"He heard you."

  POV: Kinunnos

  The Between did not have any walls to confine its vast, surreal expanse. Instead, it had edges that marked the limits of its peculiar existence—pces where reality unraveled into threads like the ends of ancient fabric, curling over themselves and whispering their cryptic secrets into the void around them. This was a realm of chaos and forgotten things, of tangled memories and shifting illusions. He sat on what might have once been the remnants of a grand throne, or perhaps it was only a faded memory of one, ghostly and uncertain in its form. When he looked at it, it transformed under his gaze. Marble one moment. Bone the next. Then charcoal. Each iteration wrong in its own way.

  The world around him flickered in translucent yers, a kaleidoscope of incompleteness—a series of ruined arches hovering in the air without purpose, stairs suspended and leading into nowhere, and firelight eternally encased in gss that had never truly been illuminated. Nothing was as it seemed. The ground beneath him was unreliable, more of a suggestion than a solid thing, yet it bore his weight when he needed it to. Most of the time, at least. There was no stability here.

  He didn't have a shape either, not in any absolute sense. He was as formless as the pce he haunted, as changeable as the shadows that drifted across it. Sometimes, he chose to wear a body the way he might wear old clothes. Adopting a form helped him think, gave some anchor to his thoughts. Right now, it was the shape he remembered most vividly—broad-shouldered, with hair like fme, flickering at its edges like a candle nearing the end of its wick. Details eluded perfection. His fingers were too long, stretched out of proportion. His smile, when it surfaced on his mismatched face, was slow and crooked, uncertain in its trajectory, as if it had to relearn the motion every time it appeared.

  He sensed the shifts of this pce with an attuned awareness, feeling the slight disturbances as if they were echoes of distant pulses. Something shifted in the dark.

  Something bowed in the dark.

  A vibration came to him, a sound and a feeling meshed together, resonant and unsettling. It was like a wire had been plucked across an immense and echoing distance. His head snapped up, sudden, alert. The Between shuddered into the sensory void it left behind.

  The sensation was faint, a whisper against the noise of the pce. Something truly real. Something that wove itself into the chaos like a bright, insistent thread. He stood—no transition, no rise—an absence of moment that defied the space of this realm. Just gone from sitting to moving, like the world had cut out the in-between.

  There. Again. A pull. Soft. Stubborn. Relentless. It looped around him more insistently, a rope unspooling.

  A prayer.

  His prayer.

  It staggered him, a force more solid than the ground beneath him, and he felt it rip through his form like a jagged bde. Pain nced down his crooked spine, sharp and electric, a lightning strike searing through night. His form split—wings, cws, smoke—then jerked back into itself like a stuttering breath, like a shuddering song.

  The feeling branded itself into his chest, permanent, impossible to ignore. Real. Anchored.

  Someone had said his name.

  Not out loud. Not fully. But the intent was there, breathing it into being, full of a raw urgency, clear enough to burn. To break.

  "Riven," he whispered.

  The name tasted like old fme, like wet stone. Like history. He should not know it. No one had spoken it to him.

  And with the name, with the call, came a shattering.

  The air around him cracked, a violent, splintering sound that reverberated through his bones and filled the space with its shrill dissonance. Chains appeared where existence started to unravel—a web of them, thin and luminous, buried in the seams of the world. They tangled in the Between like a forgotten net, like an old trap now stumbled into, and they wove through the air in a weave of light and restraint. When the name rang true, when it cleaved his essence, the chains jerked taut, pulling against him with renewed force, with the desperation of something resisting its own demise. The struggle was brief, a moment of tension straining towards an inevitable end. One fractured with a high, bell-like sound, a pitch so pure it threatened to scatter him to pieces. Then another. And another. Light spilled from the breaks like blood from an open wound, bright and fierce and unyielding. The brilliance consumed him, filled him, and he felt his own form unraveling into it, becoming the very chaos he had ruled. He staggered again, or maybe he only thought he did, because the light was too much and too real and too everything.

  Kinunnos didn't breathe. He hadn't needed to in a long time.

  But now he exhaled like it meant something, like the breath was a currency he had long forgotten the value of. It felt like release and capture all at once, a shuddering gasp that marked him with its finite urgency. The thread tugged again—insistent, impossible—and this time the pull was not just a whisper of voice, but a call of intention. Ritual. It was pure will, tying around his name with a kind of belief that wasn't loud or desperate or frantic, but so steady and certain it burned. It was like someone knocking on a door every week, every day, for years beyond count, knowing it would never open—and doing it anyway. Kinunnos hunched forward, hands on his knees, shuddering with the force of the call.

  It hurt.

  He hadn't felt pain in... he didn't remember when. Time didn't pass in the Between, not the way it did beyond its unravelling edges. Here, it folded over itself in yers and loops, colpsing into infinite echoes. But this—

  This was real.

  And with it came something worse. Another pull, another bright insistence curling around his essence, dragging him into what he could not ignore.

  He existed.

  And the knowing of it—the rawness, the unbearable solidity of form—gouged into him where the prayer bore down like a hurricane, upending him, undoing him. He staggered again, or thought he did, overwhelmed by the sensation of having a body that could stagger, that could writhe against its own limits and push against the world like a newborn child against the light. It hurt. It hurt everywhere, all at once, and he wore the pain like flesh.

  The thread pulled tighter. It curled through his ribs, wrapped around the core of him, and gave a single, merciless tug.

  Kinunnos's breath came out as a ugh, then a choked noise that might've been a sob. He wasn't built for this anymore. Not weight. Not shape. Not names.

  And yet, Kinunnos knew the one who called him so clearly, so certainly, that it was like there had never been a moment of doubt. He did not know them by sight or by the feel of their touch. Just by the force that wove through the prayer like an insistent song, unyielding and sure. It was stubborn and resilient, and it pushed at the edges of him, at the edges of this world, so continuously that he felt it looping through his very essence. It was quiet, but relentless. A constant rhythm that vibrated through him with unwavering determination, with the purpose of something that already owned him. Each pulse matched the cadence of offering, the kind that wasn't asking for wondrous miracles or divine spectacles, just... continuity. It pulled at him with an old familiarity, and he knew it the way he knew himself—with the raw certainty that it would never let him go. His fingers trembled, traitors to his resolve, and he gripped his arms to still them.

  "You shouldn't have done that."

  The words came out as an accusation, but they were only a bitter truth, a resignation that had given up pretending otherwise. The Between groaned its protest, light leaking from every raw, bleeding crack in the chains that held him here—light that burned white-hot around the ripping edges. He looked up, and in the reflection of nothing, he saw a boy with haunted eyes kneeling beside a gutter-washed altar. The sight cleaved through him, a ghost from the world that had given him up, and the memory was too sharp to be imagined, too precise and cutting to be anything but real.

  He closed his eyes.

  And the Between cracked.

  Not with sound. With memory. With the violent fracture of suppressed longing. There was no escape from it. From the painful memories of his past, from the way they broke into him with relentless precision, sharp and unyielding in their insistence.

  This was where he could not follow; this was where the distance between him and his name became insurmountable.

  Hands in his hair. Gentle, steady. Threading through curls that burned like sunlit copper. A touch that knew him without reverence. Without fear. A warmth that belonged to him, and to which he belonged in return. It obliterated everything else.

  The hands were familiar, the fingers moving with the certainty of long acquaintance. He had known them with the same truth with which he knew everything in those days, when the world fit him and he fit it back.

  "I like when you're like this," the voice had said. Close. Breath-warm against his throat. "Not pretending to be anything." The words curled against his skin, a gentle tease full of unrestrained affection.

  He'd ughed then. A real ugh. Pulled them closer. Whispered something stupid, something about the stars being jealous. He had meant it, and they knew it, and the sheer foolishness of his sincerity had made them both breathe smiles into the night air.

  Then the memory shifted. The way it always did when he let it become too true. The way it always did when he let it hurt.

  Same hands. Same voice. But now—distance. Wet air. Blood in the water. It was not the gentle unraveling he had willed it to be; it was sharp and brutal and it cut at him with tangled echoes.

  "I'm sorry."

  That part came in whispers, over and over. From them? From him? It blurred.

  Their fingers slipped from his. Let go. Left him to be scattered and forgotten. Left him to unravel into nothing.

  Then light.

  Then nothing.

  Then everything again, but different.

  His eyes flew open.

  The world came back jagged.

  He was standing now, though he hadn't moved. His pulse was fire through his limbs. His hands clenched, unclenched. Smoke bled from his skin where wings should've been.

  That memory—they—were why he'd stopped reaching back. Why he hadn't followed any of the little offerings that had come before.

  But this time felt different, and the pull was not a ghost. This one hadn't asked for a blessing, hadn't begged for power, hadn't demanded what he could not give.

  This one had lit a candle and just waited. The truth of it lingered at the edges of him, near enough to burn.

  A crack ran up one of the throne's broken spires, a splintering seam across its shivering bones, and the light inside him burned hotter. It seared through him and he felt his own name roar through the air like a bright fire.

  Kin's voice was raw when he spoke again, and it was more than a whisper; it was a promise.

  "You don't even know what you've done."

  His words cut through the Between, urgent and filled with something more than accusation. They filled the air with the resonance of his surrender, and in that resonance was the heart of the breaking truth.

  Because this time, this one time, with all the desperation and folly of a misguided heart, beneath the fear, beneath the memory, beneath the scars—he wanted to answer.

  He was moving before he knew it.

  He walked, though there was nowhere to go.

  The Between didn't follow logic. It folded inward, tore at itself, rearranged like a body made of regrets. But he moved anyway, because staying still made the thread tug harder.

  The path formed beneath his steps—tiles from old temples, stained gss crunching underfoot, pages from forgotten prayer books drifting like leaves. Every step echoed, not in sound, but in memory.

  Shrines overturned.

  Candles snuffed and left to rot, their bckened wicks crumbling against cold stone.

  Walls carved with his name—Kinunnos, The Hollow Fme, He Who Waits at Thresholds—all cracked down the middle, symbols crumbling into dust with the weight of a thousand years.

  He reached out once, fingers grazing the stone.

  It recoiled.

  Or maybe he did.

  This world had given up on him. He could feel it even now, the way its edges blurred like a faded memory. He moved through the ruins of himself, the husk of what he had once been. This was consequence. This was everything he had broken coming back to meet him.

  "You never change," a voice said behind him. It wasn't his. It was like hearing his own prophecy.

  Kinunnos turned slowly.

  The figure was tall, faceless, haloed in sharp golden light like a god freshly minted. The glow pierced the shadows, perfect and precise. It shimmered with authority. Untouchable. Perfect.

  But only almost.

  Kin' could see what y beneath the new-born brilliance—it was something old, something intended to be forgotten. But he remembered.

  "Still begging for scraps of belief," the thing said, voice smooth as oil.

  "Still hoping the mortals will save you."

  Kin's ugh was hollow and mean. "No. Not hoping."

  "Then what is it?" The figure tilted its head. "Defiance? How quaint."

  Kin stepped closer. His form flickered—too big, too small, ash swirling around his feet in a wild, unpredictable storm. "You're just a memory," he said.

  "A leftover of a council that broke me because I loved too hard." It drifted closer, light wrapped around it like armor. "You were warned."

  "You warned yourselves," Kin said through gritted teeth. It was the bde of his certainty, sharp and cutting.

  "Here I am. Stirring."

  The chains that anchored him to the Between pulsed. Another one cracked, a high sound like a bell shattering. A fre of red light lit the space like fire through stained gss. The golden figure blurred. Flickered. Its glowing edges started to run, colors bleeding, and a moment ter, it vanished like the ghost he'd always known it to be. He stood in the silence, the memory of its words still biting at him like acid.

  There was a rumble, low and steady. It shook the space around him, shook the light and the dark and the memory. It ripped through the tenuous boundaries of the Between with all the force of a breathlessly held longing.

  Light bled from him, each crack in the chains spilling colors so bright they seemed alive.

  Smoke drifted from his skin.

  Kin stood alone again—but not alone. Not really.

  The world around him groaned like a beast waking up.

  He lifted his hand.

  From the void, a single red feather drifted into his palm.

  POV: Riven

  It felt like standing inside a mirror that didn't want him there—a universe better left alone.

  The shrine stretched too tall, too wide, expanding like a lung taking in too much air. The walls shimmered—not like gss, but like memory—warped and wavering, as if a single touch could send them rippling into oblivion.

  He was barefoot, the stone beneath him warm like it had just swallowed fire and burned molten in its belly.

  Where was he?

  Where was his own body?

  He touched his chest but felt disconnected. Untethered. Unsewn from the fabrics that should have kept him solid. He was a ghost, a specter that did not belong.

  A feather fell. Red. Wrong.

  It twisted in the air for too long, floating sideways, like time forgot how gravity worked—like time forgot how he worked.

  Riven blinked.

  The movement felt slow, syrupy, and he wondered if his eyes would even bother to open again. It was like he was standing in eternity, every second a stubborn, obstinate thing. He saw the feather drift out of sight, saw it fall away from him into a past or present that seemed not to care.

  Something—someone—stood across from him.

  Not a full shape.

  A suggestion.

  Firelight caught in a storm.

  A shadow with too many eyes.

  And then none.

  And then—Kinunnos.

  How?

  From where?

  It could not be.

  It could not st.

  The moment shifted, and the shape flickered like a dying fme, a candle unsure of its own ambition, and Riven thought he might catch it before it disappeared into the nothingness.

  Fingers brushed his cheek.

  Cold.

  Then heat.

  Then real.

  He didn't move. Couldn't. Everything stilled, everything spun, and he was not the master of any part of it. He was a guest. An intrusion. He was something wild and uncertain.

  A familiar unfurling began in his chest, and he knew it for sure now. Knew it was real. There was a voice then. Just one word, low and close and carved with hunger:

  "Mine."

  The world colpsed inward like a held breath finally let go, contracting and imploding, pulling itself so tight even light could not escape, and he felt the st flicker of Kinunnos burn inside him, branding him with its terrible warmth—

  —and Riven jerked awake.

  His heart thundered a violent rhythm in his chest. His skin was damp with sweat, chilled and fevered all at once. His pulse screamed so loud he thought the whole universe should hear it, but everything else was silent.

  Too silent.

  He sat up, breathing hard as if he had run through a thousand lifetimes to get back here. As if the effort of waking had been enough to break him. As if he woke somewhere he didn't belong.

  That's when he saw it.

  Ash. On the bedsheet. Right under his hand.

  Bck against white, impossible but there, real as his own unsteady breath.

  He stared at it like he expected it to move, to dissolve, to slip back into the nightmare he was not ready to admit was more than a nightmare.

  His fingers shook as he reached for it, brushing it gently, hoping it would vanish like a dream, hoping he was wrong.

  It didn't.

  Outside the window, something nded on the sill with a soft tap.

  A single red feather.

  Still warm.

  Riven held it, repeating the word like a curse and a prayer:

  "Mine?"