White fire swallowed the cistern.
It was not heat.
It was memory.
The boy felt himself torn apart and reassembled a thousand times in the space between one heartbeat and the next. Every scar he had ever earned, every hunger pang, every night spent curled against the cold—flayed open, examined, and stitched back together with threads of stormlight.
When the light faded, he was no longer knee-deep in filth.
He stood barefoot on a plain of black glass that stretched to every horizon, reflecting a sky torn open by violet lightning. The eclipse above was no longer a distant wound; it was a titan's eye, lidless and furious, corona writhing like living flame.
And the storm-giant stood before him.
Real.
Solid.
Taller than any man had a right to be, barefoot on the glass, skin scarred by centuries of lightning kisses. Wild gray hair moved in a wind the boy could not feel. Chains of white fire—real chains, thick as his arm—hung from the giant's wrists, trailing across the glass and vanishing into cracks that bled stormlight.
The giant crouched, bringing storm-white eyes level with the boy's.
"Name's Riven," he said, voice low thunder wrapped in a grin. "And you, Little Storm, just pulled me out of a grave older than mountains."
The boy's throat worked. No sound came. He had forgotten words existed.
Riven's grin widened, sharp and fond. "Cat got your tongue? Fair. Most lose more than that the first time."
He straightened, rolling shoulders that could have carried the sky. The chains clinked softly, musical and mournful.
"Welcome to the First Trial. We call it the Crucible of Broken Thrones. Rules are simple: one of us sits on the throne at the far end. The other becomes the chain. Forever."
He gestured.
Far across the plain, a throne rose from the glass—black iron, squat and ancient, radiating pressure that made the boy's knees buckle even from here. Lightning crawled over its surface like restless spiders.
Riven watched him carefully.
"Most Eclipse Children who find the dagger choose to sit. Power. Safety. A god on a leash." His lip curled. "They all break eventually. The throne doesn't like sharing."
The boy stared at the throne. Then at the chains on Riven's wrists.
His voice came back cracked and small. "And if I refuse?"
Riven's eyes softened, just a fraction.
"Then we do something no one has done in ten thousand years." He extended one massive hand, palm open, chains dangling like an offering. "We break the storm's oldest law. Together."
The boy looked at the hand.
At the chains.
At the throne waiting in the distance like a hungry mouth.
He took one trembling step forward.
Riven's grin returned, fierce and bright as sunrise.
"That's my boy."
The trial began.
They walked.
The plain was not empty. Shapes moved beneath the glass—ghosts of previous challengers, faces pressed against the underside, mouths open in eternal screams. Some wore crowns. Some wore rags. All reached upward, fingers scraping uselessly.
Riven paid them no mind.
"Every Eclipse," he said as they walked, "the Hollowing wakes one child. One dagger finds its way to bleeding fingers. One soul gets the choice: become the new jailer, or stay the prisoner."
His chains dragged behind him, carving glowing scars in the glass.
"I was the first prisoner. Fought the gods themselves when they tried to leash the storms. Lost. Got chained to this place instead. Been fighting echoes of myself ever since."
He glanced down.
"You're the first in ten millennia who didn't run straight for the throne."
The boy swallowed. "I don't… I don't want to be anyone's master."
Riven laughed—real laughter, warm and startled and proud.
"Good. Because I'm nobody's dog either."
They reached the first obstacle.
A ring of obsidian statues encircled the throne—knights in ancient armor, faces hidden behind helms carved into screaming mouths. Their swords were raised, frozen mid-swing.
Riven stopped.
"Honor Guard," he muttered. "Dead men walking. They'll wake when we cross the circle."
The boy looked up at him. "How many times have you fought them?"
Riven's grin turned feral.
"Eleven thousand, four hundred and twelve. Lost count of the exact number somewhere around the eight-thousandth death."
He cracked his neck.
"Ready, Little Storm?"
The boy tightened his grip on the dagger. It pulsed, warm and eager.
He nodded.
They crossed the circle.
The statues woke with a sound like glaciers calving.
Swords fell.
Riven moved first—faster than anything that size should, chains whipping around him like living things. He caught the first blade on his forearm; lightning exploded from the impact, shattering the statue into a thousand shards.
The boy ducked under a second swing, rolled, came up inside the guard's reach and drove the obsidian dagger into its knee joint. The blade sank deep, drank, and the statue screamed—a sound like tearing metal—as black glass bled from the wound.
Riven laughed over the chaos.
"That's it! Make them bleed starlight!"
They fought.
It was not elegant. It was not fair. It was two broken things refusing to kneel.
Riven took blows that would have pulped mountains, grinning through blood and cracked bone. The boy darted between legs thick as tree trunks, stabbing, slashing, screaming rage he didn't know he owned. Every wound he gave the statues bled stormlight that crawled up his arms and sank into his skin like brands.
By the time the last knight fell, the boy was painted in glowing scars, chest heaving, dagger singing in his grip.
Riven stood amidst the rubble, breathing slow, chains dimmed but unbroken.
He looked at the boy with something dangerously close to awe.
"You're still standing."
The boy looked at his hands—small, torn, glowing with stolen lightning.
"I'm still here," he whispered.
Riven's grin softened.
"Then let's finish this."
They walked the final distance to the throne.
Up close it was worse. The iron radiated cold that burned, pressure that crushed hope. Faces were carved into its surface—every Eclipse Child who had sat before, mouths open in silent agony.
Riven stopped at the edge of the dais.
"Last chance, Little Storm. Sit, and I become your weapon. Refuse, and we both risk everything."
The boy stared at the throne.
At the chains on Riven's wrists.
At the eclipse burning above them like judgment.
He took one step forward.
Then another.
Riven tensed.
The boy walked past the throne.
He placed one small, blood-slick hand on Riven's chest—right over the heart where lightning crawled beneath skin.
And pushed.
Not hard. Just enough.
Riven's eyes widened.
The chains flared white-hot.
For one eternal heartbeat the crucible held its breath.
Then the boy spoke—the first full sentence he had managed since the world ended.
"I won't be your master. And you won't be my slave."
He shoved with everything he had left.
The chains shattered.
White fire exploded outward, tearing across the plain, shattering the glass into a storm of glittering shards. The throne screamed—a sound of gods betrayed—and cracked down the middle.
Riven roared, not in pain but in triumph, as lightning poured from his breaking chains into the boy's palms, into his chest, into the hollow place where a name should have been.
The boy fell to his knees, fire flooding his veins, burning away the emptiness.
Riven dropped beside him, one hand on the boy's shoulder, steadying him through the storm.
When the light faded, the throne was dust.
The chains were gone.
Riven helped the boy stand.
"You need a name, Little Storm," he said softly. "Can't keep calling you 'boy' when you just broke the storm's oldest law with me."
The boy opened his mouth. Nothing came. He had never been given a real name. "Wretch" was an insult, not an identity.
Riven studied him: the blood, the defiance, the silence that survived everything.
Then he placed one massive hand over the boy's heart, right on the newly branded sigil, and spoke the word like a baptism:
"From this breath forward, you are Kael.
It means 'the fracture that lets the storm in.'
Old tongue. My tongue.
Fits you better than any crown ever could."
The moment the name was spoken, the sigil flared white-hot.
Thunder rolled inside Kael's bones, as though the storm itself approved.
Kael.
It tasted like the first clean breath after drowning.
The crucible dissolved.
Kael fell through white fire and memory and storm.
When he opened his eyes again, he was back in the cistern.
The obsidian dagger lay cold and inert in his lap.
But branded over his heart, warm and steady, the broken-circle sigil pulsed once—like a promise kept.
And somewhere in the dark, thunder laughed.