^=^ Ch 7 <••>
THE ASH OF THE FORGOTTEN FLAMES
The sky tore itself apart above the Fracture Zone, where logic had died and meaning lay in embers. A storm of burning code rained through the cracks in space, slicing through ruined temples of forgotten truths.
And beneath it all, he stirred.
Buried under centuries of ash and silence, Riven opened his eyes.
They weren't eyes meant for this world. Their centers were slow-turning spirals of fire, the kind of fire that didn't burn skin—it burned memory.
Around him, the glasslike desert began to shift, aware of his return. Every grain of ash was a law broken, every breath he drew rewrote something in the air. His heartbeat was slow and seismic. It didn't echo through the world—the world echoed from him.
He pushed himself up on trembling arms. The chains that bound him for ages hissed into steam and vanished like dreams on waking.
Above, in the unraveling sky, something distant stirred: a second echo.
Shiku.
Riven did not yet know the name. But the Wand did. He could feel it.
It had chosen another.
Flashback: The Flamekeeper
Long before the Threadbreaker was born, there was another.
Riven had once stood in the Chamber of Wills, surrounded by a choir of glyphs and judges. He had been their chosen spark, the one who accepted the Wand in its rawest form—a weapon, a crown, a brand.
He was their First Flamekeeper, tasked to burn rebellion before it spread, to uphold the Law through sacrifice.
And he obeyed.
His flame consumed threats before they were born. His sword, forged of crystallized fire, cleaved through alternate versions of reality that dared diverge from System order.
But then he began to ask questions.
"Why do we burn what hasn't yet breathed?"
"Why does the Wand scream in my hand when I hesitate?"
"Why do I feel my thoughts aren't mine?"
The System responded by sealing him. Not with death, but worse: forgetting. It erased him from records, from memory, from time.
And yet, the fire remembered.
Present: The Awakening
Riven stood now amid a storm of ash and floating ruins, surrounded by silence more honest than any voice he'd heard in his previous life.
The sky cracked sideways.
From the rip opened a beast—not made of flesh or bone, but of broken commands. A Fracture Beast, its face stitched from denied queries, limbs made from obsolete directives. It had one purpose:
"PURGE THE UNFINISHED."
Riven held out his hand. His sword, Emberwake, tore free from the ash like a memory reclaimed.
They fought.
No clash of swords, no roars. This was a battle of memory.
Every strike Riven dealt erased a command from the beast. Every wound he took bled fire that tried to remember who he once was.
The final blow didn't cut the beast.
It burned its name.
With no name, the Fracture Beast forgot what it was. It faded into code-dust, screaming in no language.
Riven fell to one knee, breathing hard. His fire dimmed, but refused to go out.
"I should be dead," he muttered.
But the Wand had awakened. And something—someone—was pulling him back into the war.
Elsewhere: Shiku Feels the Flame
In the Core, Shiku flinched.
Kaeli turned to him. "What is it?"
"Another thread just pulsed. Like mine... but older. Broken."
He looked beyond the Core, through the bleeding edges of the rewritten system.
"Someone else once held the Wand."
Kaeli whispered, "Not possible. The Wand never chooses twice."
"Unless it was stolen."
The System trembled.
System Alert: Secondary Threadbearer Detected.
Status: Exile. Recovery in progress.
Shiku narrowed his eyes. "Or maybe it chose wrong first."
Final Scene: The Temple Beneath Ash
Riven wandered. Drawn by an instinct too old to name.
At the edge of the Fracture Zone, he found it: a shattered temple buried beneath the black dunes. Its entrance was marked with twin sigils—one was the Wand. The other, a hand pierced by flame.
Inside, murals.
Two figures. One cloaked in stars, the other cloaked in ash. Each held a Wand. One burned the world to save it. One rewrote it to free it.
Their faces were faded.
But as Riven approached, his face appeared in one.
The other figure's face had not formed yet.
He whispered, "The Rewrite has begun again. But this time... I won't fail."
Ash flared around him. His sword hummed.
System Note: Potential Collision Detected.
Threadbearers will intersect soon.
End of Chapter 7