The Glitched Mage

The third trial did not begin with flame.

It began with breath.

A slow inhale. Not Riven's—but the world's. The chamber around him folded inward, light vanishing as if drawn into a single point. The stone floor rippled. The walls peeled away in layers of heat and smoke, and the spiral above him collapsed into a burning eye.

Then—

A blink.

And Riven stood in Emberwatch again.

But not the broken ruin he had entered with Nyx and Krux. This Emberwatch breathed. It lived. The air shimmered not from residual heat but from life—dense, pulsing, present.

Structures rose around him—towers of volcanic glass and obsidian stone veined with glowing runes. Banners stitched with flame-thread snapped on poles, their crests unrecognizable but beautiful: curling fire motifs surrounded by jagged glyphs. The sky overhead was orange, not from sunset, but from smoke—thick with the breath of burning incense and distant chants.

He wasn't alone.

Crowds moved in the streets—silent, barefoot, heads bowed. Every person he saw wore a robe dyed deep ember-red, shoulders marked with a symbol that burned faintly beneath the cloth: a stylized flame surrounding a single, unblinking eye.

Riven's pulse quickened.

This wasn't memory. It was something deeper. A reconstruction of the past—not from his own mind, but from the world's. He'd stepped backward into a living moment. One shaped by the ancient fire cult that had once ruled this place.

And he was one of them.

He looked down and found his hands gloved in thin, ash-colored wraps. His robe matched the others, though the cloth shimmered faintly where it touched his skin—as if resisting him. A braided cord hung around his neck, knotted three times in the pattern of an initiate.

He tried to move—to speak—but his body ignored the command.

His limbs walked without him, slow and reverent, following a narrow procession down the blackstone path. He moved as part of a group—five others in identical garb, their faces half-hidden beneath ceremonial hoods. None of them spoke. They didn't need to.

They were being led.

Ahead, beyond a great obsidian gate etched with burning runes, rose the Sanctum Flame. A courtyard wide enough to hold hundreds of people, centered around an immense firepit carved into the earth itself. Flames leapt high from the pit—not orange, not red, but gold-white, roaring without smoke.

And around that fire… they waited.

Dozens. No, more. Hundreds of robed figures, kneeling in concentric rings around the bonfire. High-wrought columns rose around the courtyard's edges, each wrapped in burning sigils. Long ceremonial banners hung from above, inked with fire-script and edged with bone.

Riven's body knelt of its own accord.

A voice echoed through the space—low, sonorous, and ancient. It came from the far side of the flame, where a single figure stood elevated upon a dais. The cult leader.

Their robes were darker than the rest—coal-black with gold embroidery. Their face was hidden behind a helm of hammered bronze shaped like a burning sun. When they spoke, the fire responded—rising and falling with each word as if bound to breath.

"You come here not as believers," the voice said, deep and resonant. "You come as ash."

The fire surged behind them.

"You do not beg for flame. You do not command it. You offer yourself to it."

Another surge of heat washed over the kneeling crowd.

"If you would rise as one of us… then you must first burn."

Riven's vision blurred as his head bowed. The flame ahead was no longer distant. It was in him—beneath his skin, behind his eyes, pulsing with a strange, terrible pressure. Something ancient stirred in the marrow of his bones. His heart beat harder. His breath came faster.

A row of attendants stepped forward from the fire's edge. They carried blackstone bowls—each filled with thick, molten liquid that shimmered with heat. Lava. No—it smelled richer. Thicker. Like blood mixed with brimstone.

The first bowl was handed to the initiate beside him.

Then another.

Then Riven's hands moved—unbidden—and took the third.

The heat from the bowl burned straight through the wrap of his gloves, but he did not cry out. He didn't flinch.

He couldn't.

The cult leader raised a single hand.

"The Flame does not punish," they intoned. "It reveals."

They lowered their hand.

"Drink."

And Riven's body obeyed.

The cup rose to his lips.

The heat kissed his tongue—and then scalded straight through. The molten fluid slid down his throat, burning through muscle, nerve, bone, soul.

It was like swallowing a star.

Riven screamed—but the sound never left his mouth. It echoed only within, stretching wide through memory and thought.

His body convulsed and the world fell away again.

—x—

Fire surrounded him and infiltrated him, it felt as if he couldn't tell where his body ended and the fire began.

The molten drink poured through his veins, seeking every shadow, every scar, every inch of hesitation buried deep in his spirit. It found the old guilt—the boy locked in the manor bedroom, the hatred he held for his father, the years spent hollow with pain. It burned through his resentment, his fury, his thirst for vengeance.

It found the part of him that feared the future.

And it ignited it.

He thrashed.

But not outwardly. Not in body, but In memory.

He was back in the manor, the cold air sharp against his skin as his stepmother's shadow loomed, her hand raised in silent fury. Then the scene shifted—he stood in the bakery once more, the scent of scorched bread hanging in the air as a gang of thugs entered, their eyes cold with purpose, death sanctioned by his father. Another blink, and he was at the Academy, standing across from Nyx for the first time, her gaze piercing, curious, unknowable. Then the island—thick with fog and blood. The cries of mana beasts echoed in the distance as he stared down at his own blood soaked hands.

He was in the palace again, standing at the edge of the obsidian throne room with the weight of a crown not yet placed but already felt—its presence heavy in the silence, its promise etched into the stone beneath his feet.

But then, the world fell away.

No walls. No sky. No ground.

No body. No breath. No soul.

Only fire—endless and absolute.

It did not roar or scream. It simply existed. Watching. Waiting.

In that silence, it judged. And Riven, stripped bare of shape and memory, was held in its crucible.

Until something deeper stirred.

A thread of darkness, untouched by the cult's flame. Not born of fire—but of the void beyond it.

Abyssal fire.

It rose—not in anger, but in defiance.

Where the cult's flame sought to purge, his sought to consume. Where their fire demanded surrender, his devoured everything false and hollow—claiming what endured, not rejecting it.

And slowly—inch by inch—Riven began to re-form. Not as the initiate the ritual had bound him to, but as himself. The fire that had carved through his soul no longer pressed against him with the intent to burn. Instead, it curved around him like a breath held in reverence—warm, powerful, and coiled with purpose.

It didn't crush. It didn't sear. It flowed, wrapping him in recognition, not resistance.

Riven stood within it, whole again—shoulders squared, gaze steady—his form outlined in emberlight. The flame did not recoil. It acknowledged him. It accepted him.

And in that moment, the ritual broke.

—x—

Riven found himself kneeling once more, the heat still clinging to his skin like the memory of pain. The bowl in his hands had cooled to stone, the flame before him still roaring, but no longer with the threat of consumption. It was no longer trying to break him. It had already seen what it needed to.

The other initiates around the fire had collapsed—some slumped in silence, others sprawled where they had fallen. Whether they were unconscious or lost entirely, Riven couldn't tell. Only he remained upright, chest heaving with the last of the trial's burden.

From the dais, the cult leader descended without a word. Their armored steps echoed against the cracked stone, slow and deliberate. The light of the fire danced across their helm as they stopped before him.

They did not speak. They only looked at him—for a moment that felt suspended in flame—and then they knelt.

A single motion. Head bowed low. Not in worship. In reverence.

And as if bound by the same unspoken understanding, the rest of the cult followed. Hundreds of robed figures dropped to their knees in perfect silence, their foreheads pressed to the ground, their posture not one of submission, but recognition.

He had drunk the fire.

And he had not burned.

From the heart of the bonfire, a pillar of black flame erupted skyward—a towering spire of shadow and heat that split the sky above. Within its core, not one, but three glyphs began to form—each distinct, yet bound together in motion. The first was jagged and angular, the same mark that had floated above the blazing stair. The second pulsed with steady rhythm, echoing the mirrored duel in the chamber of self. And now, the third—newborn and searing, shaped by ritual fire—joined them in orbit.

They spiraled downward through the smoke, trailing embers like falling stars. As they neared, Riven felt them not just with his mana, but with the core of his being. They weren't foreign. They were familiar. Earned.

The glyphs hovered before his chest, aligning in a perfect triad—trial, reflection, transcendence.

Then, they pressed inward. There was no burn. No flash of agony. Only weight, a final anchoring pull—as if they had always belonged there.

And then they vanished beneath his skin, drawn into him like sparks into coal, leaving no mark.

But Riven knew they remained.

—x—

The vision dissolved gradually, like smoke unraveling into the wind. Emberwatch faded around him—the towering bonfire, the chanting crowd, the circle of stone—all crumbled into ash and silence. What had once felt so real now slipped into memory, leaving only the echo of fire still pulsing beneath his skin.

When the last of it vanished, Riven found himself once more in the heart of the anchor's chamber. The stillness was immediate and complete, broken only by the low hum of mana curling through the dark stone. The air was cooler here, grounded, but his body still carried the weight of the fire. The glyph—final, steady, and unmistakable—burned softly in his chest, a mark not of punishment, but of passage.

Above him, the skybound anchor pulsed again. No longer distant or cold, it throbbed with energy that resonated through the chamber walls, through the floor beneath his boots, through the very marrow of his bones. It didn't just call to him—it welcomed him, recognized him.

He exhaled once, quietly, as if releasing the last remnants of something heavy. The trials had taken from him and reshaped him. They had tested his strength, his mind, his identity. And still, he remained.

He didn't hesitate. His eyes lifted toward the anchor, and his steps followed. There was no path laid out before him, no guide to show the way. But he knew where he was going.

Toward the anchor.

Toward the sky.

Toward the beginning of something far greater than even fire could forge.