The fire responded not with resistance, but reverence. The great doors shuddered, flame curling inward like breath being drawn. The scorched images burned brighter, then crumbled to ash, revealing not darkness behind them—but light.
No warmth, no welcome. Just white-hot brilliance, pure and merciless.
The second trial.
The moment Riven crossed the threshold, the world shifted. The obsidian underfoot dissolved into smoke, the walls of fire fell away and the ground vanished beneath him.
But he didn't fall. He descended—slowly, deliberately—carried downward through spiraling currents of flame and memory, as though the world itself was delivering him to the place he needed to be.
