Chapter 7: The will and path

He didn’t know how long he stood there, doing nothing but marveling at his Sigil, only for his eyes to water when he thought about how his sister wasn’t there to see him.

She was the only one who truly believed in him so fiercely it hurt to be a walking disappointment. But she never saw him that way. She would laugh and wrestle his lanky form to the ground anytime he brought up being a burden to her.

“Why did she have to die? It’s not fair. She never wanted much from life, just to laugh and wrestle. Why then did the world take everything from her?”

He didn’t get his answer because the answer was right there for him to see. “She wasn’t strong enough to take from the world.”

His heart hardened. “Then I will carve it for her. I will take from the world and give it to her. Why am I sad? Why? I have a Sigil of Undying. I will bring her back.”

“The world is vast. The path of cultivating Aura is even bigger. I will reach the peak I must reach and bring her back. That is what I owe her. I will take from the world what was taken from her.”

He didn’t say those words out loud. He wrote them in his heart, a reminder. A promise.

He stood there for some time and soaked in the silence and the last peaceful place he was born.

But eventually, he stood up and went to the demolished building. He picked his way around and found new clothes to wear. And a weapon, a small sword.

Just as he was picking his way through, his Sigil reacted, his perception triggered, and he crouched to pick up a small necklace. It was a stone worn with age, one of the gifts his sister had given him when he was sixteen to mark his coming of age.

And immediately, as his hand touched it, the stone lit up with green light. The little Aura inside Riven was sucked away, and then the stone necklace stopped glowing.

He frowned before a look of understanding crossed his face, and then he frowned again as realization sank in. “This is a marker I bond with? I will always come back to life around this thing?”

Although he didn’t have a complete understanding of his passive ability, he knew that much. Quickly, he put it around his neck and under his clothes.

“I must keep it safe. Who knows what will happen once it’s destroyed? Will I be able to connect with another thing when I reach a new rank?”

He sighed and decided to put all other thoughts behind him for now as he made his way out of the collapsed building.

Each breath he took was followed by little bits of Aura, but it wouldn’t be anything until he reached rank one and picked a path. But even then, his body was already stronger than normal humans.

He didn’t go to the village. Instead, he turned toward the Shadowwood and began to walk. He knew where he was going. There was something that needed to be done.

The Shadowwood was a large forest that sprawled for who knows how long. As far as Riven was concerned, it might just be what covered the whole world, but he knew there were other places out there.

Big trees surrounded him, some so big that ten adult men could wrap their hands around them. Twisted roots jutted out of the floor, and the air smelled of dirt and rotting plants.

Although the forest was big, it wasn’t teeming with life as it should be. Insects did not cry out, no birds chirped, no animals called out, and no howls split the air. Even monsters were rare to see.

The forest had always been like that, which was one of the reasons the villagers had to fight over resources.

With his new body, his movements were swift and fast. Before long, he passed by a village, and even without going near it, he knew it was filled with dead bodies. He could smell them and feel it against his skin, a coldness that wasn’t unpleasant.

“I see. My Sigil lies in the domain of death. It’s no wonder I found the necromancer’s Aura familiar.”

He didn’t linger and traced his way to Stonequa Village and then from there to where he and his sister had fallen. He saw the body of the dead wolf, but not his sister’s body.

But he knew it was the same place because he saw her two severed hands, and the ground was soaked with dried blood.

By this time, the sun was leaving the sky, and the Shadowwood was getting darker.

Even then, he could see perfectly well. His eyes had been enhanced, after all. His sister’s body was missing.

“No. He wouldn’t take it with him, would he? He wouldn’t disrespect her like that,” Riven thought, his eyes flashing with anger. Suddenly, he felt a greedy kind of hunger mixed with anger. “I want to get power. Vaelith!”

How dare he do something like that? Even in death, he would still oppress her?

He took several deep breaths to get himself under control. There was nothing he could do now, only rant, but why rant when he could search for a way to get more powerful?

“I am stalling,” Riven said aloud after some time. The reason he was trying to distract himself was because there was a body on the ground.

It wasn’t his sister’s. It was Riven’s dead body.

He finally stared at it in stunned fascination. It was his body, with the right hand almost cut away. It was still biting the dead snake, and more dead snakes covered the body.

But what surprised him more was that his body was rotting. It was as if it had been lying there for days and not just hours. At first, Riven thought he had taken days to come back to life, but the blood on the ground was still fresh.

“Is this because of the Undying effects? That’s why I’m rotting so fast?”

It was jarring to see his own body on the ground like that. It felt wrong, something that shouldn’t be happening.

“I should bury myself,” he finally decided.

But the problem was that there was nothing to use as a tool, and even with his enhanced eyes, it was getting dark very fast. “I will deal with it tomorrow.”

There weren’t many monsters in the Shadowwood, but there were some, and knowing his luck, Riven didn’t want to risk anything.

“If I die, I can just come back to life, but that’s not really what I want to waste it on. And who knows what type of effects dying and waking will have on me?”

And then, as if proving his point, he heard a growling howl in the distance.

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