The vault door loomed before him, halfm splintered and scorched from the brutal battle with the golems. Shattered fragments of stone and fragments of metal limbs lay scattered across the ancient floor like discarded bones. Riven's body ached with every breath, his ribs throbbed from a blow he hadn't fully dodged, and his knuckles were raw and bloodied from punching through stone, iron, and that burning voodoo shit engraved in those golems.
His cloak was gone, incinerated mid fight by a gout of fire from the golems. His wings, black as volcanic glass. hung behind him.
The flames still shimmered faintly across his shoulders. They didn't burn him.
They were him.
He looked down at his palms, calloused, trembling, streaked with soot and blood.
"…What the hell am I?" He muttered.
No one answered.
Only the door did.
It stood before him like a monument to a forgotten era, It was massive. Bronze layered in little circular plates, ringed with a weird metal and carved with celestial glyphs that shimmered dimly, pulsing slightly.
At the center, a single phrase pulsed, glowing like a divine wound.
"Caelus Titanus… exspectat."
"The Celestial Titan… awaits."
Riven swallowed, his throat dry. That name again. He'd seen it on murals, whispered in half burned scripture, carved into the bones of dead warriors. It haunted this crypt.
As he approached, the glyphs ignited, soft golden light spilling outward in arcs and constellations. His footsteps echoed, uneven and heavy, but determined. With each step, the door seemed to breathe, ancient gears humming like the thrum of a silent choir.
His fingertips hovered over the surface of the vault.
The metal didn't just feel warm. It felt aware.
He pressed his hand to it.
A slow, divine heat climbed his arm, not painful, but like the first sunlight after endless cold.
KRMMMMMM.
The vault groaned open, bronze rings sliding and spinning and the ancient locks disengaging. Light came through, golden and sacred, illuminating dust that hadn't moved in centuries. The door cracked wide… and silence swallowed him whole.
Beyond it was not just a room, it was a temple.
A corridor of obsidian and sunstone arched high above him, carved with scenes of some type of worship. Starbursts, flame wreathed angels, winged titans, every image pulsed faintly with light.
Riven stepped forward.
"Alright... This is kinda creepy"
The farther he walked, the clearer the murals became. Warriors with flaming wings, black, just like his, stood defiant against titanic shadows. Cities of light crumbled in ruin. Suns burst and reformed. And always, at the center, Caelus Titanus Caelolunari. A divine black winged being, crowned in fire, his wings like twin eclipses, holding the sun in his palm.
It wasn't myth. It was bloodline.
Maybe that was why the flames hadn't killed Riven. Why they had listened.
He looked to the left, A mural of the winged people. On the top words were carved.
"Caelolunari"
He instinctively touched his wings, A realization dawning upon him. "Maybe this is what I am, Sky moon people?" He pondered for awhile before moving on.
He reached the heart of the temple, a circular chamber bathed in warm, pulsing light. At its center rose a pedestal of obsidian, carved with spiraling solar patterns. Upon it rested a fruit.
It shimmered with ridges of gold and red, like a coiled nova frozen mid birth. Glyphs moved just beneath its skin. It watched himcalm, patient, and aware.
Beneath it, etched in the same script, was a name,
"Caelus Titanus cor solis"
"Sky titan heart of the sun?" Riven says confused.
"…What the hell did I stumble into?"
The crypt didn't answer.
But the silence accepted him.
He stepped forward slowly, his feet dragging ash and blood. He was being called. He was being recognized.
His hand hovered above the fruit, and in an instant, visions tore into his mind.
A sky splitting open with divine flame. Titans locked in battle. Winged beings falling from burning skies. A boy, him, standing amidst the ruins, Black wings spread wide, fists burning with power.
Riven gasped, stumbling back, shaking.
"No, creepy visions! No, I'm not…" His voice broke. "…I'm just a thief. Just a stupid fucking orphan."
He looked at his hands.
At the fire that refused to leave him.
"…I didn't choose this," he whispered. "But maybe… maybe I was chosen."
With trembling fingers, he reached out.
He lifted the Solis Solis no Mi.
It pulsed in his hands. almost like it was accepting him.
And he took a bite.
The flavor was unlike anything he could name. It was not sweet or bitter. It was light. Like drinking the suns light. Like swallowing memory. His chest lit up, his spine arched, his scream echoed off the temple walls.
Heat surged through every nerve.
His black wings snapped wide as light erupted from his body in a searing burst. Glyphs along the walls blazed to life. The murals sang. The crypt awoke.
He collapsed to his knees, gasping, clutching the floor.
But when the light faded… he rose.
"FUCK ME! What was that?" He said wiping his brow.
Steam drifted from his skin. His eyes were molten with fire.
He was no longer just Riven the thief urchin. Not just a freak winged orphan hiding in the dark.
He was flame, reborn.
He looked at his hands, flames coiling gently between his fingers.
"This isn't just power," he said quietly. "It's legacy."
Somewhere far above, the manor still loomed. The pirates still ruled. The Marines still hunted him.
But now…
Now the world had something to fear.
The last fire of a fallen race had awakened.
The light finally faded, leaving only embers dancing in the vaulted air.
Riven stood, his chest heaving, his body still radiant with residual fire. But even as the glow settled into his veins like coals under skin, he could feel something had changed, around him, and beyond him.
And then he noticed it, at the base of the pedestal, a drawer revealed by the activation of the glyphs. The stone cracked open with a soft hiss, dust spiraling into the air as if the crypt were exhaling after centuries.
Inside lay a bundle wrapped in faded, celestial-blue cloth, trimmed with a light golden thread. Riven peeled it open with care.
First, the boots.
Black leather, worn but supple, reinforced with metal that kind of reminded him of the moon, at the toes and heels. Down the sides, etched in faint silver, were glyphs some familiar from the murals, others entirely alien. As he touched them, the markings pulsed, syncing to his body heat. The boots were heavy with meaning, but light on his feet, as if made for movement, flight, and... stomping. Defiantly made for stomping.
Next, the pants.
Tight, fitted, midnight black, durable like combat gear but flexible as a second skin. Small glyphs stitched in thread, Golden lined the waistband and cuffs, flaring briefly when he pulled them on. The fabric cooled his scorched legs, grounding him, steadying the storm rising inside.
"Ahhh, Oh... my... the relief." Riven said with a happy grin.
But oddly no shirt.
It felt right. To be honest. His black wings hung behind him, powerful and tattered. The absence of a shirt made his scars visible, some old, most new. He sighed think of all the knife fights he's struggled with over the years.
He looked down at himself.
He didn't look like a street rat anymore.
And Finally beneath them, resting at the bottom like the crypt's final secret, lay a small, octagonal device.
Smooth and black, with silver inlays and a Lunarian sunburst carved into its center. When Riven touched it, the object briefly glowed, and projected a flicker of light above it. A broken constellation, a solar map, and the first of many riddles.
"To know the sky, seek the flame's origin… and the scars left behind."
Riven stared.
"…A key?" he muttered. "Or a compass?"
It didn't answer. It simply dimmed and clicked closed.
He stowed it carefully into a satchel he'd fashioned from spare cloth.
But before he could take another step, the chamber began to rumble.
Glyphs lit up across the walls, brighter than before, rushing in waves of gold. The entire crypt surged with reawakened energy, ancient mechanisms long dormant roaring to life. A low, celestial hum filled the air, and far above, the walls of Wyrmsreach trembled.
BOOM.
A shockwave burst from the crypt, racing through the stone, the sewers, the slums, up through the ground beneath the manor itself. A pillar of golden light shot skyward from the hilltop, briefly piercing the stormy sky above Talon Island.
People stopped in the streets.
Slade, halfway through inspecting a shipment of black powder barrels, froze mid instruction. His eye twitched toward the sky. "No…"
In the market, the merchant who once held the key went pale, dropping a vial of elixir as the energy rippled through his bones. "He wasn't supposed to… not yet."
And on the horizon, aboard a sleek, obsidian hulled vessel shaped like a shark's jaw, a tall figure stood at the front, cloaked, arms folded.
The Lord of the Manor.
His eyes, like cold silver, narrowed as he watched the golden light break through the clouds.
So. The crypt had finally opened.
He turned to the figure behind him, a scarred woman in a pristine Marine lieutenant's coat, her arms crossed. Her medals gleamed. Her eyes burned with quiet cruelty.
"Tell the crew," the Lord said. "We make landfall by dusk."
"Yes, my Lord," the lieutenant answered, bowing. "And the boy?"
"If he lives… then he's mine."
Back beneath the city, Riven felt the tremor through his boots. The light had vanished, but something was coming.
He didn't know what, not yet.
But the fire had done more than give him power.
It had awakened the island.
And now, Wyrmsreach would burn or bend.
And he would be waiting.