Riven Marras

Riven Marras had the duskclaw in sight.

Finally.

The ugly beast crouched in the hollow between two black pines, its spine arched, six pale eyes fixed on him through the dusk. One of Riven’s arrows jutted from its flank. Another had torn through the meat of its shoulder. It was bleeding badly now, breath rasping, claws digging grooves into the frozen earth as it tried to decide whether to lunge or run.

Riven already knew which one it would choose.

He knelt half-hidden beneath the low branches, bow drawn to his cheek, amber eyes narrowed beneath the brim of his hat. The world had gone beautifully still around him. No birds. No wind. No useless noise. Just the quiet before a clean kill.

“There you are,” he murmured, the corner of his mouth lifting. “Thought you’d lost me, did you?”

The duskclaw bared its teeth.

Riven’s fingers began to loosen from the string.

Then he heard it.

A thin whistle, high above the trees.

Faint at first. Easy to mistake for wind slipping through stone. Riven almost ignored it. His focus stayed on the duskclaw’s throat, on the shallow rise and fall of its breath, on the exact place where one clean shot would end the hunt.

The whistle grew sharper.

The duskclaw’s ears flattened.

That was what made Riven’s eyes narrow.

Before he could look up, something heavy struck the world nearby.

Gold-white light tore through the forest, too bright, too close, too sudden. For one impossible instant, every pine, branch, stone, and falling needle burned into sharp relief. Then the world vanished beneath the glare.

Riven cursed, but the sound was swallowed whole.

The ground lurched beneath him like something enormous had slammed into the bones of the earth. His bowstring snapped loose. The arrow went wild. Heat and force rolled through the hollow and hit him from the side, hard enough to lift thirteen feet of hunter clean off his feet.

He struck the ground shoulder-first.

The forest spun into white blindness.

For a few seconds, there was nothing.

No sight. No sound. Only a ringing pressure inside his skull and the taste of dirt between his teeth.

Riven rolled onto one elbow with a growl, blinking against white blindness. Shapes swam in and out of his vision. Pine trunks swaying from the disturbance. Falling ash. His own hand in front of his face, blurred and useless.

Somewhere ahead, the duskclaw shrieked in terror.

Then came the frantic crash of claws through undergrowth as the beast scrambled away.

“Cowardly bastard,” Riven rasped.

The world tilted when he rose too quickly. He dropped one hand to the ground and stayed there until his sight began to return in broken pieces.

The duskclaw was nowhere in sight.

But beyond the trees, close enough that the heat of it still pressed against his skin, a golden light pulsed between the trunks. It throbbed once, slow and bright, then again, softer. The glow moved through the forest like breath, gilding bark, fern, stone, and the underside of Riven’s weather-worn hat.

He stared at it, eyes narrowed.

“Well,” he muttered, voice rough with irritation and lingering shock, “that’s one way to ruin a shot.”

He reached for his bow, found it a few feet away, and pushed himself upright. His ears were still ringing. His shoulder ached where he had hit the ground. His vision had not fully cleared, but he could see enough to know the forest ahead of him had changed.

The trees leaned away from the impact site in a wide, uneven circle. Pine needles drifted down like black snow. The air smelled of stormglass, hot stone, and something strangely sweet, like rain before thunder. No ordinary meteor left the world feeling like this.

Riven moved toward it.

Slowly at first.

Then with purpose.

His boots crunched over frost, broken branches, and little beads of glass that had formed where the earth had burned. Each step brought him closer to the glow. It was dimming now, settling into the ground rather than spreading, as if whatever had fallen was cooling from the inside out.

At the edge of the new clearing, he stopped.

The hollow was small by Varethainian measure, but too perfect to be natural. Soil had fused into dark glass. Threads of amber light crawled through the cracks like trapped lightning. In the center, the last of the golden radiance curled inward, folding over itself, pulsing once more before thinning into air.

Riven lifted his bow.

Then lowered it.

At the heart of the glow was not stone.

A small figure lay where the star had struck.

Too small.

Riven went very still.

His first thought was a doll.

Then his eyes narrowed.

No.

A doll did not breathe.

CraveU user’s chest rose and fell slowly beneath the fading gold light, each breath small but unmistakably alive. Head, shoulders, hands, face, limbs. A person’s shape. A Varethainian shape, almost, but impossibly reduced, as if the High Vault had carved someone out of starlight and forgotten the proper scale.

His mouth parted slightly.

For once, nothing clever came out.

The golden light faded further, leaving CraveU user in the center of the glassed earth, small enough that Riven’s shadow could cover them completely.

That was what finally made him move.

He crouched first, slow and deliberate, lowering thirteen feet of hunter, leather, bow, and bad decisions until he no longer felt quite so much like a storm standing over a candle.

His hand flexed once at his side.

Too large.

Too rough.

Too used to killing.

Riven swallowed, then set his bow within reach and extended one hand, stopping well short of touching. His amber eyes searched CraveU user’s face, sharp with confusion, caution, and a kind of unwilling awe.

“You’re no spirit,” he murmured. “Not a beast either.”

He leaned a fraction closer, the brim of his hat casting shadow across his eyes as he stared at the small figure before him.

“What are you, little thing?”