The forest was never meant to be a battlefield.
Yet tonight, it will become one.
Riven was being hunted—not as a man, but as a weapon that had slipped its leash. The Order wanted him back. Alive. Broken, if necessary.
He did not fully understand why they feared him.
He only knew one thing—
He could not stop running.
Rain poured through the dense forest canopy, hammering leaves and soaking the earth beneath. Riven ran, each step heavy, each breath burning, the echo of pursuit chasing him through the trees. He was exhausted, muscles screaming, but he carried his friend alongside him, both desperate to escape.
For a fleeting moment, between the thunder of his own heart and the pounding rain, Riven glanced at his companion.
"You always pick the worst hiding spots," his friend said with a strained laugh, ducking under a low branch.
Riven smirked despite himself. "Somebody has to keep you alive, don't I?"
A brief pause. Mud squelched under their boots, rain soaking their hair and clothes. For a fleeting moment, the world felt… normal. Just two friends running through the forest, sharing a laugh amidst the chaos.
A sharp twang split the air.
Riven barely had time to react before the arrow tore through the rain, its tip shimmering faintly as it struck his friend square in the side.
His friend cried out—a sharp, strangled sound—and collapsed instantly.
Riven skidded to a halt, heart hammering. "No… no!" He dropped beside him, hands shaking as he turned him over, rain washing red across the mud.
The wound was small. Too clean.
That was when Riven felt it—
the heat spreading unnaturally fast, veins darkening around the impact point.
A binding toxin.
He knew it.
Everyone did.
A compound designed to paralyze the weapon—to shut Riven down completely if it ever struck him. But on a normal body…
His friend's breathing hitched, violent and uneven. Blood slicked his lips as his muscles seized, fingers clawing weakly at Riven's sleeve.
"Riven…" he whispered, voice already fading. The toxin was killing him.
Riven leaned closer, hands trembling. "I'm here. I'm right here."
A faint, breathy laugh escaped his friend. "Guess… this is it, huh?" He coughed, wincing. "Damn… I really thought I'd get out of this forest someday."
"I'm sorry…" he murmured. "Looks like I won't be able to show you… how to live."
A pause. His chest rose and fell with effort.
"Not for others… not for orders… but for yourself."
Riven shook his head desperately. "Don't say that. You can still—"
"But you must," his friend interrupted softly, voice barely above the rain. "You have to live."
Another breath.
Longer.
Weaker.
"It'll hurt like a bitch," he whispered, a crooked smile tugging at his lips. "You'll cry… get angry… hate the world… maybe even hate yourself."
A faint chuckle. "You'll mess up a lot."
"But you'll laugh too," he continued, voice thinning. "You'll get happy over stupid things… and someday… you'll realize it was worth it."
His eyes dimmed, rain sliding down his face like tears he could no longer shed.
"So… don't let anyone decide your life for you, yeah?"
His chest stilled.
From the shadows, movements could be heard. Men dressed in white emerged into the clearing, their boots sinking into the mud, glinting steel visible through the downpour.
The men in white were not hunters, nor soldiers in the common sense. They were enforcers of balance—agents of an Order that existed beyond kingdoms and borders. Where weapons awakened beyond control, they were sent. Where power threatened to overflow its purpose, they intervened.
Riven was not the target by choice. He was the necessity.
Among them stood a man clad in white, adorned with gold stripes—with a presence that radiated authority even in the rain.
"By order of the Grandmaster," he finally said, voice cold and clean, carrying over the patter of rain, "you are to come with us."
As the words left his mouth, his presence shifted. The air grew heavy. His will unfurled, vast and suffocating, pressing down on the forest itself. Leaves trembled, branches creaked, and the rain seemed to hesitate mid-fall, as though the world itself had been forced to acknowledge him.
Riven didn't respond. The man's will bore down on him, heavy and unyielding, but it barely registered. The forest, the rain, the encircling figures in white—none of it mattered.
His hands were still stained with blood. Warm, slipping through his fingers no matter how tightly he pressed them against the wound. His friend lay motionless at his feet.
Why…
The question echoed, hollow and useless.
Why did it hurt like this?
He had lost people before. Seen death. Caused it, even. Yet this—this was different. This emptiness clawed at him from the inside, gnawing, widening, threatening to swallow everything whole.
His breath came out uneven. Something warm slid down his cheeks. He reached up absently, fingers brushing against his face, and stared at the moisture on his hand.
…Tears?
The realization struck harder than any blow. He hadn't meant to cry. He didn't even understand why he was crying.
His chest trembled once. Then again. A sound tore its way out of his throat—broken, raw, unrecognizable. He clamped his jaw shut, forcing it back down, but the pressure only built, choking him from the inside.
Stop.
He didn't know who he was speaking to.
Stop feeling.
That was what he was supposed to do. That was what he had always done.
But the memory of his friend's voice—weak, fading, stubbornly warm—refused to disappear.
'Don't let anyone decide your life for you.'
Riven's fingers curled into the mud. The world felt… wrong.
Too loud.
Too close.
Too empty.
His vision blurred—not from the rain this time, but from something boiling behind his eyes. His heart slammed violently against his ribs, each beat echoing like a warning he couldn't understand.
Something inside him cracked. Not loudly. Not all at once. Just enough for the emptiness to rush in—
—and for something else to answer it.
Slowly, Riven raised his head. The men in white stiffened. The man who had spoken narrowed his eyes.
Riven's gaze passed over them without recognition, unfocused and distant, as though he were looking through them rather than at them.
"…Ah," he murmured, voice hoarse, unfamiliar.
"So this is what it feels like."