Riven... was dead. He couldn't believe it. Just when his Sigil was activated, he died. He wanted to scream and curse at the unjustified event, to howl at the pain he was feeling as his heart was shredded.
Not only was he dead, but so was his sister. The anger that was trapped inside him had nowhere to go. "How can you kill us just because you are strong and we are weak?"
But then Riven stopped thinking as something came to his mind. "I am dead, so why am I still thinking?"
Immediately, he became aware that he wasn't dead. It was as if something flipped. He saw darkness and felt coldness as his body was being tugged away by something in the endless dark he now found himself in.
Suddenly, light bloomed and shattered the darkness, and his eyes opened.
"Rauug!"
Riven gasped awake as if he had been submerged in water for too long. He was breathing hard, and he clutched his chest where his heart was on fire.
His stomach clenched, and he coughed, his body spasming briefly as he tried to get used to the fact that he was alive, breathing.
For a moment, all he could do was stare blankly at the sky. "What in the eternal is going on?"
He thought, and his heart clenched as he remembered the event that led to his death. Suddenly, he bolted upright, clumsily trying to stand, but his legs were like wet leather, and he fell to the ground in a heap of tangled limbs.
"Ysmera!"
He sat up again, but this time much slower. His body trembled again, this time from the grief that swelled in his heart, the grief that turned to anger because she didn't deserve it. None of them did.
"Ysmera." He called softly this time, as if she hadn't heard the first time and would answer him. But only silence met him, and it was at this moment that he actually looked around him.
He was outside their house back in Timberhold Village, but where there should have been a house was a pile of crumbled walls and twisted wood.
"Those bastards even reached our house?" Their house was a little apart from the village itself on a small hill. Their parents built it when they were alive.
The thought of his parents made Riven's face turn gloomy again. "Maybe I'm really unlucky. My mother died in childbirth, and my father passed away when I was nine, somehow dying to the disease that swept the village—a sickness that killed only him from the whole village."
"And now Ysmera is dead."
He was truly and utterly alone.
He sat there for a while, his knees together and his head buried between them. His naked body trembled slightly as he let the grief and pain free. He felt it, took it in. He accepted it and molded it around his heart.
"Vaelith. I will make you feel pain no one else has ever felt," he whispered.
Then he raised his head. His face was pale, but his purple eyes shone with a light that seemed to be more of darkness. The sun was shining on him uncomfortably, but he didn't move, a frown on his face.
"Why am I still alive?"
The answer burned in his chest, something he had been avoiding since he woke up. He knew all the answers about what was going on were in there, but he was afraid to touch them in case his hope crumbled to ash as it always did.
"It's not possible... my Sigil is activated? No, no. It must be a technique from that necromancer."
Everyone was born with a Sigil, a measure of their will in the world, but not everyone could absorb Aura. Aura was the energy found in everything that was not human. Humans were the only beings born without Aura in them. They could only interact with Aura through the use of their Sigil.
Those who could absorb Aura were called Aura practitioners or users, and they cultivated it in line with their Sigil once they became smart enough to tell their right from their left hand.
The main aim of every Aura practitioner was to evolve their Sigil to its strongest form with each advancement in rank.
To activate the Sigil, one must absorb Aura that aligned with their Sigil and then kill monsters of the same Aura, form the four stars, and advance to the first rank.
And that was where Riven's problem lay. No matter which Aura he absorbed, he was unable to activate his Sigil, not to mention killing monsters to advance.
He was useless. Had been all his life, except now. He could feel something in his heart. His Sigil was alive in a way it had never been before.
He took a deep breath, and then, without hesitation, he placed his hand atop his chest. He felt his Sigil, and his mind accepted it. His eyes dilated, and he sank into his consciousness.
His Sigil was a vibrant purple and black. He could see the purple part, but the rest was hidden by a black shadow. Immediately, he knew the name of his Sigil and the passive abilities he got from it.
It was a Sigil he had never heard of before. It was called Undying.
The Undying Sigil.
The first passive ability was to cheat death four times in each rank. He would come back to life four times in a rank if he was killed, resetting every time he advanced to a new rank.
The second was the state of Undying itself. It made regeneration faster, and he could grant things the state of Undying briefly, making them last longer. It would get stronger at every rank.
Riven stared at his hand in shock when he returned to his normal self. He couldn't help it, he began to laugh. He was the most unlucky person, but maybe he could change his fate with the only luck that seemed to have been given to him.
The Undying.