Chapter 2: Riven Calyx
The bones whispered when Kael moved.
It wasn't sound exactly more like memory, or magic, brushing against their skin like cold breath. Every step echoed like it was being watched. Judged. The deeper Kael walked through the field of remains, the more they realized just how wrong this place was.
The sky overhead had stopped bleeding, but it hadn't gone quiet. Crimson clouds churned in reverse, peeling open instead of closing. Lightning pulsed in slow motion, flickering blue, then violet, then white, like the sky couldn't decide what century it belonged to.
Kael shivered and crossed their arms.
If this was a dream, it was the most painful, vivid one they'd ever had.
But their gut knew better.
This was real.
And they were very, very far from home.
"Riven!" Kael shouted into the fog, voice ragged from disuse and dread. "I know you're watching. Come back, damn it!"
Only silence answered.
That, and the faint scrape of something metallic far ahead.
Kael clenched their fists. "I didn't ask to be here. I didn't fall through a hole in the sky to wander around a nightmare alone. You owe me an explanation!"
The fog shifted.
The temperature dropped like a stone, and Kael's breath became visible silvery in the low light. Shadows stirred, and something thumped once, deep and heavy, like the heartbeat of a sleeping god.
Then he stepped out again.
Not from the fog but out of it. Like he was part of it. Shadow given form, chains trailing behind him in rhythmic pulses. His bare feet didn't stir the bones beneath him. His presence was both absence and weight.
Riven Calyx.
Kael squinted. "You just live here? In a graveyard?"
He didn't blink. "I was chained here for a reason."
"Okay, fine. Whatever you did, I don't care. I just want to get back to my world."
"You don't care," Riven repeated, tone unreadable.
Kael crossed their arms. "Correct."
"You don't care that I tore down a continent?"
A beat.
"Excuse me?"
Riven's head tilted slightly. His silver eyes didn't glow they burned cold. "I broke the spine of this realm. I shattered the sky. I screamed so loud the moons bled. That's what they say."
Kael licked their lips, unsure whether to run or keep listening. "So… you're a war criminal."
"I was in love," Riven said flatly. "And I was angry."
That silenced Kael.
"I lost something," he added, voice softer. "Someone. And the power that stirred inside me didn't know how to grieve quietly."
Kael took a cautious step closer. "Someone you loved?"
A pause.
He looked away. "Don't romanticize me."
"I'm not. I just…" Kael's throat tightened. "I know what it's like to lose something and not know who you are without it."
Riven's eyes flicked back to them, quick as a lash. "Do you?"
"I've been told I'm too much, too broken, too sensitive, my entire life. I've never felt like I belonged anywhere. And now I'm here, in some magic war-torn wasteland, because I cracked a little harder than usual."
He studied them, gaze unreadable.
Kael exhaled, shoulders sagging. "I don't know if I'm the hero or the mistake."
"You're the Veinborn," he said.
Kael blinked. "You said that before. What is that?"
Riven's jaw tightened. "A myth. A curse. A mistake with power leaking from its bones."
Kael looked down at their hands, flexing their fingers. They didn't feel powerful. They felt like a half-drowned grad student with unresolved trauma.
"I didn't ask for any of this," Kael muttered.
"No one ever does," Riven said.
Silence fell between them like a sheet of steel.
Kael looked around. "So what now? You going to abandon me here again?"
"I should," Riven replied. "The last Veinborn I helped tried to ascend and nearly broke the world in half."
Kael frowned. "You knew another one?"
His expression didn't change. But something behind his eyes fractured.
"…I loved them," he said quietly. "And I killed them."
The words slammed into Kael like a wave.
Before they could respond, the ground beneath them trembled. A sound like cracking stone echoed from far off. A shriek inhuman, high-pitched, and wrong rippled through the fog.
Riven's head snapped toward the horizon. "We don't have time for this."
"What was that?" Kael asked, backing up.
"Remnants," he said. "Creatures that smell magic. They've been starving for years."
Kael's stomach dropped. "They're coming for me?"
Riven looked them in the eye, chains glowing faintly.
"They're coming for your blood."
Then he moved.
Faster than Kael could follow, Riven swept forward and seized their wrist. His grip was cold but steady, and his chains tightened with him. A red sigil flared briefly on the side of his neck.
Kael barely had time to speak before the world yanked sideways like falling through a sideways elevator.
With a snap, they were somewhere else.
They landed in a ruin stone walls, half-collapsed archways, and old sigils carved into shattered marble. The air here was thicker, dense with heat and dust. Vines curled through cracks in the floor, glowing faintly.
Kael stumbled back, trying not to puke.
"What just happened?"
"Teleportation," Riven muttered, already scanning the ruins. "Short-range. Hurts like hell but it beats being eaten."
Kael looked at him, heart hammering. "You saved me."
He didn't answer.
"Why?"
Still silence.
Then, with a sigh like he hated himself for speaking, he said, "Because I recognized the way you screamed."
Kael blinked, caught off guard.
Riven moved past them, toward a shattered altar overgrown with black flowers. He knelt beside it, brushing his fingers along a glowing vine.
"You're going to attract things," he said after a beat. "Power you don't understand. Beings that have been sleeping since the last Veinborn vanished. And when they come, they won't be kind."
Kael stepped toward him, cautiously. "Then teach me. Help me survive."
Riven shook his head. "I swore never to get involved again."
"You already have."
Silence.
The wind howled through the cracks in the walls.
Kael waited.
Finally, Riven stood, turned to them, and said,
"Then follow me. But if you betray me like the last one… I'll kill you myself."
Kael didn't flinch.
They just nodded.
Later that night, Kael lay alone in a makeshift bed of cloth and moss beside the ruin's broken wall. The stars above were not Earth's stars they moved, almost pulsed, like they were alive. One constellation looked like a serpent curled around a dagger. Another, a weeping eye.
They tried to sleep, but every time they closed their eyes, they saw two things:
The face of Riven Calyx, lit by dying firelight.
And the split skull in the bone garden grinning like it knew what came next.
A whisper touched Kael's ear just before sleep took them.
Not Riven's voice.
Not human.
"Veinborn… awaken."
Kael sat bolt upright.
The stars were gone.
The sky was bleeding again.
And something stood at the edge of the ruins, watching them with eyes like mirrors.