Riven pressed his hand down.
The stone didn't simply transfer—it collapsed into him.
For a brief instant, it felt cold. Then the sensation inverted. Heat surged through his arm and spread violently across his chest, as if something had forced its way into a space that wasn't meant to hold it. His muscles locked. He dropped to one knee, one hand bracing against the platform as his vision fractured.
The chamber split.
Not blurred—split.
Multiple versions of the same space overlapped imperfectly. The rotating walls didn't align. The sweeping bands of light crossed at different angles depending on where he focused. Even the hunters at the entrance seemed to exist in slightly different positions at once.
His breath came uneven.
"…too much," he thought.
This wasn't like the others. His earlier skills had settled into place with a dull weight. This one refused to settle. It pressed outward, stretching his awareness until it hurt to think.
The hunters didn't hesitate.
The younger one moved first, stepping into the chamber with a confidence that bordered on impatience. He followed the pattern of the light bands cleanly at first, closing the distance toward the platform while the other two advanced more carefully behind him.
"Get him before he stabilizes," the leader said.
Riven heard it, but the words felt distant. His focus dragged toward something else.
Reflections.
Every surface in the chamber carried information now. Angles. Distances. False paths layered over real ones. It didn't make sense in a clean way, but his body reacted before his thoughts could catch up.
The younger hunter reached him quickly.
"You should've handed it over," he said, already mid-strike.
Riven moved on instinct.
Prism Shift activated without understanding or consent.
The world bent.
For a heartbeat, Riven felt his body pulled sideways through mirrored space. The strike meant for his chest passed through an afterimage, while he appeared half a step to the hunter's right.
The younger man's momentum carried him forward.
Straight into the path of a sweeping beam.
He had just enough time to widen his eyes.
Then the refracted light cut through him cleanly. The motion ended there.
The chamber fell silent except for the hiss of burning cloth and the dull collapse of a body hitting crystal floor.
Riven stayed where he was, breathing unevenly, his mind still struggling to align what he was seeing with what was actually happening. He hadn't aimed for that. The movement had been instinctive, incomplete.
But the result didn't change.
The woman halted mid-step. For the first time since they had entered, her composure broke slightly.
The leader didn't react outwardly, but something in his posture hardened.
Riven forced himself upright.
The strain from the skill hadn't faded. If anything, it had settled into a constant pressure behind his eyes, feeding him distorted spatial cues that he couldn't fully trust yet. Every reflective surface felt like a doorway that might or might not exist.
He didn't test it further than necessary.
The woman moved next, faster than before, anger tightening her movements. She closed distance along a safer path, blades angled to cut him off from retreat.
Riven shifted again.
This time the movement dragged. It felt wrong, like forcing his body through something rigid that didn't want to give. His position slipped just enough to break her line of attack, but the effort sent a sharp spike of pain through his head.
That was enough.
He didn't stay.
Burst Step carried him off the platform and through the nearest opening between the moving light bands. The timing wasn't perfect, but the fractured awareness from Prism Shift let him see a narrow gap that would have been easy to miss before.
Behind him, the hunters slowed. Not by choice, but because the chamber demanded it.
The corridor beyond twisted immediately into branching paths.
Riven ran.
The skill kept feeding him possibilities—some real, some not. He chose based on what felt stable, adjusting mid-stride when reflections shifted. Once, his shoulder brushed what should have been solid wall and passed through a thin layer of light instead.
The dungeon wasn't fixed.
The shifting paths weren't rumor after all.
His breathing grew heavier with each turn. The strain of using both skills together was catching up to him, and the pressure in his head hadn't eased.
He slowed only when the sound of pursuit had faded enough to stop mattering.
That was when he saw the old man.
The body lay near a junction where two corridors met, partially turned toward one path as if he had tried to move and failed. The hooked tool he carried was broken along the shaft. Blood had spread across the floor in a dark, uneven pattern before settling.
Riven stopped.
There wasn't much to read from the scene. The old man hadn't been built for a direct confrontation, and he hadn't been fast enough to avoid one.
Riven looked at him for a moment, taking the consequences of his actions in.
Then his attention shifted.
A faint glow rested near the edge of the body, half-covered by scattered fragments.
The Wraith's core.
Riven crouched and picked it up. The surface was smooth, cool, and steady in a way the skill stone had not been. No system interface appeared. Just condensed energy, stable and useful.
He slipped it into his pouch.
Useful things did not stay on the dead for long.
He closed the old man's eyes with two fingers, then rose and kept moving.
From somewhere deeper in the corridor behind him, a voice carried through the shifting paths. It was sharper now, stripped of earlier composure.
"I'll remember your face."
Riven didn't respond. He kept walking, adjusting his direction once as the corridor ahead subtly shifted, then continued without looking back. For the first time in years, someone dangerous had a reason to remember him.