They were dead.

  They were so dead.

  Riven couldn’t stop saying it.

  “We’re dead,” he muttered, rocking slightly where he sat on the cold stone. “We’re dead. We’re fucking done.”

  His voice sounded wrong in the dungeon—too loud, too sharp, like it might crack something fragile if he raised it even a little. He pressed his palms into his temples and squeezed, as if he could crush the thought out of his skull.

  “I hate this. I hate this place. FUCK.”

  The word ripped out of him and echoed, thin and ugly, bouncing off iron and stone and disappearing into other cages where no one answered.

  Then the door opened.

  Boots.

  Riven’s head snapped up.

  They came dragging something between them.

  Not walking.

  Dragging.

  Kael.

  For half a second, Riven’s mind refused to connect the shape to the name. The body was wrong. Limp in a way living things weren’t supposed to be. Arms hanging loose, head lolling forward, hair matted dark with sweat and blood.

  “No,” Riven whispered.

  The enforcers didn’t slow.

  They reached Kael’s cage and unceremoniously unhooked him, letting his body hit the stone floor with a wet, hollow sound that punched the air out of Riven’s lungs.

  Kael didn’t move.

  “KAEL!” Riven screamed, scrambling to the bars, fingers white-knuckled around rusted iron. “Kael! Hey—hey, are you there? Kael, answer me!”

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  Nothing.

  Kael lay twisted on his side, one arm bent wrong beneath him, chest frighteningly still.

  “Dammit—dammit, KAEL!”

  Riven rattled the bars hard enough that his shoulders screamed. “Hey! HEY! You didn’t kill him, did you? You didn’t—”

  One of the enforcers laughed.

  A real laugh. Easy. Amused.

  “Don’t worry, kid,” he said over his shoulder as they turned away. “If he’s dead, that’s your problem now.”

  The door slammed.

  Silence rushed back in like a held breath released.

  Riven slid down the bars until his knees hit the floor.

  “No,” he whispered again, voice breaking. “No, no, no… you can’t be dead.”

  The dungeon felt wrong.

  The air pressed heavier, like a storm building underground. Something moved through the cages—not wind, not sound. A pressure. A presence that crawled over his skin and made the hairs on his arms stand up.

  Riven barely noticed.

  “You promised,” he said hoarsely, staring at Kael’s unmoving body. “You promised we’d leave together.”

  His throat burned.

  “You promised, Kael.”

  The pressure swelled.

  Riven slammed his forehead into the bars.

  Once.

  Pain bloomed sharp and immediate, stars bursting across his vision.

  Again.

  Blood smeared the iron.

  Again.

  His teeth bared in a feral snarl as he drew back—

  —and froze.

  His forehead hovered inches from the bars.

  Breath heaving.

  Something… shifted.

  Not outside.

  Inside.

  Riven sucked in a deep, shaking breath and held it.

  The world didn’t disappear.

  It locked.

  The screaming in his head dulled, not gone but contained, like pressure sealed behind a valve. His thoughts aligned—not hopeful, not calm, but clear.

  “Oh,” he whispered.

  His hands loosened on the bars.

  “Oh right.”

  He let the breath out slowly.

  “This was always meant to happen.”

  The pressure surged.

  This time it didn’t scatter.

  It rushed.

  It slammed into him like icy water poured down his spine, flooding every nerve at once. Riven gasped, body arching as something tore open behind his ribs—not pain, not pleasure, but release.

  His Curse Mark burned.

  Glowed.

  It wasn’t light exactly—more like the mark had remembered what it was for.

  Riven shuddered violently, teeth chattering as the energy tore through him, cold and sharp and perfect in its cruelty. His hands clenched instinctively, stone cracking faintly beneath his fingers.

  The dungeon seemed to pause.

  A single heartbeat.

  The pressure of the world noticed.

  “Point… Rupture,” Riven whispered, the name surfacing fully formed, undeniable.

  The air around him distorted for a breath.

  Then his legs gave out.

  Riven collapsed forward, consciousness tearing away as his skull hit the stone floor with a dull crack.

  Silence rushed back in.

  For a moment, nothing moved.

  Then—

  Kael’s fingers twitched.

  Just once.

  Barely enough to see.

  As Riven lay unconscious on the floor, blood drying on his brow, Kael’s chest shuddered.

  And he drew a breath.

  The dungeon did not notice that part.

  Not yet.