The prisoner did not speak for nine days.
He was brought into the tower under midnight rain, bound in silence and watched by a dozen magisters whose hands trembled just slightly beneath their robes. Not out of fear, but anticipation—like they stood too close to a fire they'd only half understood.
He was placed in the lowest cell of the Iron Spire, a place where LAW echoes could be safely muffled by binding seals etched in obsidian and elder-ash. Yet still, the walls listened. And sometimes, they answered.
His name, once, had been Riven.
But few remembered that now. Even fewer dared speak it.
Now, he was called The Harrowed Crown—a title whispered in the aftermath of veiled massacres and sudden silences. Not a warlord. Not a monster. Something in between. A vessel, perhaps.
LAW: Grave Memory
A rare evolutionary anomaly—his LAW allowed him to absorb the final thoughts, knowledge, and residual power of the dying. Not just Called, but anyone. Their last truths became his own, stitched together inside his soul like pieces of broken glass forming a mirror that could never be whole.
He didn't eat. Didn't drink. The guards tried once to force both. They stopped after the third attempt, when one began muttering in a dead language and walked calmly into a wall until his neck snapped.
On the tenth day, the Magister of Silence arrived.
Wrapped in ceremonial blue and grey, face hidden behind a veil of woven whispers, they stood outside the cell and observed.
"We have confirmed," the magister began, voice filtered through an echoing talisman, "that you crossed into a sealed convergence zone. You violated the Trinary Accord. Thirteen dead. Twelve were Called."
Riven did not rise.
"You don't deny this?" the magister asked.
"I remember each," he said. "Clearly."
There was no remorse in his voice. Only weight. As if he spoke through not one mouth, but many.
The magister pressed on. "The High Watch believes your LAW may be unstable. We're here to determine if it can be bound. Or if you must be—"
"Erased?"
The word echoed unnaturally.
Something in the air shifted. The glyphs along the containment barrier trembled like strings drawn too tight.
"My LAW cannot be bound," Riven said. "It is not mine alone."
The magister took a cautious step back.
"What do you mean?"
Riven finally stood. Slowly. Deliberately. He moved like gravity bent around him in unfamiliar ways.
"You've heard the term Ascended, haven't you?"
The magister did not reply.
"I've touched something older than LAW. Beneath its roots. Before it chose vessels. I drowned in it, once. And I carry pieces of that drowning still."
He reached out, not toward the barrier—but into it.
And it parted.
There was no flash. No explosion. Just absence. The kind of emptiness that bends memory. One guard fell, clutching his chest. Another collapsed without a sound, eyes glazed.
Only the magister remained conscious. Paralyzed. Watching.
"I don't kill for pleasure," Riven said.
He stepped across the broken threshold. "I kill to remember."
"What are you?" the magister whispered.
Riven turned, expression unreadable. "A grave that walks."
With that, he vanished into the lower corridors of the Iron Spire. The bells did not ring. The alarms failed. It was as if his presence erased its own pursuit.
Outside the Spire, in the shadow of the Weeping Vale, horses screamed in their stalls. Ravens took flight. The wind changed direction.
Something was moving.
Not toward power.
Toward convergence.
The Cradle Vault lay silent for now—but not for long. Called were being drawn there. Not just Gerson. Not just Kaelen.
Others.
And Riven—the Harrowed Crown—would be waiting.