The Glitched Mage

The air shifted around him.

As Riven stepped forward, the chamber itself seemed to breathe—walls of blackened stone rippling outward as though the very space recognized what had occurred. The anchor's pulsing grew stronger, shedding layers of veiled flame until only the purest essence of mana remained, radiating from the skybound spine embedded high above.

Each step Riven took toward the center stirred something ancient.

The floor, once smooth, cracked open with molten veins of lava, tracing pathways that spiraled outward from the base of the anchor like veins leading to a heart. The world had narrowed down to this moment, and Riven could feel it—the weight of centuries pressing against his shoulders, not as a burden, but as acknowledgment.

He had passed the trials.

He had been seen.

And now he would claim what waited.

The last steps brought him to the heart of the chamber—a vast circular platform, raised and humming with restrained power. The air here was thick, not with heat, but with mana, vibrating against his skin like a second pulse.

Above him, the sky-bound anchor loomed.

The nail itself was far larger up close than it had appeared at a distance—a colossal spine of blackened metal and bone, ridged and twisted with runes that pulsed in a slow, rhythmic glow. It wasn't just embedded into the earth. It was tethered to something beyond it, a connection that hummed with a resonance too vast for any mortal forge to shape.

The glyphs within Riven's chest stirred in response, burning gently against his skin, syncing with the anchor's beat.

Instinct, not instruction, guided him now.

He extended his hand upward—and the glyphs answered.

They shimmered into being around him, forming a triad of light that rotated slowly, aligning in the air like the arms of an ancient clock. Each rune—Trial, Reflection, Transcendence—burned with the memory of what had been endured. Each one a key.

The anchor reacted immediately.

A low, groaning sound echoed through the chamber, as though the stone itself were mourning or exalting. The massive spine began to respond, its surface shifting. The runes inscribed into its body unraveled, peeling open like layers of molten steel revealing veins of living mana beneath.

Energy flared outward.

Wind roared through the space—though there was no source—and the flames along the walls bent inward, as if bowing to the exchange.

Riven held his ground.

The glyphs moved faster now, encircling him in a dance of fire and void, until they blurred into streams of living script. With a surge of certainty, he thrust his hand forward—and the glyphs slammed into the anchor.

The effect was immediate.

The massive structure shuddered once, violently, and then began to shrink.

Not collapse. Not diminish.

Condense.

It folded in on itself, layer by burning layer, the metal and bone spiraling inward in a seamless, breathtaking motion, shrinking down from a towering colossus to something smaller. More contained. Still thrumming with impossible power—but now manageable. Now wieldable.

Riven watched, breath tight in his chest, as the anchor compressed down to the size of a blade—no larger than a short staff of twisted darksteel, runed along its entire surface with the glyphs of the trials still glowing faintly.

The final spiral of mana wound inward—and the transformation stopped.

The staff hovered in the air before him, spinning slowly, casting long, curved shadows across the obsidian platform. Heat radiated from it, but not the wild, consuming fire of before. This heat was alive. It pulsed with a rhythm that matched his own heartbeat.

The anchor had accepted him.

It had chosen him.

Riven reached out, hand steady, and grasped the staff. The moment his fingers closed around it, the world breathed again.

Mana flooded into him—raw, wild, ancient. A direct tether to the forgotten power of Emberwatch, to the skybound realms beyond even Varethun. Images flashed behind his eyes—cities suspended in the clouds, rivers of fire carved across the sky, beings made of light and darkness gazing down from thrones far beyond mortal reach.

He staggered under the weight of it, but he did not fall.

He drew the staff to his chest, and the glyphs along its surface dimmed—settling into a deep, slow pulse. Waiting.

Obedient.

The platform below him began to rise.

With a deep rumble, the floor lifted, carrying Riven upward toward the chamber's ceiling. The spiral of flame that had once burned high above began to part, separating like a storm pushed back by unseen hands. Through the opening, he glimpsed the sky—not the smog-choked skies of Emberwatch's ruins, but something older. A sky of endless dusk and pale burning clouds, heavy with the weight of memory.

The world tilted.

Not physically—but in sensation.

The chamber fell away, and Riven found himself rising alone through a shaft of brilliant light, carried upward not by stone or magic—but by will.

The glyphs on his chest warmed again, syncing with the anchor-staff's pulse, guiding his ascent.

Faster.

Higher.

The heat around him wasn't oppressive now. It was energizing, carrying him on a current that felt older than time itself. He could feel the connection anchoring itself deeper into his soul, threading through his mana heart, binding him to the object in his hand—and through it, to something greater still.

The barrier between earth and sky thinned.

And then, with a suddenness that stole the breath from his lungs, he burst through.

—x—

The night above Emberwatch stretched out before him—clear, endless, vast.

For a moment, Riven hovered above the world.

Below him, the blackened ridges of Emberwatch lay silent, wrapped in mist and starlight. The ruined kingdom of the fire cult sprawled out like a broken memory, the fires of the dead city long since gone cold.

Above him, the stars shimmered—closer now, as if leaning down to witness what had awoken.

The staff in his hand pulsed once more.

He could feel the power anchored within it—raw potential, tied to the remnants of the skybound world from which the nail had fallen so long ago. It wasn't just a weapon —It was a key.

He could build with it.

Or he could destroy.

The glyphs along the staff shifted subtly under his fingers, responding to his touch, ready to obey.

Riven closed his eyes for a long moment, letting the night air wash over him.

This was not the end.

It was the beginning.

The first true step toward something greater than survival.

Toward the rise of the Shadow Kingdom not merely as a hidden power, but as a force that would shape the world itself.

When he opened his eyes, he turned his gaze northward—toward the distant mountains that shielded his kingdom, toward the rivers that fed its farmlands, toward the unseen roads where armies would one day march.

The staff hummed in his grip, eager, alive.

He descended slowly, guided by the same unseen currents that had lifted him.

The land welcomed him back with a deep, thrumming anticipation that seemed to rise from the stones themselves.

He touched down at the edge of the ruins, where Nyx, Krux, and the priest waited, their forms barely illuminated by the dying embers of the distant bonfires.

They turned as one when he landed, their gazes sharpening the moment they saw the object in his hand—the reshaped anchor, still pulsing faintly with heat.

Nyx's mouth parted slightly, her usual irreverence drowned in something deeper: awe.

Krux's gauntleted fist tightened at his side—not in fear, but in shared understanding. They had fought alongside Riven. They had seen what he could survive. But this…

This was different.

The priest bowed his head low, the firelight casting deep shadows across his features. His voice, when he spoke, was reverent. "It is done, then. You have reclaimed what was lost. The anchor answers to you."

Riven stood still for a moment, feeling the weight of the staff in his grip—the living hum of it threading through his bones. He looked down at it, then back to the priest, his gaze unwavering.

"No," he said, his voice low but absolute. "I haven't reclaimed anything."

The priest lifted his head slightly, confusion flickering in his eyes.

Riven's hand tightened around the staff. "This was never mine to reclaim. It was never theirs to keep. It's not about taking back what was lost."

He turned, the faint light of the dawn bleeding across the horizon behind him, painting the ruined stones in the first bruised colors of morning.

"It's about what comes next," Riven said, his voice growing steadier, stronger. "What we build from it. What we become because of it."

He shifted the staff, the glyphs along its length pulsing faintly as if stirred by his words.

"This is not the end of a trial. It's the beginning of a reckoning."

The priest bowed his head again—lower this time, not just in acknowledgment, but in understanding.

The fire had not destroyed him.

It had crowned him.

And the world would soon remember what it meant to endure flame—and to rise beyond it.