Chapter 2 - 1 - The Rat in the Ruin
"I hope this world burns."
The words slipped from Riven’s lips like a curse. A puff of white breath escaped his chapped mouth, dissolving into the cold air that blanketed the tall grassy hill where he lay hidden.
He crawled slowly through the damp undergrowth, his body smeared with dirt and dust. He was twenty years old, with olive-toned skin and messy black hair plastered to his sweat-soaked forehead. In his hands, he clutched a battered spyglass he’d bought after haggling with what little money he had.
His eyes were fixed on the battlefield raging below.
A wide stretch of land unfolded beneath the cliff where Riven lay. In the center of it, a war was unfolding—less like a military campaign and more like a nightmare made real. Thousands of soldiers clad in black armor—bearing the crest of the Arkham Kingdom—charged down the hills on horseback and foot. They wielded swords, spears, and magic, shouting in a tongue not everyone could understand.
And yet... their enemy was just one person.
Amid the storm of fire and shattering magic, Riven couldn’t make out the figure clearly. All he could see were explosions, shockwaves that shook the earth, and blinding flashes of light that split the sky like divine fury.
"What the hell is that...?" Riven muttered, squinting through the cracked lens of his spyglass. "Is it even... human?"
Entire squadrons were annihilated. The ground was torn asunder. Trees uprooted like weeds. Blood streamed like rivers, while the air was saturated with screams—cut off mid-howl, as if swallowed whole by the mist.
This wasn’t a battlefield.
It was a slaughterhouse.