The shard grew heavier the longer Riven carried it.
By the time they stumbled across shelter, Riven could barely stand upright.
The world blurred at the edges, colors dulling to a washed-out gray. His breathing slowed into shallow gasps, each one scattering his thoughts.
"Riven," Veyla said sharply, grabbing his arm. Her hand felt distant. "You're burning up."
He shook her off with a faint smile. "It's alright, don't sweat it," he said, pulling away from her. But he knew it wasn't. He was feeling sick, and he didn't know why.
They continued walking, ducking below a pillar into the ruins of an old shrine—a circle of broken stones half-swallowed by the earth. Crumbled pillars leaned inward, as if bowing toward the empty altar at the center.
The air was thick with the scent of dust and something sweet, sickly sweet, like rotten blossoms left too long in the sun.
Above them, the sky stretched on, endless and colorless. A place where even the stars had forgotten to burn brightly.
Riven staggered forward and dropped to one knee at the center of the shrine. The rune on his arm pulsed steadily.
The Shard of Sorrow, though wrapped in the cloth, released faint ribbons of grief into the air, weaving through the shrine like invisible smoke.
"I think it's time to bind it," he muttered slowly, as if tired.
He pulled out the cloth from his pouch and loosened it. The shard rose on its own, lifting into the air with a quiet hum, hovering inches above his open palm.
Veyla stayed behind him, her hand unconsciously drifting toward the hilt of her blade, but she didn't intervene—just watched him.
"Be careful," she muttered.
Riven placed his free hand over his arm, his fingers trailing across the rune as he remembered the beast's words:
"Bind the shard and forge your name."
He didn't fully understand how he would do it, and he doubted it would actually work, but he did it anyway.
With a deep breath, Riven pressed the shard to his arm, and the instant it touched the rune, the world exploded.
Light devoured him—white and absolute. Heat surged through his body, searing his muscle and marrow alike.
"Shit!" he groaned.
He tried to scream, but something ripped the air from his lungs. There was only pressure and pain.
The rune writhed, the spiral at its core twisting open like a mouth stretched too wide. The gaping mark devoured the shard, sucking it in; Each line of the rune snapped into new patterns, burning brighter than before.
The wind blew heavily as visions flooded into his mind. He held his head out of pain.
Ash falling in the distance like endless snow. An army of knights ablaze under a shattered sun.
A throne built from weeping stone, cracked with streams of black blood—and a face... a woman's face, soft and smiling.
Tears streaming down her cheeks.
"Mother?" he gasped in shock. He reached out desperately, his hands clawing at the fading image.
"Mother! Mother! Please don't go!" he screamed.
But it slipped from his grasp, burning away like paper touched by flame—gone.
Something inside him split in two, and the rune sealed shut once more.
He collapsed forward, his hands slamming into the cold, muddy ground as tears streamed down his face.
His heart thundered in his chest, deafening. His skin steamed as faint trails of heat rose into the cold air.
Every muscle in his body screamed in protest, twitching with leftover pain from the memory.
Veyla was at his side in an instant, gripping his shoulder tight.
"Riven, talk to me! Say something!" she barked.
He coughed continuously, harshly, and dry. Each breath like a knife through his ribs.
He slowly pushed himself back onto his heels.
"I'm fine," he said, in between coughs.
Immediately, he felt the absence of something—a hollow space carved into him, so deep that it could never be filled.
He couldn't remember her face anymore, but he knew she had existed once before—knew she had once mattered to him more than anything.
But her features, her laughter, her soft warmth... it was all gone, as if she were never there.
"No!" he shouted, tears streaming down his face as he curled his hands into fists, nails biting into scarred palms.
The price had been paid already, and there was no going back.
On his arm, the rune had changed. New lines slashed across it, sharp and deep. At the center, the spiral twisted tighter than before, coiling inward, encasing something fragile and faintly pulsing.
He could feel it now, an additional weight in the rune. It felt hungrier—but not for remnants, for grief.
The word unfurled in his mind as if it had always been there. He didn't know what it was yet.
But he felt it, woven into him now. His strength felt sharpened, his focus stripped clean of doubt, and a coldness that hadn't been there before.
Veyla's gaze never left him. She knelt at a cautious distance, wary and waiting for him to recover.
"What happened?" she asked, her voice filled with relief.
"A piece of me," he responded, his face still devoid of emotion.
"What did it take?" she asked quietly. But he took a while to answer.
He forced himself to meet her eyes that glittered with something sad.
"A memory. A precious memory of someone dear to me," he whispered.
Her expression softened, her hands lowering from her weapon. She didn't ask whose—probably because she understood what he meant.
They sat there for a long moment in silence, the shrine walls casting jagged shadows under the failing light.
Later, after they built a small fire from broken branches and the shrine had faded to little more than shapes in the gloom, Riven sat apart, staring at his hands.
He flexed his hands slowly, studying the way the light caught the grime under his nails, the way the scars stretched along the backs of his knuckles.
Nothing seemed to have changed. Yet each breath he drew pulled more than air into his lungs. He could feel it now—a soft emotion: grief, seeping from the very stones around him, drifting from the ashes, the broken earth, even from Veyla's quiet breathing where she sat, half-dozing near the fire.
It was everywhere around him, like it was new—or he just hadn't been able to feel it before.
The sorrow responded like a living thing, threads of sadness coiling toward him, wrapping around his spirit.
It slid into him in slow, steady streams, filling the hollow spaces left by the memory he had lost.
And with it came strength—not the wild, brutal strength he had known before.
It felt colder and more controlled than that — a weapon honed from grief. It sounded absurd.
Riven closed his eyes for a moment, letting the sensation roll through him.
"There would be more bindings. There would be more shards. And more memories will be lost," he muttered sadly. This was just the beginning.
Tomorrow, they would move again, hunt again, and fight again. But tonight, in the ruins of a forgotten shrine under a colorless sky, Riven sat with his sorrow, shaping it into something new.
"I will ensure these memories don't get lost in vain," he promised, squeezing his fists tightly.