Two Weeks Later...
The courtyard had changed.
What was once a patch of dirt and makeshift dummies was now a war torn pit of progress. Scorched earth. Broken wood. Gouges carved deep by dulled blades. Charred feathers littered the corners like burnt prayers. The stone walls bore new scars some shallow, some deep, each a marker of blood, sweat, and stubborn survival.
Where silence once ruled, the space now echoed with the ghosts of violence and grit. A graveyard of old failures turned into the proving ground of something dangerous, something rising. The scent of burnt feathers mingled with sweat and steel, but beneath it all lingered something older primordial. Fire kindled from within.
And at the center, Riven. Shirtless as ever, lungs heaving, wings flared behind him. Old bruises bloomed across his ribs, mottled like ink stains. New scars caught the morning light.
His hands trembled, but not from fear.
Slade circled him with a real sword now. Not a training stick. Dull-edged, yes—but still forged steel. The kind of weight that remembered how to kill.
"You're standing like you've got something to prove," Slade said, voice flat, eyes sharp as the blade in his hand.
"I do," Riven growled. "I'm better than yesterday."
Slade's expression didn't change, but the faintest flicker of approval passed through his eyes. "Then prove it."
Steel clashed, sharp and ringing in the quiet air. Riven surged forward, a flurry of motion and heat. Faster now. Tighter. His body moved like a storm barely leashed. There was still the wildness in him he rage, the reckless drive but it had begun to mold into something sharper. A blade honed failure.
His chaos had rhythm now. His fury had form.
His wings no longer twitched awkwardly, they flowed, sweeping heat and wind into each movement, adding torque to his spins, lift to his leaps. They were no longer limbs to be hidden, they were weapons. They were his.
Cut. Block. Twist. Parry. Feint. Strike.
Slade disarmed him.
But it took longer this time.
Riven hit the dirt, coughing, a line of blood curling from his lip. His ribs screamed. His shoulder ached. But he didn't groan. He spat blood.
"Again?" he asked, eyes burning with more than fury now. They burned with purpose. With direction.
Slade grunted. "After water. Then we try blindfolded."
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Later, Riven sat cross legged on the forge floor, gulping water from a chipped mug. The heat of the coals pulsed against his skin, matching the slow throb in his bones. His wings twitched restlessly behind him, singeing the soot covered walls, leaving tiny scorch marks that no one bothered to clean anymore. That weird fiery blaze behind him shined like a second sun. [1]
His fingers trembled around the mug, but he didn't stop drinking. Hydration was fuel, and fuel meant one more round. One more swing. One more day alive.
Slade sat nearby, rewrapping the grip of a practice blade with rough leather. The air between them was thick with heat, smoke, and the weight of unspoken things.
"You're quieter than usual," Riven said, voice hoarse.
Slade didn't look up. "Things er moving."
Riven blinked, wiping sweat from his brow. "What things?"
"Wyrmsreach." Slade finally met his eyes. "Word's spreadin. That the Lord's not back yet. That the crypt was disturbed. That the manor guards are jumpy. Folk are noticing."
Riven frowned, brow furrowed. "And?"
Slade leaned in slightly, voice low and gravel-heavy. "They're angry. Hungry. Not for food, but for change. You lit a match. Doesn't mean you control the fire."
Riven looked down at his hands. Calloused. Blood specked. Hardened. They didn't feel like a child's hands anymore. His muscles were leaner, sharper now, no longer skin and desperation they were forged. Like steel. Like a weapon.
His wings flexed behind him, slow and deliberate. Each feather bristled with heat and the weight of unspoken expectation.
"I didn't come here to lead a revolution," he said quietly.
Slade stared at him. "Then you'd better start preparing to survive one," he replied. "Because whether you want it or not… you're becoming the face of one."
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Behind closed doors and crooked shutters, Wyrmsreach began to murmur.
It started the night Riven escaped the crypt. A light had poured from beneath the manor pulsing, golden white, like the sky had cracked open underground. The air shimmered. The earth quaked. Windows rattled. A kettle boiled over. A baby stopped crying.
Some swore they heard singing, not from men, but something older. Something that hadn't sung in centuries.
By morning, a merchant's assistant bruised, breathless, panicked was dragged through the streets by the Marines, raving about a winged boy made of fire and wrath. His story was cut short by a fist to the teeth.
Most looked away.
But one drunk dockhand listened.
That dockhand told his mates. They told others. The story twisted, grew teeth. Grew wings.
A smuggler was later found gutted in an alley. Not robbed. Just humiliated. A pair of soot marked feathers laid across his chest like a signature. A warning. A myth being carved into flesh.
Then came the blacksmith's apprentice. A skinny boy with burn scars on his arms, sneaking home wide eyed, whispering about the forge where fire never died. About a boy with wings like smoke and skin like battle, trading blows with a man everyone thought long dead.
Slade. Training someone.
Not just anyone.
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After a few days the whispers rode the air like smoke curling into alleyways, slipping through markets, wrapping around street corners like a second wind.
The market was tense. Fewer guards. More glares. Behind shuttered doors, names passed from mouth to mouth like contraband.
Riven. The boy with wings. The forge fire that wouldn't go out.
Kids imitated him in alleyways with cardboard wings and wooden sticks. They fought invisible enemies. They screamed his name like a war cry. Some drew feathers in chalk. Others lit matches and blew them out quick, pretending it was flame from their veins.
Men nodded silently when he passed, like they recognized something in him they'd once had and lost.
Women passed food when no one was watching. A heel of bread. A boiled egg. A peach tucked into his satchel with a note that simply read, "Thank you."
The city remained a cage but the bars were creaking.
Then came the girl and the sailor.
Nessa, the baker's daughter, snapped when a Marine short changed her father. She waited until his back turned then smashed a ceramic plate over his head. Sent his teeth flying into a basket of cabbages.
"Fuck the Marines!"
She was arrested.
But the next morning, her cell was empty. The lock? Melted like wax under a furnace.
People said the boy had come. That he'd burned it open with his bare hands. That he hadn't said a word just looked at her, nodded once, and vanished into the smoke.
Old Bran, a sea dog who'd paid bribes for decades, refused to open his door to the enforcers.
"I heard the boy's gonna burn this whole gods damned town," he said. "Figure I'll save him the trouble."
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The Murmured Names
They began quietly. But they spread.
The winged one.The coal blooded.The spark.
They said he came from the crypts, fire in his blood. That he flew between rooftops, cloaked in smoke and vengeance. That he left feathers on corpses like a wraith of reckoning.
That he trained under pain. That he stood against Marines. That he wasn't afraid.
They said he was one of them but more.
One of us but unbreakable.
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Slade threw a hooded man to the floor. He landed hard, gasping, blood leaking from his mouth.
"Caught him snooping by the stash," Slade said. "Third one this week."
Riven stood nearby, arms crossed, feathers twitching with residual heat.
"Spies?" he asked, tone unreadable.
"Could be. Could be just desperate. Either way, the shadows are growing teeth."
Riven stared down at the man, who wouldn't meet his eyes.
"People are scared," Riven murmured. "That makes them brave… or stupid."
Slade snorted. "You were both."
"Still am."
Slade almost smiled. "And yet here you are. Shirtless and still breathing."
"Barely."
They laughed—short, quiet, like the sound of flint scraping steel.
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That night, Riven stood on the roof of the forge, wings hanging like celestial banners. They glowed faintly in the moonlight, casting long shadows across the crooked rooftops below.
The city murmured beneath him.
Not loud. But alive.
From windows and doorways, glimmers of movement. Faces half lit. Eyes watching. Whispers rising. Quiet gestures turning louder.
Wyrmsreach is waking up, he thought.
He exhaled slowly, breath misting in the cool night air.
Slade's voice rose from the ladder behind him, gravel and weight.
"The question is… what will you do when it does?"
Riven didn't answer.
He just stared toward the manor on the hill, where the corruption sat fat and waiting.
And his wings flared wide against the stars.
A/N: LETS GET TO THE REBLELLION FAM, I also want to finish this arc so Riven can move on and start his journey. I reckon 6-8 more chapters of this shi, maybe a lil less.
[1] I found a picture of King, and recently watched the seraphim (I think) Episodes in One Piece. Lunarians have that fire ball floaty thing behind at all times. I didnt know that so I'll write about it more.