The Glitched Mage

The tension in Riven's chest hadn't eased since he had realized something was coming.

His eighteenth birthday. The first full moon of autumn. The night the veil between the world of the living and the abyss would be at its weakest.

Beware… the academy… find the relic… Abyss Born.

What had it meant?

Nyx had been quiet since he told her. Not out of disinterest, but something deeper—calculating, watchful.

Now, the night of the full moon had arrived.

Riven stood atop on of the Academy's towers, overlooking the vast courtyards below. The moon bathed the world in cold silver light, casting elongated shadows across the stone paths. Students moved below, oblivious to the tension in the air, the way the land itself seemed to hold its breath.

The wind was too still. The night too quiet.

Then—

A ripple of something passed through the air, so faint that even Riven barely noticed it. A shift, a breath, an unseen force pressing against the world.

A pulse from the abyss.

He stiffened.

From the depths of his shadow, Nyx stirred, her voice slipping into his mind like a blade through silk. 'It's starting.'

Riven's eyes sharpened as he turned his gaze past the Academy's outer walls, beyond the iron gates, to the wilderness that stretched behind the academy. The dense treeline loomed in the distance, its towering silhouettes shifting—not with the wind, but with something unseen.

The shadows beneath the branches slithered unnaturally, stretching and recoiling like grasping tendrils, moving when nothing should have cast them. The air grew heavier, thick with an ancient, restless presence. A force was stirring in the dark, something beyond the rogue undead drawn to him.

Something that had been waiting.

'It's not just the dead rising tonight,' Riven murmured, voice edged with cold certainty.

Nyx's presence coiled tighter. 'No. There's something else out there.'

Then, the first scream shattered the silence.

From the Academy's farthest edge, movement surged from the darkness. A horde of figures—some skeletal, some wreathed in mist—dragged themselves from the depths of the abyss. Their glowing abyssal hearts pulsed like dying embers, hunger radiating from them in waves.

Riven's gaze flicked toward the Academy's defenses as divine sigils along the perimeter flared to life, golden barriers shimmering into place over the main buildings. Professors and enforcers rushed into position, their mana flaring like stars against the abyssal dark.

But the undead didn't throw themselves mindlessly at the barriers.

They circled, shifting in unnatural patterns—searching.

Riven exhaled sharply. 'They're looking for me.'

Nyx's voice curled through his mind, sharper than before. 'And they're growing stronger the closer they get. The full moon is amplifying them.'

A massive skeletal beast, twice the height of a man, crashed into one of the outer courtyards. Its abyssal-infused bones shimmered with dark runes, its empty eye sockets locked onto a group of students.

It inhaled, abyssal energy coiling in its ribs—

Then a bolt of divine light obliterated its skull.

Riven's gaze flicked to the battlefield's front lines.

A lone figure stood against the rising tide.

Cassiel Vaigne.

The Academy's strongest second-year.

His blade burned with golden radiance, the sheer force of his divine magic carving through the undead like a cleansing fire. His armor glowed with layered enchantments, his movements precise, controlled.

He wasn't just defending. He was butchering the undead as they came.

The holy energy in his strikes made Riven's abyssal mana heart pulse in irritation, the natural opposition of their magics reacting even at this distance.

Nyx made a quiet sound of amusement. 'The paladin fights well. I almost like him.'

Riven didn't respond. His eyes remained locked on the battlefield, calculating.

Then he felt it.

A shadowed presence that wasn't part of the horde.

Something old. Something watching.

Then—whispers.

"Abyss Born…"

His body went rigid. The voice wasn't Nyx. It wasn't anything he recognized.

But then it clicked. That voice—layered, echoing, as if a hundred whispers spoke in unison. He had heard it before. The one that had overridden his system — the one who had warned him of this day.

She was here.

Before he could react, the abyss split open.

A rift in reality, dark and swallowing the air itself, tore through the space behind him. The sheer pressure of it sent cold fire skittering across Riven's skin, his mana reacting on instinct to the presence that stepped through.

Slow. Unhurried. A predator descending upon prey.

And then—she appeared.

At first, she was nothing but shadow, an amorphous specter moving through the rift like liquid darkness. But as she crossed the threshold, the shape of a woman began to form—tall and composed, yet wreathed in abyssal mist that never quite settled into solidity.

Her face was half-obscured, veiled by shifting wisps of black energy. But her eyes—glacial, piercing, utterly detached—locked onto Riven with an intensity that made even his abyssal core coil in warning.

A spirit. A wraith. A force of vengeance incarnate.

Nyx hissed, her form solidifying in front of Riven in a single, fluid motion. She raised her sword, obsidian steel gleaming under the eerie light. Her stance was unwavering, shoulders squared, her presence a barrier between Riven and the shifting darkness before them.

"Who are you?" Her voice was smooth, sharp as a blade drawn in the dark—calm, but laced with an undeniable edge of warning.

The spirit didn't answer.

She didn't move. Didn't breathe.

She simply existed—a presence so suffocating it pressed against reality itself. The abyss coiled around her, bending, obeying. Every flicker of her essence whispered of something ancient, something that had long since shed mortality.

A force that had been waiting.

Riven's grip on his own mana tightened, though outwardly, his stance remained unreadable. His gaze flickered across her form, searching, dissecting. Unlike the rogue undead below, there was no mindless hunger in her. No uncontrolled rage.

Only purpose.

And that made her infinitely more dangerous.

At last, she spoke, her glacial eyes narrowing with quiet scrutiny. "You do not recognize me."

Her voice was layered, fractured—hundreds of voices speaking as one, yet cold and detached. There was no inflection, no warmth. Just fact.

Nyx's fingers flexed on her sword hilt, her stance shifting, but Riven spoke first.

"Should I?" His voice was calm, unbothered, but inside, his mind was already moving, analyzing.

The spirit's eyes flickered, a subtle shift in the abyssal mist curling around her form. "You should," she murmured. "You carry his will. His blood. You walk the path he could not finish."

Velmorian.

That much was obvious.

The spirit exhaled—a slow, almost mournful sound, though it carried no real emotion. "And yet… you are not him." Her gaze sharpened, frost cutting through the abyssal dark. "You are a mockery."

The word cut through the air like a blade.

Nyx shifted, abyssal energy flaring at her fingertips, but Riven lifted a hand—a silent command to hold.

His expression remained impassive. "A mockery?"

The spirit took a step forward. The abyss trembled with her movement.

"You are weak," she said simply. "You claw at the abyss as if you own it, but you have not earned it." The mist around her darkened, shifting like ink in water. "Velmorian wielded the abyss because he commanded it. You wield it because you are desperate to prove yourself."

Riven's jaw tensed.

He didn't rise to the bait.

"You speak as if you knew him," Riven said, his tone measured. "Yet, in all the memories he deemed important enough to pass on to me, you were never there."

A pause.

Then—

For the first time, something cracked in her icy demeanor.

Her form flickered. The mist wavered, shifting with an almost imperceptible tremor.

The abyss around her pulsed—once, twice—before settling into stillness again. But Riven had seen it. A break in her control, brief yet undeniable.

Then her expression smoothed once more, her voice returning to its frozen detachment. "His memories… must have been incomplete."

Riven tilted his head slightly, watching her. "Or perhaps, you weren't important enough to be remembered."

The air around them grew colder. The abyss itself seemed to recoil, dark mist writhing at the edges of her form like barely contained fury. And yet, when she spoke again, her voice remained eerily calm.

"You are unworthy." she murmured. "I should be the one with the power that was given to you."

Riven froze, an unsettling feeling creeping across his flesh.

The spirit's form flickered, the abyssal mist around her shifting like a living thing, restless and agitated. Then, finally, she exhaled—a slow, measured sound, as if savoring the moment before a kill.

"You do not understand, do you?" she murmured, her voice layered, ancient. "I am not here simply to berate you — I am here to take what's rightfully mine."

The words were final, absolute.

Riven's eyes narrowed, his stance steady. "Is that so?"

The mist around her thickened, stretching toward him like grasping hands. "You don't remember, do you? The abyss. The moment you fell." Her gaze sharpened, something almost hungry flickering beneath the cold surface of her expression. "I was there. I reached for you. And yet—you resisted."

Riven's heart beat once—slow, deliberate.

Memories surfaced, unbidden, sharp as a blade carving through the present. He remembered the moment after his death in his previous life, the moment his soul had drifted weightless in the abyss, untethered, lost. He had been nothing but a flicker of consciousness in the void, surrounded by the all-consuming dark.

And then—the hunger.

A force had reached for him, something vast, endless, relentless. A creeping shadow that had not simply sought to claim him, but to unmake him entirely. It had tried to consume him before he had even received his system, before he had even been given a second chance.

His gaze snapped back to the wraith before him, to the shadows swirling at her command.

She was that darkness.

The thing that had tried to devour him in the void.

She continued, taking a step forward. "I tried to devour you then, but you fought against me. Even when the void should have consumed you, you tore yourself free with the help from what remained of Velmorian." Her mist coiled tighter, vibrating with restrained fury. "You should not have been chosen."

The air thickened, pressing against him, the abyss surging at her will.

"But now, here you stand. And the veil is weak." Her voice dropped into something lower, something that slithered through the space between them. "This time, there will be no escape."

The mist lunged.

It came fast, faster than even Riven expected. The abyss surged forward, shadows wrapping around his limbs, his chest, forcing their way inside.

She was trying to consume him.

His vision blurred, the world fading into pure darkness as her essence tore into him, sinking deep, trying to pull him apart piece by piece. She sought his soul—his very being—to unmake him and take his place.

To become the Shadow King herself.

But the moment she entered him—

She faltered.

The void inside Riven was vast. Endless. It was not a soul ripe for the taking, nor a body meant to be possessed. It was cold, bottomless, a hunger beyond even the abyss itself.

There was nothing to take.

Nothing to claim.

Only a devouring, endless darkness.

Riven smirked, his voice a whisper in the emptiness.

"You can't consume what's already been devoured."

A shriek tore through the void, her form recoiling from his, the mist violently unraveling. She staggered back into existence, her entire being trembling as though she had stared into something even she could not comprehend.

Riven stepped forward, his expression utterly composed. "Now that we understand each other," he said, his voice calm, "let's talk about your future."

The spirit's breath came faster now, not from fear—but from something eerily close to it.

"What… are you?" she whispered.

"The one who will burn Solis to the ground," Riven answered smoothly. "But I need something stronger to do it." His gaze flickered, dark energy curling at his fingertips. "I need a blade worthy of cutting through this wretched kingdom."

The mist around her still trembled. She did not move. Did not attack.

Riven continued. "You want the Solis Kingdom to suffer? To fall?" His voice was razor-sharp, every word digging into her festering hatred. "Then help me destroy it."

Her aura pulsed, a storm of unreadable emotion flickering through her form.

Silence stretched between them.

Then—

"You wish to forge me," she murmured, her voice quieter now, more deliberate.

"Yes."

She exhaled, slow and controlled. "And if I refuse?"

Riven tilted his head slightly. "Then you fade away, powerless and forgotten." His mana surged at his fingertips, reality bending to his will. "Or—you become something greater."

The mist around her coiled tightly, hesitant.

Then, after a long pause, she whispered, "What do you want?"

"I want your vengeance," Riven said simply. "And I want you as my weapon."

Another silence, thick with something unspoken.

Then—finally—her gaze met his, something dark settling within it.

"…Very well," she murmured. "Forge me, Abyss Born."