For hours, he remained unmoving, letting his senses guide him. First came the sense of touch. He could feel the faint graze of the night air brushing across his bare skin, the gritty tickle of dust landing and scattering over his shoulders, the rough texture of earth beneath his form. Then came the sound, the hollow whistle of wind through broken beams, the far-off creak of old metal shifting, the steady rhythm of his own breath. And beneath it all, there was the pulse of his body. His heart beating, blood flowing with deliberate certainty through every vein.
Slowly, he turned his attention inward.
His lumenflow started to stir within him, no longer the rigid, fragmented trickle he'd been shackled to as a defect. Now, it moved freely like water unbound from a dam, coursing through him with a strange fluidity that he wasn't used to. He began to guide it slowly, drawing it carefully from one limb to the next. What once had taken him years of painful practice now felt almost natural, each shift was so much easier than he'd imagined it would be.
'Probably because of all those years forcing my body's lumenflow into doing it wasn't built for, ' he thought.
He maintained the flow, hour after hour, until at last a faint shimmer rippled across his body, fading in and out like a mirage. His skin glistened with sweat as he gritted his teeth.
'Finally, I think I've gotten the aura… so this is it. And this much effort… just to awaken it?'
Every pulse of the aura and he could feel the lumen draining out of him, his energy bleeding into the glow, each flicker costing him more than the last. But he endured and held onto that particular feeling, controlling the rhythm, maintaining his breathing and letting his body adapt just as another hour passed.
And then unknown to him, along his back, a black, spine-shaped tattoo shimmered faintly to life overlapping his own spine, pulsing in and out of existence with the rhythm of his breath. His heartbeat synchronized with the lumenflow, each thump rippling outward, causing the faint aura around him to pulse in time.
Ba-dum.
The aura flared briefly.
Ba-dum.
It receded, only to shimmer again.
The rhythm continued like a steady drumbeat echoing through his entire body. Riven did not notice the mark along his back, nor the strange harmony building between the flesh and the flow
He only focused on enduring and holding that fragile control.
——
The abandoned forge was quiet, save for the ragged rhythm of Riven's breath. Sweat poured down his skin, tracing paths across the lean muscle of his arms and chest, dripping onto the dust-caked floor. Yet despite the exhaustion, a faint smile tugged at his lips. It's been over a day since since he started testing his new body and for the first time in ever his body felt truly alive.
He rose from where he had been sitting, shaking his limbs loose, then rolled his shoulders until the joints cracked like dry timber. He leaned left, then right, stretching until the tightness bled away from his sides, then bent forward until his fingers brushed the ground. His legs followed in a long, steady stretches, holding the burn until it passed. He bounced lightly on the balls of his feet as a low chuckle escaped from him. "Feels… good."
Riven shifted into a warm-up without thinking, his body remembering patterns he had been trained into even before his mind did. He dropped down for push-ups then transitioned into Sit-ups in a brutal repetition. After a few minutes he started on a sprint across the forge, back and forth until dust billowed around his feet. He increased the tempo, faster and harder until his chest was heaving and his sweat darkened the stone beneath him. Four hours bled away, until finally he stopped, hands braced against his knees, grinning through heavy breaths.
He muttered with a grin on his face. "I think I've got the hang of my lumenflow now."
He lifted his right arm, staring at it as he drew the current inward. The lumen moved smoother than before, flowing without the little resistance that had plagued him last night and that morning.
Riven exhaled, steadying himself, and then slid into a stance. His body moved through the motions of a style long hammered into him, one that mixed fluidity with sharp, explosive strikes. He jabbed, quick and tight, then slipped sideways with a pivot, the motion rolling into a low kick. A palm-strike followed, then a sudden shift into an elbow snap. Each transition was sharp and flowed into one another, an art built around adaptation.
After another hour the forge echoed with the silent crack of his fists slicing air, the snap of his kicks against the empty space. For once, his muscles didn't scream in rebellion due to the simple motions. For once, his movements didn't feel like they were tearing him apart. He stopped. Panting as a grin split across his face. "Finally. I can actually use it without breaking myself."
After a moment, he wandered deeper into the forge. His eyes fell upon a massive anvil, it was tall and wide, sitting like an immovable object. He eyed it, then glanced at a smaller one nearby, barely the size of his own body then looked back at the bigger anvil and said, "Let's not push it, Riven." His gaze slid past them to a pile of old chains rusting in the corner, and his grin returned. "Oh. That'll do."
Minutes later, he stood with chains coiled around his arms up to the elbows, the links snaking upward and slung over a thick beam, then down to the smaller anvil. He heaved, pulling until the chains rattled and the anvil lifted, his muscles straining against the stress but still holding up. He grit his teeth, savoring the burn and testing his endurance. For several long minutes he held, before finally releasing with a grunt. The anvil crashed down, dust exploding upward. Riven coughed, waved it away, and laughed under his breath. "Okay then, not bad at all."
He emerged from the haze with dust clinging to his skin and flexed his hands in front of him. He stared at them for a long moment, something had happened last night as he channeled the flow through every limb, then murmured, "Let's try that again, shall we?"
The lumen rose at his call, flowing into his arms as he held them forward. He focused, pushing harder. But… nothing happened. His brows furrowed. "Was that a fluke?" He tried again. Nothing. Again. Still nothing.
A low growl escaped him before he muttered in frustration, "Damn it!" He pressed a palm to his face, shaking his head. "What the hell am I…" He froze mid-sentence, lowering his hand slowly. His eyes locked on his right hand, a thought flickering in the back of his mind.
"…Wait a minute."
He raised the hand, narrowing his eyes. And carefully this time, he called the lumen and funneled it through, but the difference this time was that he did not channel it into the whole arm, not into the muscles but into the fingers alone.
The change was instant.
His fingertips started to darken. One by one, his fingers turned black, as though ink was bleeding through his flesh and then...
Riven's eyes widened. A chill ran down his spine.
"What the fuck…"
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