The shape didn't rise.
It knelt in silence, head bowed, body still — as though awaiting command.
The porcelain mask cracked at the edge, revealing just the faintest shimmer of golden light beneath. Not fire. Not power. Something older.
Memory.
Riven's heart thundered.
Not in fear.
But in recognition.
---
Instructor Vex kept her weapon raised, though her hands trembled.
"That thing just bowed to you," she said. "You going to tell me why?"
"I don't know," Riven replied, too fast.
Too rehearsed.
Because part of him did know. Not in words, but in bone. In that quiet center inside him that had stopped asking questions and started keeping score.
The shape — the Sorrowborn — had weight. It didn't breathe, didn't blink, and yet the air around it rippled like time itself hesitated near it.
"You sure?" Vex's voice sharpened. "Because my scanner says it's a Class-X anomaly, and anomalies don't usually kneel."
Riven stepped forward.
The Sorrowborn didn't flinch. Its form was humanoid, but imperfect — limbs slightly too long, joints that shimmered when it moved. Around its hands, threads of faint gold hung like tattered strings caught in the windless air.
"What is it?" Vex asked.
Riven looked down at the kneeling figure.
"It's a… remnant."
"Of what?"
He didn't answer.
Because the moment he tried, a pulse ran through the mirrored chamber — not sound, not heat. Something more intimate.
A pressure behind the eyes. A weight behind the ribs.
---
[Emotion Sync: 61% – Residual Anchor Detected]
[Sorrow Signature: Confirmed – Tier 3 Loyalty Established]
---
The Sorrowborn raised its head slightly. Beneath the broken mask, it whispered a single word.
"Elyon."
Vex froze.
Riven took a slow step back.
The air thickened.
That name — his name, not yet spoken by anyone alive — had not been programmed. Not archived. Not remembered by anyone in this age.
Not unless…
Unless the breach wasn't just a wound.
It was a door.
---
The walls began to glow again — not the glyphs this time, but the mirrors. Each one flared with different color, different vision.
One showed a battlefield of flame where stars fell like ash.
Another showed a garden of crystals, where children laughed without sound.
Another still — a throne room of glass, cracked down the center.
And in all of them…
He was there.
Not Riven.
Elyon.
Draped in sorrow, crowned in silence. His expression always the same:
Empty.
Tired.
Alone.
---
"Riven!" Vex snapped. "The mirrors are syncing with you — this isn't normal!"
He staggered backward, breath catching.
Too many images.
Too many versions of himself that weren't himself — but somehow were.
His knees hit the stone.
[Stability Alert: Neural Drift Detected]
[Emotion Anchor Fragment at Risk]
No.
Not now.
He dug his fingers into the dirt floor. Felt the coolness. The weight. The present.
"I'm not him," he whispered.
The Sorrowborn raised its head fully now.
"You were."
---
Then the mirrors cracked.
Not shattered — fractured.
Every pane split down the center.
And through each came a sound.
A heartbeat.
The same, synchronized pulse in every world, every memory, every fragment.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
His.
---
Riven stood.
The air bent again — like the dungeon was deciding whether or not to remain a dungeon, or something older.
He looked to Vex.
She didn't speak.
Her eyes were on him now like he was the breach.
Not the anomaly.
The source.
---
The Sorrowborn finally rose. It took a single step forward — slow, reverent — and extended a hand. In its palm lay a sliver of white crystal, curved like a fang, pulsing faintly with gold.
Riven didn't reach for it.
But the shard floated to him anyway.
The moment it touched his chest, it vanished.
No flash.
No flare.
Only feeling.
---
[Anchor Accepted – Aspect "Sorrow" Awakened]
[Emotional Arsenal Online – Tier 1]
---
And then the Sorrowborn collapsed.
Its porcelain mask crumbled to dust.
Its body dissolved into light.
All that remained was silence… and the echo of a name.
---
Behind them, the breach began to seal.
The fog receded.
The mirrors folded inward and vanished.
Vex stepped forward, but her hand shook as she reached for Riven.
"What the hell are you?"
He didn't answer.
Because he wasn't sure anymore if Riven was all he was.
But he knew this:
Elyon was waking up.