Broken roads were one of the best ways the world waves and yells that something is seriously wrong. Riven, of course, ignored it.

“Sir, you been waiting for a long while now,” the chauffeur said as though Riven had forgotten he’d spent the better part of today and yesterday lounging in the back of trains, carriages, and the beat-up car Father had sent to pick him up. “Can’t hurt to wait a little longer.”

The Coral trees lining dotting the roadside seemed to agree, fleshy pink and skeletally still in the dying light of late afternoon. Well sure, waiting couldn’t hurt Riven. Not really. Mother, though, was another matter.

“I’m tired of the waiting,” Riven said. He paused to add the chauffeur’s name but his mouth froze. He’d never asked. Damn it. “Why’d it break down?”

“Wish I knew. There’s enough Sept in the tank, so maybe the engine?”

Riven pressed his hand against his shirt and looked down. Letter from Mother, check. Carpet bag, check. “Well, I’m heading out either way. Thanks for the ride.”

The chauffeur looked up from inspecting the smoking engine. Soot stained his old wool clothes, the black outshining all the other faded colours. It streaked his hands too, the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, and his face was dark with it more than his patchy salt-and-pepper beard. He’d been scuffling with the car’s engine for the better part of an hour, and someone needed to award Riven with a crest signed patience.

“Well, I don’t think I can leave this poor, old boy.” The chauffeur slapped the car’s bonnet. “Sure you can go on alone?”

The hood was pushed up and to one side like the lid of a chest but the car was far from a treasure by a long shot. Its front was shaped like a black wolf-snout, but the iron bars of the engine were old and rusting, the wolf’s teeth rotten and ready to fall out. The four wheels were large and thick, shields stolen from the graves of ancient warriors to drive this lazy contraption. Worst of all, its grey chassis was as boxy on the outside as it was within, and every little bump and hole had jolted Riven around so much, it was now weird to be stationary. Maybe that was why his feet were itching to move.

Riven picked up his carpet bag. Unlike the chauffeur’s shirt, the wool of his bag was bright, the colours still sharp despite the years. “I’ll be fine, thank you.”

He turned and walked down the road, though the chauffeur wasn’t done.

“Just be careful if you meet any of ‘em Deathless,” he called out from behind. When Riven kept walking without any acknowledgement, his voice grew louder. “They’re runnin’ amok all over Severance Frontier. This road’s broken cause of ‘em.”

His words needled into Riven’s spine, little shivers working out to claim him whole. He shook it off and kept his pace brisk but careful. The road was pockmarked with irregular holes, rent with gouges and fractures as though the land had grown a nasty rash, and it wouldn’t do to trip, fall, and break something right when he needed to get going faster. Daylight was fading, and the chauffeur was right. Riven would die if he got caught by malicious Deathless.

They weren’t known to take prisoners.

Riven had journeyed enough. He’d been sitting so long on hard seats, supporting a breakfast tray on his arse would be a cinch. It was good to stretch his legs, flex his rather weak muscles. Sweat had formed a film all over his skin, and the image of running water in his head sent little lightning bolts to his legs. Faster, and faster. Running water to soothe away all the weariness. When would he be granted such sublime mercy?

Right wrist growing sore, Riven switched the carpet bag to his left hand and pulled it up to his shoulder. He kept switching his stare from the road to the world beyond. Severance Frontier stretched out on either side of the raised highway he trudged along, a light sheen of fog smothering the land, Coral treelines in the distance like teal sentinels guarding the horizon. Nearby oddities tugged at his eyes as well—a mirrorlike pool here, cracked earth there, fissures snaking away in a starburst. And there was the Sept too, tiny, glittering particles littering the ground, whisking through the fog, dusting the Coral trees.

A wasteland, one born from the war between Resplend and Vedel Arn. One where Riven now had to belong. He was supposed to fit in here. He was supposed to call this war-torn region his new home, a place where the war hadn’t really left. People just fought with the land instead of against each other, squeezing out the faintest dregs of a livelihood from a tired and reluctant world. All because the Dodecilian Council had promised the riches of Sept.

A new home yes, but not for long though. Not if he could help it. He’d find a cure for Mother, and then he could hightail it out of these blasted lands.

Even now, years after the incident, Riven still couldn’t shake it out of his head. Still couldn’t displace the memory of him cowering in a dark corner of a wide room, Mother standing tall over him, using herself as a shield to keep him from harm. A Deathless had got in. A witch had infiltrated their home, and most of that encounter had burned away from his memory, except for the storm of colours still rioting in Riven’s head. All he remembered afterwards was Mother lying in a hospital bed, her weak hand in his, wasting away day by day as her organs died.

Riven shook his head to clear the image away. Maybe it was a good reminder of sorts, but all it did was make his heart squeeze too tight to even feel it beating. The medicer in charge of her had said she still had a few months. Enough time for Riven to find something.

Didn’t help he kept seeing Mother everywhere. Pools rippled, just as her dresses used to, folds of shimmering silk and satin. Usually violet. She’d always loved some shade of magenta. Stray winds whispered past Coral shrubs and thorngrass, gentle as though she was trying to teach Riven something without telling it to him, urging him to reach for it with soft and subtle nudges. The Sept twinkled too, like her favourite earrings had on her birthday, studded gems the shade of deepest dusk.

Riven froze. Had he just—no it couldn’t be. His mother was in bed, back home three hundred leagues away in the capital, either sleeping, reading, or more likely, worrying about him. There could be no way he’d spotted her in the trees. Must have been a trick of the low light. Fatigue too, and hunger. His stomach growled in confirmation.

The road diverged where Riven had paused. A steel signpost pointed to two directions—the path curving southeast towards Providence Demesne and shooting northeast to Ascension Demesne. The car was supposed to have taken him on the south road, towards Father in Providence.

But Riven stared at the distant shadows between two tall Coral trees, branches intertwining to form an arch with glittering Sept floating underneath. Mother…

He headed north. If there wasn’t anything there, he could double back and traipse the way he was supposed to, though his stomach gave another protesting grumble. Riven feasted his eyes on the still pools and the pockmarked land, and that made his hunger shrivel somewhat. Very unappetizing, this dead ground.

There was nothing there. Well, nothing but light fog and Sept. The Coral trees were a teal species like the ones in the distance, and Riven stood under the arch, peering up into the branches. Of course, Mother wasn’t here. Foolish to give in to whimsy. He’d just delayed everything for no real reason other than satisfying some irrational curiosity.

The Sept glittered, right in front of his eyes. Riven held out his palm, and shimmering dust gathered on it, turning his hand into a galaxy. This was why he was here. This Sept. There had to be a way to cure Mother with it, even Father thought so. He was funding the research facility after all. If it could fuel cars, light up homes, and create fatal weapons, surely it held a way of freeing Mother from her death sentence.

Riven clasped his hands tight. He’d find a cure, no matter what. Mother just had to wait a while longer.

Sighing, and trying not to breathe in the Sept, for it supposedly did strange things to the body when inserted in great quantity, he was about to walk back when a blast tore through the area. He whirled. Farther north, damn it. Cursing the name of the Scions—did it really have to pull him away from where he needed to be?—Riven, of course, rushed straight for it.

The road twisted and curved for a while, then veered sharply to the right. He staggered to a stop. In the name of all Scions, what was he looking at?

To the left was the largest Sept pit he’d ever seen. A veritable mountain stood before him, a dumping ground for used and dead bits of Sept, from the tiniest grey grains to ashen crystals big enough to use as pillows. The junkyards in the capital had been no bigger than houses, and most had been stuffed into pits. This one not only overflowed but had risen, the faded Sept climbing back towards the sky it had fallen from, forming a gargantuan pile that could have held an entire city on its own. Riven got vertigo the higher he craned his neck. Impossible. Did no one have any sense of space management here?

When his gaze reached the peak, his mouth fell open. There were figures at the top. Figures who were fighting.

It was difficult to tell what in the Five Realms of the Chasm was going on. They were tiny at this distance, dust motes colliding against each other over and over. But bright. Holy Scions, so damn bright. Arcs of purple light arced off one, while the other held a green star in their hand, dark as forest foliage but shining like leaves of emerald. And they kept on charging into each other, indigo and pine flashing against each other and lanced back everywhere, searing Riven’s eyes if he stared at them directly. All the while, the mountain of drained Sept kept shifting. Wave after wave of it roiled, an ocean of broken Sept rising in turmoil at the storm swept up by the distant combatants, miniature landslides scraping off the sides and half-tumbling, half-floating to the ground.

Madness. They had to be Essentiers, but fighting out here in the open like that? Severance Frontier was supposed to be insane, but this was a little too much.

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Riven shut his mouth with some effort. He had to get out before he was buried in one of those landslides, drowning in a sea of refuse. But light flashed, the green pulsing bright momentarily like lightning, tinting the whole mountain with a leafy hue. The figure bearing purple flew back as though shot from a cannon, crashing and disappearing into the mountain.

But as he vanished, the purple sparked and blazed as well. Radiant enough to show the figure in detail, if only for one thundering heartbeat, outlining shimmering scales and huge, segmented wings. Riven gasped.

A demon. One of the figures was a demon.

Curse the Scions, but the chauffeur had been right. He’d been caught up with the Deathless. Just his luck, of course.

All right, there was no more time to dawdle. He had to run, now. Purple flashed again, and even as Riven turned to put his thoughts to action, the mountain broke apart. An entire half broke off, and Riven’s legs halted all on their own, muscles seizing at the sight. No point in running. None at all. That landslide would swallow the area for leagues all around. A barrage of broken Sept, a billion grains, shards, and crystals all aimed straight for him, and he was frozen. There was no saving himself from that. No shield. No shelter from certain death.

Shelter. Riven twisted, legs thankfully, thankfully working again. The trees. The two Coral trees twisted with each other were his only hope. He ran, and dived under the arch, curling into a ball and shielding his head with his hands. That’s what he was taught at boarding school at least. Protect the head. Nothing else mattered, at least not as much as the head. He took in a deep breath, for who knew how suffocating it’d be even if he survived the impact.

All his dreams of saving Mother, of seeing his brother and sister again, all dashed. This could be it. This could be his death. This—

Half the mountain crashed in, obliterating everything.

#

When Riven woke, he coughed and spat out Sept. By the time his lungs were no longer trying to heave themselves out and the blur of his vision resolved to sharp clarity, he was sure of only one thing. He wasn’t sure if he’d really woken up or not.

They were everywhere. It had looked like he’d be buried as with a proper landslide of earth but Sept worked in mysterious ways. An irregular lattice had formed all around him, a subterrane that stretched in every direction, roofs and floors made of faded grains held up by columns of dead, grey crystals, and he was on a slope, runnels of Sept dusting off into the darkness below. Even the air was permeated with them, tiny motes floating everywhere like irrepressible insects. Good thing they were inert. His whole body had to be filled with them by now.

Great. He’d started off to get to Father’s place where he could rest, relax, and recuperate from his exhausting journey, yet look where he had ended up. Buried under a mountain of dead Sept for his enterprise. Or rashness. Perfect.

Riven stared everywhere. There was no way to spot an exit, no way to tell if there even was an escape route. No, there had to be. Muted light filtered throughout the cavernous space so cracks or holes were out there somewhere. He just had to find it.

He located his carpet bag a little ways away. Surprising that he could see it in the gloom. Riven made his way towards the bag, feet sinking alarmingly deep into the pile of Sept, heart jumping into his mouth every time the floor shifted under his feet and he felt as though he’d slip. Thank the Scions he didn’t fall. It was dark below, an abyss ready to swallow him whole without leaving a single trace he’d ever existed. It was hard not to gulp every time his eyes were drawn downwards.

Riven made it to his carpet bag in one piece. He picked it up, carefully so as not to disturb the pile of Sept too much, and a glow erupted, forcing his lids to close. Damn, so bright. It burned behind his eyelids, as though all the glittering, living Sept outside had been condensed into a tiny space about as big as an apple.

He opened his eyes to just a crack. A tiny slit to stop the brilliance from blinding him. Riven picked up the Sept crystal, an oblong, glassy shape with blunt ends that tended to slip from his hands. As his eye grew accustomed to the radiance, he made out more details—dark swirls marred the crystal in several spots, little cracks and craters dotting its surface like it was a facsimile of the blasted ground everywhere. The pile shook. Riven’s heart galloped at lightning speed, and he fell into the dead Sept as soon as he tried to climb up.

Then the entire cavern began sliding down. No. No way. This couldn’t be the end.

Thrusting the crystal inside his shirt and above Mother’s letter, he tried to climb, and when that failed, he attempted to swim. That didn’t work either. Riven screamed as the slope turned nearly vertical, and he accelerated towards the yawning, gaping maw. Where was he headed? Where in the Chasm would he end up?

Riven lost his grip and free fell. Shit. He clawed the air, legs kicking at nothing and nowhere. He’d be dead on impact. No, there had to be something, had to be some way he could—

He crashed into another pile of dead Sept and didn’t die. Didn’t even hurt much. The Sept was soft as sand, and Riven sank into it, the grains cushioning his fall. Too many grains. They swirled around and over him, embracing him like a constricting serpent, and he couldn’t breathe. He coughed, struggling and fighting against the clamp of death.

Then he burst out. Free! Riven coughed again, his lungs rebelling at the sudden change in their diet. Thank the damned Scions, he wasn’t dead. Well, not yet. He looked around, and yes. Not yet was right.

Riven had fallen far, and everything was dark here. Light was a distant pinprick far above, and the only reason Riven caught sight of anything—and that was limited to only what was near him—was for the crystal glowing from beneath his shirt. Its warmth on his chest calmed his hammering heart. With great care, Riven pulled out the large Sept crystal, illuminating the whole area.

Holy Scions, he really shouldn’t have.

An abyss had opened up. The area of dead Sept he was resting on ended abruptly at its edge, and if Riven focused, the slow scrape of Sept sliding down into the hole crept into his ears. And he was slowly being dragged towards that gaping maw.

His heart squeezed hard. What was going to do? Even the littlest move would set off another landslide and who in the Chasm knew where that abyss would take him. He’d die, no doubt about it. That he hadn’t yet was an outright miracle he’d have to thank the Scions properly later for if he survived. Sweat beaded his forehead, and his breaths turned raspy. There had to be some way to save himself, but nothing came. Not a single, blasted idea.

I don’t want this.

Riven stopped panicking. What the—? He stared around. Those words had materialized out of nowhere, reverberating in his head like the voice of a giant, but he couldn’t tell the source.

Help me. Save me. Stop me.

“Who’s there?” Riven shouted. His head swivelled to the abyss and was it possible? Something was there? Nothing could be down here, buried this far and still alive. Well, nothing but him. Surely no one else could have this much hapless luck.

Though that voice sounded far from human. Far from mortal.

The demon. Crap. Demons could converse, and he’d never heard of one speaking so omnisciently like some god, but it wasn’t like he was an expert in demon-speak.

“Who’s there?”

Riven had to stifle his gasp. That hadn’t been him. His words, but thrown back at him from somewhere higher up in the darkness, the voice normal and human, thank the Scions. But also very pained.

“I’m…” How in the Chasm was Riven supposed to explain himself when he was about to die? “I need help. Who are you? Where are you?”

“I got stuck here after that landslide. Did you see the insanity going on top?” The voice tutted, then groaned. Young and decidedly male, with a strange cadence like he found the situation so ridiculous, it was funny even in the face of death. “Say, you don’t know a way out, do you?”

“No.” He hadn’t really answered the questions, but that didn’t really matter. “Do you?”

There was a slight shift in the Sept above and several little crystals rained down, tapping Riven on the head and catching on his shirt. “That crystal you have there. Can you throw it at me?”

Riven’s grip on the Sept crystal tightened. “Why?”

“It can help us get out of here. Alive.”

“I don’t even know who you are.”

“I’m stuck here same as you, and more importantly, I don’t want to die. You heard that voice. You want to meet whatever thing it comes from?”

“But what in the Chasm are you going to do with this crystal?”

“The demon.” There was a hush to his voice, like his plan was for their ears only. “It can help us get out of here, but it needs the power from the crystal to heal itself. Come on! Throw it up!”

Riven’s arms twitched. He should throw it up since it wasn’t like he had other options besides dying. “How do you know all this? Who are you?”

“I’m an Essentier, what else? Look, there’s no time. Just throw it up if you want to live.”

Even as he said it, the cavern groaned. The Sept pile began shifting, sliding down into the yawning abyss with the sound of an earthquake, little crystals and pieces scurrying across the top like mice. Riven shouted, then tried to move up, but there was nothing for purchase. This was a sea, and he was caught in a current that led straight to oblivion. He was going to die.

Trust. That was all it was about. The abyss called, the grinding noise of the landslide, its sudden cessation as the Sept waterfalled into the enormous hole, all hammered into him like an army of Spectres. He had no other options, no other choices besides throwing the only thing he’d found in this rendition of the Chasm itself.

He had to choose. He had to live. Survive. For Mother.

“Throw it, now!”

Riven complied. “Catch!”

Please, oh Divine Scions, let it be the right spot. The crystal sailed high like a glittering comet and froze in its path all of a sudden, an arm extending from it and disappearing into a layer of dead Sept. But Riven didn’t even get the change to congratulate himself on his throw—and what a throw it was to have found his target in the dark—as a wave of dead Sept engulfed him and he was dragged back, shrieking and choking on particles of every shape and size.

Then he was falling. Falling to his death, the hole swallowing up his scream, all the used Sept deadening every sound, the rush of air past his head tearing through skin, flesh, and bones all the way to his very soul.

Stupid, stupid, stupid of him to think he’d be saved by some mysterious Essentier from nowhere. Must have been a figment of his imagination, a delirium induced by insane desperation. Whatever waited at the bottom, whatever had spoken in that enormous voice, would claim him, mind, body, and soul. Shit but how could he make so many mistakes in the space of hardly an hour?

Purple blazed. Bright as a star, coruscating as a sun, lighting up the entire cavern with a magenta shade.

Riven jerked to halt, teeth snapping shut and almost slicing off his tongue. Close call. Something ropy had grabbed him about the waist, grip tight enough to squeeze his innards out his holes. That something pulled.

He was flying up now, every bone creaking and muscle spasming in protest, mouth shut tight in case he came close to biting off his tongue again. Riven shrieked as he was hauled through the descending Sept crystals, the shards needling and piercing his skin. What in the Chasm was happening? That demon, was it really alive? That second Essentier had really come through.

Riven dared to open his eyes to a tiny slit. The world was crumbling around him, the pillars of dead Sept were falling, floors and roofs crashing into each other, but there! Light! So much light, though all it showed was nothing but the brittle scales and dull rocks, grains that had lost all their lustre and were about as wondrous as pigeon droppings. But the light was growing brighter, dazzling really. They weren’t far from an exit.

Yet Riven still couldn’t see what was pulling him with such force. Just a vague, amorphous silhouette against the light blazing from above.

“Ready?” It was the other Essentier.

“For what?” Riven yelled back.

No answer. No matter. Riven closed his eyes, curled in as much as he could, and covered his head with his arms again.

Then he struck the mountain. The dead Sept tore through him, shards lacerating, crystals stabbing, pebbles grounding, a million grains abrading against his skin and clothes. He couldn’t even scream. Not when there was such a great danger of it all infiltrating inside and tearing him out from within. His heart pounded as though it meant to escape before it was shredded to red ribbons.

Finally, finally Riven burst out. He was floating, free for a few moments as the grip around his waist disappeared. Brief glances were all he caught of the world. The sky was tasselled with streaks of vermillion giving way to indigo, the broken mountain smothered the land as far as he could see, and far off was a lone figure standing at the peak of what remained of the mountain of dead Sept.

The Essentier with the green star in their hand. Then the star winked out.

And Riven fell.