Chapter 3 #2
Riven turned his head back. He looked directly at Dravon’s chest plate. He couldn't do it. The ledge was visibly cracked. The masonry was dust. The weight of a fully grown man would shatter it instantly.
"My lord," Riven began, his voice finally cracking, trembling with genuine, undisguised fear. "That ledge is structurally compromised. It will not hold my weight."
"Are you questioning the architecture of the First Builders?" Dravon asked, his voice sharpening into a blade.
"No, my lord. But I am Unattuned." Riven grasped blindly at the rigid laws of Spireheart, hoping the academy's bureaucracy might shield him where his own invisibility had failed.
"The Codex of the Maker strictly forbids the Unattuned from crossing the safety railings.
It is a capital offense. I would face exile to the Whispering Wastes. "
Dravon’s cronies laughed. It was a cruel, echoing sound that filled the empty balcony.
Dravon leaned in, his face inches from Riven’s. His amber eyes were cold, dead, and utterly devoid of empathy.
"If you cross that railing to fetch my property, I will ensure the Proctors look the other way," Dravon whispered. "But if you refuse..."
Dravon paused, letting the silence stretch out, twisting the knife in Riven’s gut.
"If you refuse, I will walk down to the High Proctor's office right now. I will tell them that I caught a filthy Unattuned sweep trying to steal my family's signet ring. I will tell them you snatched it from my hand and threatened to throw it into the abyss."
The world seemed to stop spinning.
Riven couldn't breathe. The air in his lungs had turned to lead.
It was a flawless execution. In the magocracy of Orometh, the word of a highborn was law.
The word of an Unattuned was less than wind.
If Dravon made the accusation, there would be no trial.
There would be no investigation. The academy guards would simply drag Riven to the courtyard, bind him to a silverwood post, and burn him alive with raw aether for daring to touch noble gold.
His entire life, Riven had operated on a single, guiding philosophy: if you obey the rules, you survive. If you stay invisible, you survive.
Dravon had just taken the rules, weaponized them, and pressed the blade against Riven's throat.
Riven looked at the two armed initiates blocking the stairs. He looked at Dravon’s cruel, victorious smile. He was completely out of options. His ordinary world, his miserable, predictable life of sweeping and surviving, had been utterly destroyed by the boredom of a sociopath.
"Well?" Dravon demanded. "Are you a thief, Cale? Or are you a helpful servant?"
Riven closed his eyes. The migraine behind his temples flared. He felt a deep, sickening wave of absolute defeat wash over him. He had grasped at every straw. He had tried to be nothing. It wasn't enough. It was never going to be enough.
"I am a servant, my lord," Riven whispered, the words tasting like ash in his mouth.
"Good. Then serve."
Riven turned around to face the heavy brass railing. His hands were shaking so violently he could barely lift them. He reached out and grabbed the cold metal. The brass was thick, designed to keep people safe from the yawning abyss below.
He threw his right leg over the top bar.
The two initiates stepped closer, leaning against the railing to watch the show. They were smiling. They were watching a man walk to his execution for entertainment.
Riven pulled his left leg over. He was now standing on the outermost lip of the solid marble, his heels hanging off the edge, gripping the brass bars behind his back.
Just two feet away, across a small gap, was the ancient, crumbling outcropping of calcified ash. The gold signet ring glittered mockingly on the very edge of the ruin.
Below him was nothing but the crushing, suffocating dark of the descent shaft. The cold draft from the deep earth blew upward, carrying the metallic scent of wet flint.
"Go on," Dravon sneered from behind him. "Don't make me wait."
Riven took a ragged, terrifying breath. He let go of the brass railing.
He reached his right boot out over the empty air. He brought it down onto the crumbling ash of the outcropping. He didn't put his full weight on it yet. He tested it. The ancient masonry groaned, a soft, dry sound like old bones grinding together.
He had no choice. He shifted his weight forward and stepped completely onto the ledge.
The moment his second boot settled onto the ash, the world shifted.
The low, grinding background hum of the Atrium vanished. The terrifying, intimate silence that had consumed him down in the Ashen Reach suddenly swallowed him whole.
Ba-thump.
Riven gasped, his eyes flying wide open.
The vibration wasn't coming from deep within the mountain anymore. It was coming directly from the brittle stone beneath his feet. The ledge was alive. It was recognizing him.
Ba-thump. Ba-thump.
The frantic rhythm of his terrified heart echoed perfectly in the calcified ash. The rock began to radiate that deep, cosmic warmth, cutting through the freezing draft of the abyss.
Riven looked down.
Beneath the layer of grey dust, deep within the micro-fractures of the ancient masonry, a faint, searing golden light began to pulse. It was the same light. The same terrifying geometry.
"Hurry up, rat," Dravon’s voice sounded muffled, distant, as if he were shouting from underwater.
Riven dropped to his knees on the crumbling ledge. He reached out with his acid-burned, trembling hand toward the gold signet ring.
Snap.
It was the loudest sound he had ever heard.
A massive, jagged fissure ripped through the calcified ash directly between his knees. The stone spider-webbed, the cracks shooting outward with terrifying speed toward the edge of the abyss.
Riven’s breath caught. He froze, his hand suspended inches from the ring.
He tried to shift his weight backward, trying to retreat to the safety of the brass railing. But the moment his knee moved, another sharp crack echoed through the stone.
The ledge shifted downward. Only a fraction of an inch, but it was enough.
He was completely stranded. If he moved forward, the stone would shatter.
If he moved backward, the stone would shatter.
He was kneeling on a fractured pane of glass suspended over the void, and the deep, ancient magic of the First Builders was pulsing rapidly beneath his skin, waiting for a command he didn't know how to give.
He was utterly, entirely out of control.