Vortan's scream shattered the eerie silence left by the Buster Call's looming threat. The skies over Wyrmsreach had turned an unnatural red, smoke curling across the horizon. The plaza burned, a half destroyed skeleton of itself. Bodies lay strewn amid rubble and charred fruit stalls. The air reeked of ozone, blood, and ash. Boochie's old stall now gone, Boochie along with it.
"You arrogant bastards!" Vortan roared, the glyphs along his arms pulsing like molten veins. "Do you even understand what you've triggered!?"
He hurled a solar shot into the sky, a streak of golden wrath that cracked the clouds and turned shadows into stark white silhouettes.
"This city wasn't yours to burn!"
Across the scorched plaza, Riven stood amidst the wreckage. Blood soaked his bare chest, steam rising from blistered flesh. One wing dragged behind him in the ash, bones cracked, feathers scorched. His face was smeared with blood and grime, one eye nearly swollen shut.
"Then why," he spat, voice raw, teeth stained red, "are you the one holding the match?"
Their collision reignited the war.
Vortan surged forward like a blazing juggernaut. His blade, wreathed in ancient glyphs, hummed with sunfire. He moved with terrifying speed, crashing into Riven with a shockwave that splintered the cobblestones. Riven barely raised his cutlass in time. Steel screamed against steel, and then a solar glyph burst along Vortan's gauntlet.
Point blank.
The blast tore through Riven's ribs.
He screamed, flung backward like a broken doll through a half burnt fruit stall. Flames erupted around him, wood splinters and singed apples rained like shrapnel.
"RIVEN!"
Slade charged, blades drawn, his boots pounding through fire and gore. His face was grim, blood already trailing from a fresh gash at his temple.
His twin blades sang one high, one low. Vortan deflected the upper slash with his gauntlet, but the lower one bit deep, carving a ragged gash across his ribs. Black red blood sprayed across the stones, sizzling where it landed.
"You've already lost," Slade growled, pushing forward with a fury born from decades of repressed vengeance. "No glyph, no god, no buried secret saves you now."
Vortan sneered, grabbed Slade's face with a glyph etched glove.
"Let's test that theory."
A burst of searing heat detonated point-blank. The skin on Slade's left side blackened and peeled back in ribbons, exposing raw muscle and bone. His eye burst in a spray of red. He screamed, a sound like rusted metal shearing in half.
But the old man did not fall.
He roared back and drove a blade into Vortan's shoulder, the steel grinding through sinew and joint. The tyrant staggered, then spun.
And Riven rose.
Smoke coiled from his ruined side. His left arm hung useless. Half his chest was seared to exposed bone, yet his body moved. Flames coiled around his ribs, licking the wound like loyal beasts.
His eyes burned, looking like two dying suns, wild and defiant.
His halo flared, pulsing erratically.
"You're done," Riven said, voice a molten whisper.
"THEN END IT!" Vortan bellowed.
They clashed.
A storm of steel and fire. Each strike from Vortan gouged craters into the plaza, his glyphs erupting with waves of incinerating heat. Riven ducked, parried, lunged. He moved like a beast unchained, flames erupting from every swing. His cutlass, blackened and scorched, became an extension of his fury.
Vortan's blade slashed across Riven's chest, tearing open another wound, blood sprayed, sizzling against the heat of his body. Riven retaliated with a solar explosion to the gut, launching Vortan into a broken pillar.
Slade joined the fray again, weaving between craters. He stabbed low. Vortan deflected.
Too slow.
Vortan caught Riven's wing.
SNAP.
The sound was sickening. Bone split, tendons shredded.
Riven screamed, collapsing to one knee, blood gushing from his back. Feathers fell like burning snow.
Slade lunged to help.
Too late.
Vortan turned and drove his longsword through the old man's gut. The blade punched out his back with a wet crunch, dragging intestines with it.
Slade gasped, choking on blood. It poured down his beard in a river of crimson.
"Old fool," Vortan snarled. "You should've stayed in your forge."
Slade smiled through blood and pain. "Still had... one move left."
His hand charred, shaking tightened around Vortan's forearm.
A solar bomb.
Hand forged.
Stolen.
Primed.
"For Wyrmsreach."
BOOM.
The blast split the plaza in half. Flame surged skyward. The wall of heat flattened nearby buildings. Screams echoed. Stone turned to slag.
Silence followed. Choking. Heavy.
Then, footsteps.
Riven emerged from the smoke.
Barely standing. One arm limp. His wing a torn wreck of feathers and fractured bone. He dragged his cutlass behind him, its edge glowing from the heat.
His breath came in choking, rasping gulps. His vision swam.
But the fire in his chest still burned.
Vortan still lived.
His body was a ruin, skin blackened, armor shattered, jaw dislocated. One eye dangled by a thread. His leg twisted backward. But he crawled, blood smearing the ground behind him.
"You... don't understand... what you're playing with..."
Riven limped forward. He stared down at the man who'd butchered his family. Who ruled with glyphs and guns and fear.
"I don't need to," he whispered.
He raised one trembling hand.
The flames gathered. Not wild. Not chaotic.
Focused.
They curled inward, coalescing into shape. Not a blast.
A spear.
The shaft shimmered like sunlight filtered through smoke. The head burned like a newborn star, humming with celestial power. His first true Celestial Construct.
Vortan looked up.
"Wai..."
Riven's voice barely rose above the flame.
"Sun... Spear."
He drove it down.
The spear screamed through air and flesh and glyphs. It burned straight through Vortan's chest, exploding out his back in a sunburst of white hot light. A shockwave tore across the city. Fire consumed everything around them.
And then, stillness.
Where Vortan had been, only a crater remained. At its center: ashes.
Smoldering.
Silent.
Riven stood above them, shaking, bleeding, drained, alone.
He turned.
And saw Slade.
The old smith lay slumped against a ruined wall, body thrown clear by the blast. Blood soaked the ground beneath him. His chest rose once, barely.
"Old man... Slade..."
Riven stumbled to his knees, grabbing the smith's shoulder.
"Don't you fucking dare. Not now. Not like this."
One eye opened, dull, unfocused. A broken smile.
"You did good, boy," Slade rasped, voice hollow. "Brighter than any sun I ever saw."
He reached up, hand trembling, and gripped Riven's wrist.
"Forge... something new."
Then his grip loosened.
And fell.
Gone.
Riven didn't move.
His chest twisted. His body shook. The fire dimmed.
He didn't know what this feeling was. It wasn't rage.
Grief.
It hollowed him.
He let out a rasping laugh. Choked. Shuddering.
"This is so stupid," he whispered. "You die, and I get stuck with feelings? That's your big final move?"
He wiped blood from his face. Smoke and... Tears? Stung his eyes.
"You win, old man. I'll burn the whole damn island down for you."
He rose. Shaking. Wing dragging. Chest scorched.
But his voice cut through the silence:
"Rebels of Wyrmsreach!"
All around, survivors stirred, fighters, villagers, slaves. Scorched, bloodied, but alive.
"Your Lord is ash. Your chains are broken."
He lifted his cutlass high. Flame danced along its length.
"This city is ours!"
The square erupted, cries of freedom, fists raised, weapons drawn. The roar shook Wyrmsreach. A city reborn.
But Riven's eyes never left Slade's body.
He stood tall. But inside, he was lost.
And the fire in him wept.