The safe house was a hole in the wall—literally. A cave system in the cliffs overlooking the Iron Coast, concealed behind a waterfall that made conversation impossible and detection unlikely. Riven had claimed it three days after the Thornback massacre, needing distance from Greyhaven and its inevitable Covenant response.
Now he sat on the stone floor, shirtless, examining the black veins crawling across his torso like cracks in porcelain.
They'd spread since the convoy. What had been confined to his arms now branched across his chest, creeping toward his heart in thin, dark tributaries. He traced one with his finger, felt the void pulsing beneath his skin. Not painful, exactly. More like pressure. Like something trying to get out.
Or trying to get in deeper.
His reflection in a pool of collected rainwater showed eyes gone completely black—no whites, no irises, just liquid shadow that occasionally rippled like disturbed water. His face was leaner than it had been even a week ago. Sharper. The void didn't just corrupt, it consumed. Burned through everything unnecessary until only purpose remained.
How long before there was nothing left to burn?
Riven pulled his shirt back on, wincing as fabric scraped against sensitized skin. The void-corruption made everything feel wrong lately—textures too rough, temperatures too extreme, his own heartbeat too loud in the silence.
He moved to the cave's main chamber where he'd spread out his materials. Davos's ledger lay open, its cipher partially decoded. Three days of work had revealed a network of operations spanning half the continent. Shipping routes. Payment schedules. Names of Covenant operatives embedded in legitimate businesses.
A roadmap to the empire's foundations.
Riven had marked seventeen potential targets in red ink. Merchants, officials, enforcers—all cogs in The Covenant's machine. All complicit in the suffering that fed the Ten Pillars' power.
All going to die.
But which one next? The slavers operating out of the Heartlands? The blood-sport organizer in the Ashen Plains? The alchemist supplying the poison that kept arena fighters compliant?
Too many choices. Too many threads to pull.
His hand moved to the wooden horse in his coat pocket—Lyra's horse, worn smooth by twenty years of desperate clutching. The familiar weight of it usually grounded him, reminded him why he was doing this.
Tonight it just felt like carrying a corpse.
Riven set it on the stone beside the ledger and stared at both. Evidence of what he'd lost. Evidence of what he'd become.
Is this what you wanted? he asked the wooden horse silently. Me turning into a monster to avenge you?
The horse offered no answers. The dead never did.
His mind drifted, unbidden, to another ghost. One still breathing, presumably. Still walking the frozen halls of Northern Ember's stronghold with that controlled grace that made combat look like dancing.
Iskra.
He hadn't thought about her in weeks. Had trained himself not to, because thinking about her made everything complicated in ways the void couldn't simplify.
But tonight, alone in the dark with corruption eating him alive, the memories came anyway.
She'd been the first person to speak to him at Northern Ember. Not with cruelty or pity, but with frank assessment.
"You're too angry," she'd said, watching him demolish a training dummy with more force than technique. "Anger makes you sloppy. Makes you predictable."
Riven had been fifteen, three years into his exile in the Void Marches, still raw from the massacre. "Anger keeps me alive."
"No. Skill keeps you alive. Anger just makes you feel like living matters." She'd stepped into the training circle, twin blades appearing in her hands like extensions of her body. "Let me show you the difference."
She'd beaten him in thirty seconds. Hadn't even seemed to try.
That was the beginning.
Over the next five years, she taught him everything the Shadowveil hadn't. Ice-enhanced strikes that turned sweat into frost weapons. Pressure-point techniques that stopped hearts without breaking skin. The art of killing so efficiently that targets died before fear could register.
But more than that, she'd taught him how to exist in the numbness. How to function when grief had carved out everything soft and left only edges.
"The void takes," she'd said once, after a particularly brutal training session. "It takes and takes until you're hollow. But hollow doesn't mean empty. You can fill the space with purpose. Make the absence mean something."
Riven had been twenty then, his void-corruption already visible, his humanity already slipping. "What if there's nothing left to fill it with?"
Iskra had looked at him with those ice-blue eyes that never seemed to blink. "Then you become a weapon. And weapons don't need to feel to be effective."
He'd wanted to tell her she was wrong. That she was more than a weapon. That when she smiled—rare as winter roses—it made the Northern Ember's frozen halls feel almost warm.
He'd wanted to tell her that she made him remember what it felt like to be human. To want something beyond revenge.
He never did.
Because wanting things was how you got hurt. And he'd already been hurt enough for ten lifetimes.
The memory faded, leaving Riven alone in the cave with only the waterfall's roar for company.
He wondered if Iskra ever thought about him. Wondered if she'd heard about Eclipse's return to civilization, about the bodies piling up in his wake.
Wondered if she cared.
Probably not. Northern Ember didn't do sentiment. You were useful or you weren't. He'd left, which meant he'd chosen his path.
She'd chosen hers.
That's how it worked.
Riven forced his attention back to the ledger. Sentiment was a luxury. Iskra was the past. The Covenant was the present.
His finger traced down the list of targets, stopped on a name that made his jaw tighten.
Marcus Vey - Overseer, Western Blood-Pits. Direct report to Pillar Morghul.
The same Morghul who'd sent the orc enforcer to threaten Davos. The same Pillar who ran the slave trade. Who turned children into fighters and entertainment.
Marcus Vey was his liaison in the western territories. Organized the matches. Collected the profits. Made sure the supply of fresh meat never ran dry.
And according to the ledger, he'd be in Blackwater Port in four days for a "procurement meeting."
Riven smiled. It felt wrong on his face, like always. A predator's expression wearing human skin.
Four days. Enough time to plan. To prepare. To—
A sound at the cave entrance. Barely audible over the waterfall, but his void-enhanced senses caught it. Footsteps. Light. Confident.
His hand found his blade.
"Easy, Eclipse." Sylus's voice carried through the water's roar. "I'm alone. And I brought wine."
She emerged the waterfall, somehow managing to look elegant despite being soaked. In one hand she carried a bottle, in the other a sealed letter.
"How did you find me?" Riven asked, not lowering the blade.
"I'm an information broker. Finding people is literally my profession." She set the bottle down, shook water from her white hair. "Also, you're not exactly subtle. Half of Greyhaven saw you leave. The other half is spreading rumors about the shadow-demon who slaughtered the Emerald Serpent's guards."
"I was careful."
"You were efficient. There's a difference." Sylus studied him, mercury eyes picking apart details. "You look worse than you did a week ago. The corruption's accelerating."
"I'm fine."
"You're dying. Slowly, but measurably." She sat uninvited, produced two cups from somewhere in her coat. "How long do you have? Year? Two?"
Riven was quiet for a moment. "Six months. Maybe eight if I'm lucky."
"And you're still planning to take down the Ten Pillars in that time?"
"I don't need long. Just need to hurt them badly enough that the empire collapses when I'm gone."
Sylus poured wine into both cups, pushed one toward him. "That's either the most optimistic or most delusional plan I've ever heard. I haven't decided which."
"You didn't come here to critique my timeline." Riven took the cup but didn't drink. "What do you want?"
She held up the sealed letter. "This arrived through my network two hours ago. Covenant dispatch, intercepted before it reached its destination." She broke the seal, unfolded the paper. "Want to know what it says?"
"Tell me."
"The Covenant is offering ten thousand gold for Eclipse. Dead or alive, though they prefer alive. They want to make an example." She scanned further down. "They're pulling in specialists. The Flayer—that charming individual the orc mentioned—is already en route. Along with someone called the Weeping Blade and a tracker known only as Hound."
Riven felt nothing. The void had taken fear months ago. "Names don't scare me."
"They should. These aren't street thugs or mercenaries. These are the Pillars' personal killers. The ones they unleash when normal enforcement fails." Sylus's expression was serious. "The Flayer specializes in pain. Breaking people piece by piece until they beg for death. The Weeping Blade is an artist with poison—they say her victims cry blood before they die. And Hound... Hound doesn't stop. Ever. Once he has your scent, he'll track you to the edge of the world."
"Let them come."
"You're not listening." Sylus leaned forward. "This isn't about pride or courage. This is about mathematics. You're one man, corrupted and dying, against an organization with infinite resources and no moral constraints. The smart play is to run. Disappear into the Void Marches. Live whatever time you have left in peace."
"Peace?" Riven's laugh was harsh. "I watched my family get butchered while I hid like a coward. Spent twenty years turning myself into a monster so I could come back and make it mean something. You think I want peace?"
"I think you want death. And you're about to get it, just not on your terms." She stood, moved to leave, then paused. "The children are safe, by the way. In case you were wondering. All twenty-three. Even gave the smallest one a name."
"Good."
"Is it?" Sylus turned back. "You saved them, Eclipse. Risked everything to pull them out of those wagons when you could have just killed the guards and walked away. That's not monster behavior. That's human behavior."
"I'm not human anymore."
"Maybe. But some part of you is still trying to be." She headed for the waterfall exit. "Four days until Marcus Vey arrives in Blackwater Port. I assume that's your next target?"
Riven didn't answer. Didn't need to.
"Thought so. For what it's worth, Vey deserves it. Everything you're planning to do to him." She paused at the threshold. "Just don't get killed before you finish. I've got money riding on you making it to at least three Pillars."
Then she was gone, disappearing into the water and mist.
Riven sat alone again. Looked at the ledger. At the wooden horse. At his reflection in the wine cup—black eyes staring back from a face he barely recognized.
Six months. Maybe eight.
Ten Pillars to topple.
Three hunters coming for his head.
And somewhere in the frozen north, a woman with ice-blue eyes who'd taught him how to turn emptiness into purpose.
Riven picked up the wooden horse, tucked it back into his pocket where it belonged.
Then he began planning Marcus Vey's death.
The Covenant wanted to make an example?
Fine.
He'd make one first.