The silence in the warehouse was heavier than the rain outside. Riven stared at Marrow, and the old man's words echoed in the hollowed-out chambers of his mind.
Born in Nethyra. Brother. The other half of the pendant.
It was a lie. A ridiculous, childish story. A fairy story in truth. He could feel the solid concrete beneath his boots, smell the damp, oily air of the human world. This was his reality. Not some demonic fairy tale.
"You're lying," Riven's voice was a low, dangerous rasp, all traces of his earlier shock burned away by a surge of defensive anger. He took a step back, his hand closing protectively around the core shard in his pocket, its solid, non-magical hum a comfort. "My parents were engineers. I have their photographs. I grew up in the Aetherian foster system after they died. You're trying to use me."
Marrow's face was a mask of pity, and that only infuriated Riven more. "The memories were a necessary protection, Riven. A constructed life to keep you hidden."
"From what? A fairytale brother?" Riven scoffed, a harsh, ugly sound. "You expect me to believe that I'm some… some lost prince of demons because an old man and a glowing rock say so?"
Before Marrow could answer, the world outside the warehouse erupted.
It wasn't the crack of a single rift. It was a roar. A sound of reality itself being gutted. The corrugated iron walls of the warehouse shrieked as if in agony, buckling inward. The fluorescent lights exploded in a shower of glass and sparks, plunging the space into a strobe-like chaos of lightning from outside.
The sky was no longer grey with rain through the newly torn gaps in the wall; it was a weeping wound of violet and crimson-a permanent lightning strike that had anchored itself to the earth. And from that hell-mouth, they descended.
These were not the flickering half-formed shades from the ruins. These were soldiers: hulking, armored beasts with flesh of molten rock and wings of shattered bone, moving with a terrifying, coordinated precision. They weren't mindless; they were an invasion force.
"He's here," Marrow whispered, his face pale with a fear that was far more convincing than his earlier stories.
Riven didn't have time to understand who "he" was. A part of the roof had been ripped off, and a flying demon, the size of a ground vehicle, landed in the middle of the warehouse, its burning gaze fixing onto Riven.
The pendant at his chest flared, a searing brand of crimson light. This time, it wasn't a gentle pulse. It was a scream of alarm, a raw pull of power surging through his veins without his permission. His vision sharpened and the world slowed down. He could see the individual cracks in the demon's armor, smell the sulfur on its breath.
He was moving before he could think, his relic-hunter's blade in his hand. He ducked under a sweep of a claw that would have taken his head off, the movement too fast, too fluid to be entirely human. He drove the blade into a joint in the creature's leg. It howled, not in pain, but in fury, and backhanded him across the room.
Riven crashed into a stack of metal crates, the impact driving the air from his lungs. He tasted blood. And in that instant, all the power that had surged through him was gone, leaving him bruised, breathless, and utterly human again. He was outmatched.
Just as the demon lunged for the kill, a new sound cut through the chaos: the sharp, authoritative whine of Aetherian engines.
Through the torn wall, three sleek, gunmetal-grey DPF skimmers descended like raptors, their mounted plasma cannons glowing blue. Hatchways slid open, and soldiers in advanced combat armor rappelled down, forming a disciplined perimeter. Their movements were clean, efficient, and brutally human.
At their head was a woman. Her silver-white hair was tied back in a severe braid, her cerulean eyes scanning the scene with unnerving calm, taking in the scale of the rift, the demonic forces, and finally landing on Riven, struggling to his feet. Her gaze tarried for the barest fraction of a second on the pendant, still aglow fiercely at his throat.
"Contain the breach! Neutralize all hostiles!" The voice of Captain Mira Calen cut through the din, clear and sharp. She didn't wait for acknowledgment. Her rifle came up, and a precise burst of plasma took the towering demon in the neck, making it stagger back.
She moved toward Riven, her focus absolute. "Civilian! Identify yourself!"
Riven just stared, his mind racing. The DPF. The military. This had just gone from a personal nightmare to a galactic-scale problem.
Before he could form a word, a smaller, faster demon dropped from the ceiling, claws aimed for Mira's exposed back. Riven's body moved on instinct he didn't understand. He shoved her aside, taking a deep gash across his arm for his trouble. He grunted in pain, stumbling.
Mira spun, dispatched the creature with two clean shots, then turned her piercing gaze back to him. She saw the fresh wound, the way he moved, the defiant, terrified look in his eyes. And she saw the pendant.
Her expression didn't soften, but it shifted. The official script was ditched.
"You're the one they're after," she said without making it a question. "The 'pendant man'."
"I don't know what you're talking about," Riven gritted out, clutching his bleeding arm, the lie feeble even to his own ears.
Mira's eyes flickered to the apocalyptic rift outside, then back to him. "You can either come with me and explain, or you can stay here and explain it to them." She jerked her head toward the horde of demons. "Your choice."
In the maelstrom of the demonic storm, high above in the command skimmer, a sensor operator turned to his superior, his face ashen. "Sir, we're reading an energy signature inside the primary breach. It's. it's massive. It's not a demon. It's a command signal." The officer hunched forward, his eyes wide as he stared at the screen. Through the visual static of the rift, for one horrifying second, visible was the form of a man in a long coat, standing calmly amidst the hellfire, looking down, directly on the warehouse. On Riven. Jake had arrived. The hunt wasn't a search anymore—it was a siege.