A/N: Quick note I've changed Rivens past a little bit, he would've only been raised by his Mother. His Father not in the picture. I've fixed past chapters and updated them. His Mother was Lunarian and so is his deadbeat Father.
The forge hadn't burned in days, but the air still tasted like molten steel and old secrets.
Slade's smithy stood squat and stubborn in the workshop district of Wyrmsreach, tucked between a collapsed warehouse. From the outside, it was just another dying building in a city full of them, no sign, no smoke, nothing but dust and rust.
Inside, it was different.
Fifteen souls stood scattered in the dim light of a forge lantern. People worn thin by life in Wyrmsreach. A missing dockworker with calloused hands and a sailor's shoulders. A baker's daughter with bruised knuckles and the thousand yard stare of someone who'd seen too much bread and blood. A limping ex soldier with a Marine tattoo half burned from his arm. An old washerwoman with haunted eyes and a stare that could shame a priest. A courier boy who hadn't spoken in three months. A barber missing two fingers. Faces from the cracks in the city.
They didn't speak. They didn't need to. The silence was thick enough to chew.
Slade stood near the anvil like it owed him money, arms crossed, jaw set in stone. He didn't say a word. He didn't have to. The people here had seen the smoke, black and curling over the manor. Heard the whispers. about fire without fuel. Watched the manor gates shut two hours early last week for "maintenance."
Something was happening.
Then the door creaked open, and everything stopped.
Riven Caelum strode in like he owned the place, or at least had broken into it before. His wings were folded neatly against his back, glistening black and unmistakably Lunarian. The forge light caught the edges of them and threw shadows that looked a lot more divine than he felt. His fire hovering around his back where his wings were.
He wore fitted black pants with golden trim and a pair of tall black boots etched with glowing glyphs, ancient and humming softly, regulating the constant low heat rolling off him. Without them, the smithy probably would've started melting.
He looked like a myth.
He sounded like a kid who didn't give a damn.
"Alright," Riven said, eyes flicking over the crowd, "Let's address the flaming winged elephant in the room. Yes, I have wings. Yes, I'm Lunarian. No, I'm not here to sell you celestial insurance plans. If you came for enlightenment, I'm fresh out."
The murmurs started immediately.
"That's the boy…"
"The one from the flames..."
"He's just a kid!"
"He's Lunarian."
"Wow," Riven said, clapping once. "You all win the 'Captain Obvious' prize. Yes. I'm also shirtless. Please contain your excitement."
A few chuckles, weak but real.
Slade didn't smile. But his eyes flicked with something, approval, maybe. Or just recognition.
Riven walked to the center of the smithy and knelt. From under one arm, he unwrapped a cloth bundle. Carefully, almost reverently.
Out came three things.
A broken dagger, scorched, blood stained.
A charred Lunarian feather.
And a fragment of a scroll, ancient and curling with celestial runes.
He set them down like offerings.
Riven looked up, eyes catching every face. The flickering light turned his gaze molten.
His voice dropped, serious now, but not without bite.
"I'm not here to be your leader. I'm not your messiah. I'm not some tragic golden child come to free the oppressed."
He paused.
"I'm more like your extremely pissed off neighbor who finally snapped after years of listening to the upstairs nobles throw parties while we drown in the gutters."
A woman near the wall, the baker's daughter, crossed her arms. "So what are you, then? Another story to get our hopes up?"
Riven's gaze snapped to her. She didn't flinch.
"No," he said, evenly. "I'm the fire under their floorboards."
The ex soldier grunted. "You've got wings and words, boy. But that ain't armor. When the Marines come, what do you plan to do, lecture them to death?"
Riven's wings flared, just slightly. Heat rippled from his back, turning the air molten at the edges.
"I plan to burn their godsdamned teeth out, if that's what it takes," he said, voice low and shaking with something dangerous. "But not alone."
He stood slowly, wings stretching farther now less show, more instinct. Like they had something to say too.
"You want hope? Buy a prayer candle. You want honesty? Here it is."
"This island is hell. Not poetic hell. Just… regular, corrupt, beat you down until you crack hell. I've starved in it. Bled for it. Watched my mother scream for help while no one came. And now they want to call me 'Divine'?"
He laughed, bitter.
"Gods don't sleep in alleys. Gods don't rob pirates to eat."
"But I'll tell you what I am."
His smile twisted, not friendly. Sharp.
"I'm angry. I'm done waiting. And I'm sick of watching this city eat its young."
He pointed toward the street outside.
"The rich call us rats. So maybe it's time we start gnawing through their floorboards."
The silence that followed wasn't dead. It was holding its breath.
Then the washerwoman stepped forward. Slow, deliberate. Her hands were cracked from lye. Her back hunched from years over basins.
She looked at Riven, eyes glassy with memory. "You sound like my son," she said softly. "He talked like that. Before the patrols took him."
Riven's voice dropped. "What happened to him?"
She shook her head. "They fed him to the sea."
No one moved. Not even Slade.
The dockworker clenched his fists. "They killed my brother for asking questions about rations."
The courier boy twitched, then forced words from his mouth for the first time in months. "They beat my mum in front of me. For smiling wrong."
Slade finally stepped forward. His voice came low and steady, steel hammered into speech.
"We don't have an army," he said. "We don't have ships. We don't even have a goddamn flag."
He looked around the room.
"But we have him. And we have us."
He looked at Riven now, not as a child, not as a freak, but as something solid. Something bright enough to blind.
"We move quiet. We move smart. And when the time comes?"
His voice hardened.
"We move fast."
Riven tilted his head, mock thoughtful.
"Sounds good. I'm in. But can we work on a better team name than 'The Sad Fifteen'? Kinda screams 'we'll die in the first act.'"
That got a chuckle from the barber, the baker's daughter, even the ex soldier.
"A name can come later," said the soldier. "After we give them a reason to remember it."
Slade nodded. "We hit supply lines first. Disrupt shipments. Create gaps."
The dockworker chimed in. "I can get you lists. Who gets what. Who's bleeding the rest of us dry."
The washerwoman raised her chin. "I can pass messages. People still look through me."
Riven looked at them all, these strangers. These broken, dangerous people.
And saw something terrifying.
Belief.
He took a breath, then pointed to the anvil behind him.
"We don't need a flag?" he said. "Fine. But we make one."
He grabbed a blackened forge cloth from the bench and scorched a simple glyph into it with a fingertip a sunburst, jagged and bright.
"We burn this into their nightmares."
A spark flickered in the gloom.
And beneath soot streaked beams and rusted tools, something dangerous began.
Something divine.
Or close enough.