Fifteen years. The date on the proclamation was fifteen years old, faded and weathered but still legible. They'd kept it posted all this time, a warning and a triumph.
His "followers were given mercy through purification."
Riven's hands clenched into fists. Purification. The Pantheon's polite term for slaughter. Men, women, children—anyone who'd believed in shadow's necessity, who'd prayed for truth beneath the light's blinding glare. All of them burned or drowned or dissolved in divine judgment.
Because they'd had faith in him.
A sound escaped his throat, half laugh, half snarl. They'd tried to erase him. Had succeeded, by all rights. His divine essence scattered, his name stricken from official records, his worshippers murdered to prevent any chance of resurrection through renewed faith.
And yet here he stood. Powerless, mortal, barely alive—but aware. Remembering. Existing.
"Sloppy," he whispered to the painted face of Solarius on the shrine. "You should have made sure, old friend. Should have watched my dissolution until the last spark went dark. But you were always too confident, weren't you? Too certain of your own permanence."
His shadow, cast by the morning light, didn't move the way it should. Just for an instant—less than a heartbeat—it rippled. Like water disturbed by a stone, or darkness acknowledging something it recognized.
The fragment inside him pulsed once, responding.
Riven looked at his shadow, really looked at it for the first time since waking. It was thin, anemic, as weak as his mortal body. But it was his. His Authority. His domain. The concept that had defined his godhood: shadow as the revealer of truth, darkness as the necessary counterpart to light, the hidden reality beneath accepted doctrine.
"Not gone," he said softly. "Just... dormant."
A new sound broke his focus. Not armored footsteps this time. Something quieter. Barefoot, careful, trying very hard not to be heard.
Riven turned.
At the alley's entrance stood a child. A girl, maybe ten years old, dressed in rags that made his own clothes look luxurious. Her hair was a tangled mess of dark brown, her face smudged with soot and grime. But her eyes—her eyes were sharp, alert, missing nothing.
She was staring at his shadow.
Riven followed her gaze. His shadow was behaving now, falling exactly where the light dictated. But she'd seen. In that moment when it had rippled, responded to his recognition—she'd been watching.
They stood frozen, predator and prey, though Riven wasn't certain which was which. The girl's hand moved slowly to her side, where a piece of broken glass jutted from her rope belt. A weapon. Pitiful, but she held it like she knew how to use it.
"You're one of them," she said. Her voice was hoarse, damaged. Like she didn't speak often, or had screamed too much once and never fully recovered. "Shadow-touched."
The fragment in Riven's chest pulsed again, stronger this time. Recognition flowing both ways.
This child had encountered shadow before. Real shadow, not the mundane absence of light but the concept itself. The mark was faint, but it was there—a resonance that called to the Authority fragment inside him like answering like.
"I don't know what you mean," Riven said carefully. His voice was still adjusting to mortality, but he managed to keep it level, non-threatening. "I'm just—"
"Don't lie." The girl's grip on her glass shard tightened. "Your shadow moved wrong. I saw it. That means you're touched, or sick, or..." Her eyes widened slightly. "Or you're one of the new chosen."
Chosen. The word hung in the air between them, heavy with implication.
Before Riven could respond, before he could decide if this child was a threat or an opportunity or simply a complication, she did something that made his breath catch.
She pressed her free hand to her chest, over her heart, and bowed her head.
It was a gesture of reverence. Of prayer.
"Shadow Saint," she whispered. "The old ones said you'd return. When the light burned too bright and the truth died in flame. They said shadow would rise again to show what the gods wanted hidden."
Riven stared at her. At this child in her rags and dirt, offering devotion to a concept she barely understood. Part of him wanted to laugh. Shadow Saint. He'd been a god, not some ascended mortal hero.
But another part—the part that remembered his followers burning, remembered the faces of those who'd believed in him and paid for it with their lives—that part saw the opportunity.
Faith. Even a child's faith. Even this thin, desperate, half-formed belief in a legend she'd heard from "old ones" who were probably dead now.
It was a starting point.
"What's your name?" he asked.
The girl looked up, still wary, but the glass shard lowered slightly. She didn't answer, just watched him with those too-old eyes.
"Can you speak?" Riven tried again. "Or just—"
She shook her head and pointed to her throat. Then made a gesture—fingers to lips, pulling away, cutting the air.
Mute.
But not deaf, clearly. And not stupid. She was evaluating him, trying to determine if he was what she'd hoped or just another dangerous thing in a world full of them.
Riven made a decision. He was weak, nearly powerless, in a city controlled by the very gods who'd executed him. He needed resources. Information. Allies, no matter how unlikely.
And this child needed... something. Protection, perhaps. Or purpose. Or simply to believe that the "old ones" hadn't lied to her.
He extended his hand, palm up. An offering, not a command.
"I'm not a saint," he said quietly. "But I am shadow. And if the old ones told you I'd show hidden truths..." His lips curved into something that wasn't quite a smile. "They weren't entirely wrong."
The girl studied his hand for a long moment. Then, slowly, she reached out and placed her small, dirty fingers in his palm.
The moment their skin touched, Riven felt it. A thread. Thin as spider silk, fragile as morning frost, but unmistakably present. Faith, flowing from her to him. Not much—barely a trickle compared to the rivers of belief he'd once commanded. But it touched the fragment inside him, fed it, made it burn just a fraction brighter.
The girl gasped. She'd felt it too, the connection forming. Her eyes went wide, and for a moment she looked terrified.
Then she smiled. A small, broken thing, but genuine.
She tugged on his hand, gesturing toward the alley's far end. Deeper into the slums, away from the main streets where Divine Knights patrolled. She wanted him to follow.
Riven glanced back at the shrine one more time. At Solarius's painted face, forever frozen in righteous triumph. At the proclamation declaring him erased.
"I'm not dead," he told that image. "And before I'm done, you'll wish you'd made certain."
Then he let the mute girl lead him into the shadows of the Iron District, where forgotten things went to hide and wait and—sometimes—to grow strong enough to return.
Behind them, unnoticed, Riven's shadow stretched longer than the light should allow. And deep in the divine realm, in a throne room built from solidified radiance, Solarius paused mid-conversation with his fellow gods.
"Something..." the High God of Light murmured, his eternal brightness flickering for just an instant. "Did you feel that?"
But the moment passed, and he dismissed it. After all, what could one dead god's echo possibly matter?
He would realize his mistake.
They all would.