Riftborn: The One Who Carries The Void

The chamber had emptied of cheer.

What remained was silence.

The kind that settles not from respect — but from instinct. The kind stone makes when it listens. The kind forests echo before the storm begins.

Rei stood still. Kaia beside him, her hand near her blade. Durik's stance had shifted — one foot half-forward, as if ready to shield, or strike.

They had not waited long.

The elves did not march in like soldiers. Nor slink in like spies.

They entered.

Unhurried.

Unshaken.

Unbowed.

Their leader was tall, her robe woven from threads that shimmered like dew. Her face was veiled in silverleaf, her steps silent as a drifting leaf. But it was her presence — not her appearance — that slowed every breath in the room.

She carried the forest with her.

The weight of trees.The stillness of roots.The memory of something ancient and green and watching.

She did not speak first.

She let the silence grow.

Until even the King was forced to break it.

"You walk far from Thornevale," Rurik said, his voice as hard as the stone beneath their feet. "And without invitation."

The elven woman raised her head slightly, her veil rustling like leaves in windless air.

"We do not come as guests," she said. The Matriarch's Voice was soft — not from weakness, but age. Like it had echoed across lifetimes. "We come as keepers. Of balance. Of truth. Of warnings you no longer hear."

The dwarves stirred, insult flickering behind their eyes.

"Then speak your warning, Matriarch's Voice But choose your words well."

"We always do."

She turned her head — not to the King.

To Rei.

"The mountain screams," she said. "And you walk at its heart."

Rei did not answer.

"The Forge breathes again," she continued. "And we felt it from across the vale. But it is not just fire that has awakened."

Kaia stepped forward. "What do you want from him?"

The elf tilted her head. "We want him alive."

That silenced even the dwarves.

She continued. "He is not your heirloom. Not your relic. Not your weapon. He carries something neither forged nor found. The Rift pulses beneath his skin."

Rei's hand instinctively gripped the satchel where the Gem of Skarnveil lay.

"And with it," she whispered, "a wound begins to bleed."

Rei stepped forward, slow.

The air between him and the elven envoy was thick. Not hostile — but dense, like two tides pressing against each other in still water.

"You speak like you know me," Rei said.

"We don't," she answered. "But we know what follows you."

Rei's eyes narrowed. "Then tell me."

She was silent for a breath. Then another.

"You are the echo of something undone," she said. "And in that echo, the Rift breathes."

She turned back to the King.

"And you would shape that breath into a sword."

"I would shape it into a shield," Rurik said. "To protect this mountain, this flame, from the storm you refuse to name."

The elf did not flinch. "There are forces in this world that cannot be forged. You believe fire makes you strong. But the fire that touches him—" she glanced at Rei, "—does not burn clean."

"You believe you can contain him?"

"I believe he must choose."

"And if his choice burns us all?"

"Then it is still his."

The tension coiled now — not into conflict, but into certainty.

No one in the room could claim Rei.

Not the dwarves.

Not the elves.

And Rei himself said nothing — for there was nothing to claim.

Only a burden.

Only a breath.

Only a path that curved downward… into fire and deeper things.

The Matriarch's Voice turned toward Rei one last time.

"When the Rift inside you calls — do not answer it alone."

Then she turned.

And the elves left without bow, without salute, without a single glance backward.

Kaia exhaled. "I hate elves."

Durik grunted. "You think they hate us more?"

Rei didn't speak.

He was still listening.

Still hearing the silence they left behind — like the hush of leaves before the ground splits open.

The elves walked without sound.

Even the wind, where it should have coiled through the vent-shafts and hollow passes of the dwarven stronghold, stilled in their wake.

Their feet touched stone, but left no echo.

The Deepguard watched from the shadows, hands gripped on their axes, shoulders broad and unmoving — yet even they, sons of iron and heat, shifted in discomfort as the procession passed.

They had not spoken a word since they departed the King's chamber.

Not one.

Not until the last gate of the mountain neared — a towering arch of obsidian and steel, etched with flame-runes that glowed faintly like cooling blood.

And then she stopped. The Matriarch's Voice.

She turned her head slightly — not toward the dwarves who watched them from above, but toward the youngest of her escort.

A silver-haired acolyte, barely grown, her eyes wide from everything she had seen.

"Speak," the Matriarch's Voice said quietly.

The girl flinched. "Is it true, my liege?"

"What part?"

"That he carries it. The Rift. That… it breathes through him."

The Matriarch's Voice did not answer for a moment.

Then, softly, "It does not breathe through him. It breathes with him. That is the danger."

The girl's voice quivered. "But he looked—"

"Like a boy," the Voice finished. "Not a monster. That is why he is feared."

She turned again, and they stepped through the final arch, into the cold wind beyond.

Mist clung to the jagged rocks that surrounded the eastern exit of Druvadir — a high pass, barely wide enough for carts, now used only in ceremony and forgotten oaths.

Below them, the drop was sheer.

The forest could not be seen from here.

But it was felt.

Like a pull beneath the skin.

A root calling its branches home.

The eldest among them — a seer blind from age, with runes carved like vines across her face — paused beside the arch's edge. Her fingers brushed the ancient stone.

"Mongrim's flame lingers," she whispered. "But the forest remembers what that flame once sealed."

Another seer stepped close. "He has not awakened… not fully."

The blind one turned her head, sightless gaze falling to where the mountain met the clouds.

"No. But something inside him has."

There was a long silence.

Then the Voice said, "The King wishes to bind him."

"And we?"

The wind picked up.

The veil over her face stirred — revealing a brief glimpse of sharp cheekbones, pale lips pressed in thought.

"We wish to keep him whole."

"Can he be?"

Another silence.

Then the Voice answered, not with certainty, but command.

"He must be."

They began the descent.

Step by step. Stone to frost. Cold to older cold. Down the forgotten stair carved long ago when treaties still held between forge and grove.

The youngest of them hesitated as they passed a chasm where the mountain split — a fracture that steamed softly, as though the breath of the Forge reached even here.

She looked down.

And whispered, "What if he opens it again?"

The Voice slowed.

Not to rebuke her.

But to answer her with clarity.

"He is not the one who opens the Rift."

She turned her head.

"He is the place it chooses to knock."

They walked on.

And the wind whispered behind them.