The Revenant moved like smoke and hunger given form.
Its body was stitched from shadows. Its soul—if it still had one—burned with twisted rage, screaming silently from within. Every step scorched the earth.
Maelis met its gaze.
And the fragment of her soul, the one that had once called itself "truth," stirred deep inside her.
Let go, it whispered.
Unleash what you've become.
She did.
Power surged—not clean, not controlled. But it was hers.
A thread of starlight laced through her veins, wrapping her arms in pale fire. As the Revenant lunged, she moved faster than thought, blade clashing against its talon-like limbs.
Riven didn't join the fight immediately. He watched. Studied.
This is her test.
The Revenant swung wide, breaking stone. Maelis ducked low, slid beneath its arm, and drove her blade toward the core—the echo of the twisted soul still flickering inside it.
But it caught her mid-strike.
The Revenant's hand closed around her throat.
Her vision blurred.
Pain flashed red. Her soul pulsed, unstable. And then—
A voice inside her, not her own.
We are not prey.
Silver light burst from her chest, a flare that threw the Revenant back with a scream not made of flesh. It reeled, smoke pouring from its mouth, its soul unraveling.
Maelis dropped to one knee, gasping. Her hand trembled—but her eyes burned steady.
Riven stepped beside her now.
"You're evolving faster than I thought."
"I don't want to become her," Maelis said, voice ragged.
"You might not have a choice." He turned to the smoldering remains of the Revenant. "And that wasn't the only one."
She looked up. The forest felt wrong. The silence wasn't silence anymore.
Then she saw it.
Etched into the trees around them were marks—sigils that hadn't been there before. Markings used only by one sect.
"The Shadowborn," Riven muttered. "The Order's elite hunters."
"They know we're alive," Maelis said.
"No." He looked at her, jaw clenched. "They know what you are now."
The wind howled through the trees.
Somewhere far off, a soul screamed.
Maelis turned toward the fading embers, her breath still catching in her throat. The soulflame she'd unleashed hadn't just been power—it had been memory. Something primal. Buried deep.
Riven sheathed his blade slowly, watching her. "That wasn't Harvester magic."
Maelis shook her head. "No. It was something else. Something… mine."
They stood in silence, surrounded by the smoldering remains of the broken scouts. The fog receded slightly, and in its place came a bitter wind, carrying whispers in a tongue neither had heard aloud, yet both understood.
A warning.
Riven stepped closer, lowering his voice. "The Order will hunt us harder now. But that kind of power? It's not just awakened. Someone—or something—is calling it forth."
Maelis touched the singed edge of her cloak, fingers trembling. "The throne of starlight," she murmured. "The severed soul… it's connected to me. To what I was. But there's more."
She closed her eyes—and the whispering grew louder.
Ash to ash. Fire to fire. The Revenant rises where truth was burned.
Riven's expression darkened. "The Revenant Fire… it's not a myth, is it?"
Maelis opened her eyes. "No. And it's not finished burning."
Just then, the earth beneath them shuddered. Cracks split the ashen ground, releasing a faint red glow from below. A deep pulse echoed up through their boots—like a heartbeat. Something ancient stirred in the bones of the city.
From the fissure rose a flicker of spectral flame—blue at the core, but lined with veins of silver and crimson. It hovered between them.
Maelis reached toward it instinctively. The flame didn't burn. It recognized her.
Suddenly, her vision blurred.
She stood—again—in the throne room of bone and stars. But this time, she wasn't alone.
A figure knelt at the foot of the throne. Its armor was scorched. Its face hidden behind a broken mask. But the presence radiated grief. Rage. Devotion.
"The Revenant waits," the severed soul whispered behind her. "But not for you. For what you were. For what you buried."
Maelis's voice cracked. "Who is he?"
"Your shadow. Your choice. The one you left behind."
She blinked—and the vision shattered.
Back in the real world, the revenant flame vanished into her chest.
Maelis staggered.
Riven caught her. "What did you see?"
She steadied herself, her voice cold. "A war is coming. But it didn't start today. It started when I died the first time."
Riven narrowed his eyes. "Then we need answers. And there's only one place left that might still have them."
Maelis looked up. "Where?"
He hesitated.
"The Catacombs of the First Harvester."
"The Catacombs of the First Harvester…" Maelis repeated, her voice hushed.
Legends whispered of that place. A graveyard beneath the old world—sealed after the War of Splintered Souls. It was said to be where the original contract between death and dominion was forged. A place even the Order feared.
"Only Wraithbound and High Circle Harvesters are permitted near it," she said.
Riven gave a bitter smile. "And yet, that's exactly where your soul wants to go."
The ground stopped trembling, but the fog hadn't returned. The forest held its breath. As if the world itself waited to see what she would choose.
Maelis stared at her palms. No blood now. Only faint traces of that silvery light, like threads of a star woven through her skin. The last spark of the revenant flame still pulsed in her chest—quiet, but alive.
"I used to dream of being chosen," she whispered. "To rise in the Order. To carve out my place. I thought if I followed every rule, harvested with honor, I'd find meaning."
Riven's gaze didn't waver. "And now?"
She looked up at him, eyes hardening. "Now I want the truth. And I don't care what I have to burn to find it."
He nodded once, then tossed her a small vial from his belt. Soul-salve—rare. Pain bloomed down her side now that the rush had faded. She caught it, wiped the blood from her temple, and drank.
"Then we head east at dusk," Riven said. "Through the Hollow Reaches. We'll need to cross the Spine Valley and avoid the Gatewardens."
"Won't they sense me?" Maelis asked.
"They'll sense you," he said. "But if your soul keeps changing… they may not recognize what you are."
She looked to the horizon—past the ruins and the dying trees.
Then something glinted in the dirt nearby. She knelt and pulled it free—a medallion scorched black. An Order token. The emblem melted into a spiral.
Riven inhaled sharply. "That's not from the retrieval squad."
She turned it over. The back held a single rune. One neither of them had seen in years.
Maelis whispered it aloud: "Exile."
They weren't just being hunted by the Order.
Someone had released the Revenant. On purpose.
And whoever it was had once been one of them.
The sky bled into dusk.
As they moved eastward through the ashen woods, shadows stretched long, clawing at their heels. Maelis gripped the scorched medallion tightly, its heat long faded but the weight of its meaning still pressing against her skin.
"Someone sent the Revenant after me," she said, more to herself than Riven. "But why?"
Riven's silence was answer enough.
They reached the edge of the treeline—and the land fell away into a jagged expanse of bone-white cliffs and twisted ravines. The Hollow Reaches.
The wind here carried no scent. No sound. Just emptiness.
Riven crouched, scanning the path ahead. "We'll rest in that crevice before the climb. If we're lucky, the Gatewardens won't patrol this far west tonight."
Maelis nodded, though her eyes were drawn elsewhere.
To the cliffside.
A strange glow flickered from deep within one of the ravines—too steady for fire, too fluid for soulflame.
Compelled, she stepped closer.
And then she heard it.
A voice—ragged, ghostlike—drifting from the depths.
Not just a whisper.
A name.
Her name.
"Maelis…"
She froze.
The voice was hers. But twisted. Older. Burned through time.
"Did you hear that?" she asked sharply, turning to Riven.
But he wasn't looking at her.
He was staring at the cliffside behind her, sword drawn, eyes wide.
"Behind you."
She turned.
Out of the fog stepped a figure in robes of bone-white silk, lined with ash-black threads. No mask. No sigil.
Just a face.
Familiar.
Her own.
But this Maelis was wrong. Her skin shimmered with soul scars, her eyes were silver fire, and her presence…
It crushed the air.
The Revenant had been a shadow.
This was a reflection.
"You shouldn't have awakened," the other Maelis said. "Now you've ruined everything."
Before Maelis could react, the doppelgänger raised her hand—and the world split open behind her in a scream of light and shadow.