They didn't speak for a while after the knight.
Riven sat by the crumbled arch, the dust still settling from the fight. His blade rested across his lap, streaked with ash and dry blood. The mark on his chest pulsed slowly beneath his shirt, still faintly warm from the absorption.
It had felt clean.
Precise.
He didn't regret the strike but he didn't feel proud of it either.
He just felt… hollow, empty.
Like the echo of a bell long since silenced.
Veyla stood nearby, back turned, arms crossed as she stared off toward the edge of the ruins. The wind moved her cloak slightly, stirring the dead grass at her feet. She hadn't congratulated him. Hadn't said anything at all.
Which made her silence louder.
Eventually, he spoke. "You've been quiet."
She didn't answer.
He tried again. "Say it, say what you've been holding in."
Veyla shifted but didn't look at him. "You want to hear it from me?"
"I want you to stop looking at me like I'm some kind of monster."
She turned then, slowly, face unreadable. Her hand rested lightly near the hilt of her sword, not threatening, but instinctual. Like she wasn't sure who she'd be talking to next, him, or whatever the Rune was turning him into.
"I'm not calling you a monster, Riven," she said. "Not yet."
He flinched at her response, but didn't argue.
Veyla stepped closer, eyes narrowed, not with anger, but a deeper emotion. Worry.
"I've seen this before," she said. "Not exactly this, but close enough."
He tilted his head. "Someone like me?"
She nodded. "There was a woman once. From the Scorchline. Fought during the Ash Rebellion. She didn't have a Rune like yours, but she was born Hollow. No Grace. No Flame. And then one day, she came back from the dead with a mark etched into her spine. Not Grace. Not Ash. Something different."
"What happened?"
Veyla looked past him, remembering. "She started absorbing power. At first it was small. A beast here. A corrupted Cinder Knight there..... She got stronger. She won fights no one should've survived. People praised her, said she was chosen by the gods."
Riven leaned forward slightly. "And?"
"And then she started forgetting things."
Veyla's voice dropped. "Her name. Her past. Her voice. By the time she reached the Boneway, she couldn't remember her sister's face. By the time she stood before the Flame-Keeper of Eorath, she couldn't speak."
Riven was quiet.
"What happened to her?"
"She won," Veyla said simply. "She killed the Keeper. Burned through a thousand Flameborn like they were kindling."
A pause.
"Then she turned to ash. Right there in the snow. Nothing left but her boots."
He looked down at his hands. They didn't tremble. Not even a little.
"And you think I'll end up like her."
"I don't think," she said. "I know what happens when people keep pulling power from something that doesn't belong to them."
Riven didn't look at her. He looked past her, at the broken statue near the far wall. A figure once shaped like a saint, now half-melted by rot.
"The Rune doesn't ask me to take it," he said. "It just happens. When I kill, it feeds. When I survive, it takes."
"And every time it gives you something," Veyla said, "it also takes something else in return."
"I know."
"Do you?" she questioned intently.
He didn't respond.
She stepped closer, knelt in front of him. Her voice was quieter now. Not soft, but real.
"You were kind, the day we met. Lost, sure, but kind. You looked at the wolves and hesitated. You didn't want to kill anything you didn't have to."
Riven looked at her now.
"Today," she continued, "you didn't blink when you stabbed a man through the heart. And I know he attacked you first. I know he chose the fight, but you didn't hesitate before fighting back. You didn't even think."
He exhaled slowly, a thin breath through the nose.
"You're afraid I'll lose myself."
"I think you already are," she said.
The wind shifted. Cold now and sharp.
He stood up, slower this time. The weight of the Rune dragged at his chest, not physically, but it was always there now. A warmth with teeth.
Veyla watched him rise, but she didn't move.
"Then what would you have me do?" he asked. "Stop fighting? Let the next knight kill me? Let the Ash eat me because I'm too afraid to use it?"
"No," she said. "But I'd have you choose. Not just react."
He blinked.
She pointed to his chest, just above the Rune. "That thing's dangerous. I'm not saying don't use it. I'm saying stop pretending it won't use you back."
The wind carried ash again as she spoke. It fell soft, like snow, speckling the ruin around them.
"You think it has a will," he said.
"I know it does."
He nodded once. Not to agree. Just to understand.
Then he reached into the side pouch on his belt, pulled out a strip of old cloth, and slowly tied it across his chest, covering the Rune beneath the layers of his shirt.
It didn't change the heat. It didn't change the pull he felt.
But it helped him forget it was there, just for a while.
He looked at Veyla.
"I can't give it up."
"I didn't ask you to," she responded.
He turned to leave. She followed, steps behind him.
As they walked through the remains of the ruined chapel, the silence between them returned. But it wasn't cold anymore. Just quiet. Like a thread still held between two hands, even if no one spoke.
Riven stepped over the corpse of a broken Grace statue, then paused.
There, behind it, half-buried in soot, was something strange.
A piece of armor. Cracked and scorched, but old. Ancient. Etched with the same spiral thorns as his Rune.
He crouched. Picked it up.
A pauldron. Heavy and burnt on the inside.
And as his hand touched it, the Rune reacted. Not wildly, just a flicker.
A memory, not his played in his head.
A man kneeling in a field of bones, screaming into a fire that didn't listen.
Riven dropped the piece and staggered back out of fear..
Veyla was already beside him, holding him from falling..
"I told you," she said.
He nodded slowly. "I'm beginning to understand now."