In a secret place in the world, wrapped in shadows and silence, two indistinct figures warmed themselves around a campfire. The flames crackled low, spitting sparks that rose and died in the cold air. The smell of fat dripping onto the embers mixed with the smoke of damp firewood. On an improvised spit, a rabbit roasted slowly; its skin stretched and darkened, snapping as the heat licked the thinnest parts.
The sturdier figure leaned slightly forward, as if the light should not fall directly on his face. His voice came out deep, with the dryness of someone who had repeated that decision to himself for years.
— At last, the day requested by the Master has come. Today, I will tell you the whole story of how we reached this point… and what your function is in this world.
The other figure, smaller—though it would be blasphemy to call her small—remained motionless for a moment, feeling the warmth strike her face while the cold insisted on her back. When she spoke, there was impatience and something else: an old knot lodged in her throat.
— Professor… I don't understand. Why fifteen years of waiting? Wouldn't it have been better sooner?
The snap of a branch in the fire sounded too loud. The rabbit turned on the spit with a faint creak of wood.
— No. — Professor Grik's answer was dry, leaving no room for negotiation.
And he went on:
— We will begin at the point of the story chosen by the Master.
Then his voice rang out, measured and deliberate, and the narration began…
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
— Do you know what you're accused of, and why you're here? — asked the middle-aged man dressed in white, with hands far too clean for that place. The fabric of his clothes smelled of harsh soap and alcohol, but the air around him wouldn't allow the scent to stand out.
The cracked walls had a smell of their own: iron, old sweat, and wet stone. It was like breathing inside a blade. Somewhere above, far away, came a muffled thud; voices blended together—laughter, a scream that began and died too quickly, as if the walls swallowed sound before it could become a scandal. Light fell in thin bands, cut by bars and fractures; on the floor it formed pale stains that flickered with torch smoke.
The clink of chains echoed somewhere down a corridor. It wasn't the noise of a single prisoner. It was the house's language.
— I'm accused of slandering a noble… — Riven said, and his own voice sounded different in there, drier, hoarser. — Of spitting in his face… and calling him a whore.
The "doctor" showed no shock. He only watched with the indifference of someone who had catalogued worse crimes—and more ridiculous ones—earlier that same morning. His eyes swept over Riven as if searching for fever, fracture, weakness; anything that could turn into a number in a bet.
— I'm in the Crimson Coliseum, in the center of the Empire… a place built to entertain the eli—
— Silence— The interruption came abruptly, without anger—only functional impatience. He didn't even need to raise his voice; in that place, an order carried authority on its own. — Guards. Take him to his cell. Tomorrow he'll be ready to fight for his life.
The orders didn't echo: they spread. And almost immediately, two men emerged from a side shadow in the corridor. Worn armor, leather darkened by sweat and oil, metal dented and marked by use. Their smell arrived first: rancid leather, rust, and the sharp acidity of men who work near blood all day.
One of them grabbed Riven by the arm with the automatic firmness of someone who asks permission from no one. The pain came less from the force itself than from the cold metal of the manacle.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
— Enough! — the young man shouted.
— Professor Grik, I waited fifteen years. Fifteen years. — His voice was heavy, as if each syllable were a debt to be collected. — I've heard this story already. Not exactly like this… but I've heard it. What I want is the beginning. Everything. Detail by detail. I want to be the one who knows the beginning—his beginning.
Grik kept turning the spit over the fire, with excessive patience for someone about to reveal a world of truths. When he answered, his calm sounded like a provocation.
— Young Master, the Master's guidance said we were to start at the initial moment… the political ignition and all that.
— I don't want to know that. — The young man didn't let the sentence breathe. — I want the beginning. That's an order. Leave the earlier part aside. I want to know how he became that.
For a moment, only the fire's crackle. Then Grik gave in—not with his body, but with his expression: a slight crooked smile, as if he already expected this part would never be easy.
— Fine. You win. — He let out a slow breath.
A thought crossed his mind like lightning: He reminds me of him… How cruel fate is, isn't it, Master? Some things simply don't change.
Grik lifted his eyes, and his next words came softer, as if choosing a less painful door into the past.
— Then we'll start with something a bit more pleasant, Young Master…
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Wood creaking. Iron striking.
The sound came in layers: floorboards groaning under hurried steps, pot lids clanging, utensils scraping the bottoms of trays—and behind it all, the constant bubbling of broths that never stopped boiling. The air was hot and heavy, thick with steam.
Aromas mingled: herbs crushed between fingers, hot fat, onions sweating in a pot, the sweetness of some root cooking down. Even so, there was something strangely organized about it all, as if the kitchen were a heart beating at the right rhythm.
A child who looked about nine, but was seven, stood balanced atop a crate, focused on peeling potatoes.
His forehead shone with tiny beads of sweat, sharpening the fatigue in his young, pale face. His eyes, black as coal, contrasted with skin almost colorless and hair white as snow—a whiteness many blamed on illness.
The blade in his hand made a thin, repetitive sound; the peels fell in uneven spirals, clung to the crate's damp wood, then dropped to the floor. He rose onto his tiptoes—too small to reach the counter without it, too proud to admit to the others that sometimes even the crate wasn't enough.
Tomorrow will be the great festival.
And deep into the night, everyone cooked. As if the world outside could be kept at a distance, at least for one night, with nothing but fire, food, and busy hands. A few times a year, an event like that happened—whether an important date, or the birth of a child.
Tomorrow, on the seventy-sixth day of the year, they would celebrate the day the ancestors arrived in that land: the Cinnabar Womb. A city built inside a massive hollow mountain, on the edge of the Forbidden Forest, Eir-nar.
— Riven, are you almost done with the potatoes? Go fetch another sack, — said the cook, tall and broad as a wall.
— This was the last one in the pile, sir. Now there are only carrots left.
— Good. Then grab the carrots. After you finish them, you're done.
Riven was used to it: overprotection. To the others, his illness meant fragility. He understood. He didn't complain; he only nodded.
He crossed the kitchen as fast as he could, which for him meant the speed of a hurried slug. What a terrible pain in his knees. Why hadn't he brought the crutch?
Since birth, he had been like this. Fragile. He had nearly died in labor—something uncommon for his kind, known for being strong from their first breath. True beasts in the bodies of men.
And as if that weren't enough, he couldn't manipulate mana. Not externally, to become a mage; not internally, to become a warrior. Sometimes he wondered why the gods had chosen him, of all people, to be born this way.
But tomorrow his grandfather had promised him a gift. And Riven found himself clinging to that idea like someone holding an ember in the cold.
"Grandfather Oryn is always generous".
In about thirty minutes, he finished the task and left the communal kitchen.
Outside, the stone streets met him with their familiar cold. He walked a few steps and stopped—as he always did—to admire the view. The ceiling inside the mountain was studded with glittering minerals—annelite crystals, he thought. Colorful, beautiful, but worthless to them beyond aesthetics. During the day, those crystals let microbeams of light pass through, enough for the cavern to follow the cycle of morning and night, as if the outside world still held some authority there.
In about seven minutes, he reached home. He pushed the door open and noticed the silence. No one.
They must be busy, he concluded.
He locked the door from the inside, crossed the hall, and went straight to the room he shared with his older brother, Tissor. He pulled off his shirt slowly and stared at the bandages on his chest and shoulder, stained with spots of dried blood. His skin bled at the slightest friction, even through the softest cloth. And it wasn't just the skin. It was him—all of him. Weak. Even his bones felt like twigs.
At least I'm not blind, he thought, and the idea came like a bitter comfort, almost a prayer spoken without conviction.
As he was about to undress further, sudden nausea hit him—a sickness he hadn't felt in over a year. His vision darkened at the edges, his stomach twisted, and the floor seemed to rise too fast. Just before he fell face-first, he still thought, with weak, belated anger:
"Damn it… now my parents won't let me out of their sight anymore".
Riven dropped to his knees first, as if his body still tried to keep some dignified posture, and only then did the rest give way. His forehead barely touched the ground; trembling, he kept himself up with a ridiculous stubbornness that wasn't strength. Then, finally, he surrendered, letting his head fall onto his outstretched right arm.
The world didn't vanish.
He waited for the blackout like someone waiting for a familiar relief… and it didn't come. What came was something else: a presence.
Not in his ear. Not in the air. Not in the corridor.
Inside.
A phrase—or the shadow of a phrase—scratched at his mind like a nail on glass. It had no tone, no language, no direction. It was as if someone pressed the tip of a red-hot iron against the idea of me.
Riven held his breath.
— Why…? — he tried to say, but his throat produced only a sigh.
Then the pain began.
It wasn't a "headache," like fever or a blow. It was pain that drove through his skull, as if the skull were only a door and someone were forcing it open from the inside. Behind his eyes, a cruel white light flared. Each heartbeat became a hammer strike.
And beneath that, an even worse sensation: the intimate certainty that it wasn't flesh being torn away.
It was destroying him.