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Chapter 62 - Chapter Sixty-Two – The Fire That Sleeps

Riven didn't speak for a long time.

We stood on scorched earth, the Guild of Ash kneeling before him like silent statues. Kael's sword remained unsheathed, the tip trembling ever so slightly in his grip. I felt like we were standing on a thread stretched across a volcano—one wrong step, and everything would explode.

Embershade approached slowly, stopping a few feet from Riven. "I never thought I would see the day. When the veil cracked, and the gods fell silent, it was your fire that held the Loom together. You gave yourself to the Rift to seal the fracture."

"I don't remember doing any of that," Riven said hoarsely.

"You wouldn't," Embershade said gently. "The price of your sacrifice was your memory. But your soul—it remembers. Your fire is still inside you. Sleeping."

Riven backed away from her. "Stop calling it fire. I'm not some... chosen weapon."

She inclined her head. "You never were a weapon. You were hope. You still are."

I felt my hands clench.

So many things made sense now—Riven's instinctive grasp of the Loom, the way it responded to him like a second skin. His quiet anger. His emptiness.

But it also scared me.

Because if Riven truly was this "Scorched Heir," then he wasn't just a forgotten prince—he was a walking catastrophe.

Kael finally stepped forward. "And what happens now? You crown him and march him to war?"

Embershade's expression sharpened. "We only kneel to remind him who he is—not to chain him. If he commands us to leave, we will. But the Rift is opening again, and the gods that sleep beyond it are stirring."

I flinched. "The gods? I thought they were—"

"Dead?" she finished for me. "No. Not dead. Just buried."

Riven looked at me. His eyes were full of something I hadn't seen before—not fear. Not pain.

Guilt.

"What if I hurt you?" he asked quietly.

I stepped toward him. "Then I'll remind you of who you are. Not who you were."

The wind shifted.

A crack sounded from the Rift behind us. A glowing fissure opened, humming with unstable Loom energy.

Kael cursed under his breath. "It's starting."

Riven's hand caught fire.

Not wild or raging.

Just a slow, calm burn.

Like the beginning of something unstoppable.

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