rusted gate bound by chains etched in sigils.
Riven extended his hand. The Void pulsed faintly within him—recognizing something. The chains groaned, then snapped loose as if they remembered him.
Maelis stared. "That's not normal."
"Neither is what's hunting us," he muttered.
The gate creaked open.
Inside was a vast chamber, stacked with ancient tomes, soul jars, forgotten weapons, and relics older than the Order itself. At the center stood a pedestal. Upon it lay a book bound in stitched flesh—the Codex of the Broken Veil.
Riven reached for it. The moment his fingers brushed the cover, visions exploded behind his eyes.
Flashes of black seas.
Mountains of bone.
And creatures that didn't walk—they crawled, with mouths where their eyes should be.
He staggered back, breath ragged.
Maelis caught him. "Riven!"
"I saw them," he gasped. "The Bound. The Abyss isn't just sending them… it's preparing them."
"For what?" she asked.
Riven looked up, eyes burning like coals.
"A purge. They're coming to cleanse the world—starting with us."
Maelis took a cautious step back from the Codex.
"What kind of purge?" she asked.
Riven's voice was low. "Not just bodies. Souls. They want to unmake us. Everything tied to the Cycle—consumed, rewritten, or worse… chained."
He flipped open the Codex, its pages crackling like dead leaves. The ink moved on its own, words warping as if resisting being read.
But one symbol burned through the page.
A circle. No—an eye.
The Eye of the Abyss.
Maelis leaned in, brows drawn. "I've seen that before. In the Seer's chamber—painted behind the throne of the old Soul King."
Riven turned sharply. "The one the Order erased from the records?"
She nodded. "They said he lost control. That he tried to bind death itself."
"And what if he didn't lose control?" Riven asked, voice hard. "What if he opened something—and the Order buried it, then built their power on top of it?"
The room trembled.
Dust fell from the ceiling. The chains at the gate twitched.
Maelis grabbed his arm. "Something's waking up, Riven. We shouldn't be here too long."
But Riven wasn't listening.
The Codex's pages flipped on their own, faster and faster, until they stopped on a blank page.
Then, as if ink bled from the paper itself, a message formed:
"YOU TOOK WHAT WAS OURS."
A chill rushed down his spine.
Maelis stepped back, hand going to her dagger. "That's not from the Codex."
"No," Riven whispered. "It's from them."
The shadows in the chamber began to move. Slow. Deliberate.
From the corners of the archive, whispers crawled out of the walls. Not voices—memories.
Maelis gripped his shoulder. "We need to run."
Riven closed the Codex, and the whispers stopped.
The shadows froze.
But just before the last one faded, a voice, soft and cold, echoed in his skull:
"You are marked, Riven. And when the time comes... you will open the gate for us."
They didn't speak as they climbed out of the Archive Beneath.
Not a word passed between them, not even as the shrine closed behind them with a low groan like a creature exhaling its last breath. The wind outside had died, and the forest around the ruins stood unnaturally still—as if the world itself was holding its breath.
Riven stared at his hands.
That voice—those words—You are marked.
It hadn't just spoken. It had known him.
"Whatever we just stirred," Maelis said quietly, "it was watching us the whole time."
"Not just watching," Riven murmured. "Waiting."
She glanced at him. "Waiting for what?"
He looked ahead, jaw set. "For the right moment. For me."
Maelis didn't argue. She couldn't.
They mounted their horses and rode back toward the city. But even as the lights of the outer walls flickered into view, a strange pressure settled over Riven's chest, heavy and unmoving.
The mark wasn't just a threat.
It was a claim.
They reached the hidden path toward the Order's watchpoint. Maelis went ahead.
But Riven stopped.
Something shifted in the corner of his vision. A figure, standing just beyond the treeline.
Tall. Cloaked in black. Face hidden beneath a hood stitched shut with golden thread.
And when it raised its head, no eyes looked back—only darkness.
Riven didn't move.
The figure lifted one hand, slow and deliberate.
In its palm… floated a soul flame.
Small. Blue. Still flickering.
Maelis's.
Riven's heart stopped.
He drew his blade—
And the figure vanished.