Part IX: Blood and the Awakening of the Wheel
That massive scream outside echoed through the spires of the Virell tower, beating against the stone walls as I stood right on the threshold. Behind me, Riven's flawless, absolute whiteness had grown as silent as an ash heap stained by the wild assault of a thousand colors. But outside... Outside was the birthplace of a hell.
Thousands of wizards, frozen into stone for a thousand years, collapsed to the ground simultaneously with the agony of unravelling. As that first drop of blood began to march, tick-tock, through their frozen veins, turning their stone flesh into dust, the place transformed into a veritable resurrection of a graveyard. Some opened their arms to the sky, vomiting with sobs as the breath they hadn't been able to swallow for centuries tore through their throats; others writhed on the grass, coloring like the petals of a tender rose.
I drew a deep breath into myself.
This wasn't just oxygen; it was gunpowder, mold, soil, the smell of decayed empires, and most importantly... the smell of time. My new heart, beating like a stranger within the cage of my chest, hammered the memory of an old man and a rusted wheel into my mind with every contraction. I was no longer a shadow. I was no longer a fading extra in Riven's ice-cold mind, but the very author of this noisy carnival.
Clack.
The sound of my boots striking the stones as I began to walk drove like a spear into the chaos of the tower square.
Right in the middle of the square, High Priest Valerius's statue, frozen atop a massive marble pedestal, was breaking apart. First, the layer of stone on his shoulders cracked. The snap was as sharp as a bone splitting in two rather than glass breaking. Valerius's head suddenly tilted to the side; in place of his dull, grey pupils, the smoky, painful brown of human eyes settled.
He was left breathless. As his chest heaved like a bellows, he looked at his hands. His stone fingers turned into human flesh as dust fell from them.
"R-Riven..." he murmured, his voice as rough and cracked as a dry riverbed. "Our Lord... The Silence... Where is it?"
Realizing the situation, he slowly raised his head. His eyes turned to the thousands of maddened wizards filling the square and the wild blue sky reflecting over me. Then his gaze locked onto me—the simple, dark-toned tunic hanging from my shoulders in place of his huge grey cape, and the vibrant color of my skin.
"You..." Valerius said, collapsing to the earth as he felt his knees give out. "You were that shadow. That... that shapeless memory. What did you do? Where is our Lord?"
I slowed my paces and stopped right in front of him. I leaned down and brought myself to his level. On my face was that small, dangerous smile that Riven had been afraid to even write in books for a thousand years.
"Riven is no more, Valerius," I said, my voice loud and full enough to drown out the howling of the wind. "The whiteness is over. The books are closed. Now I am writing the story."
Valerius tried to clutch the hems of his robe with trembling fingers, but his fingers were still as pale as lime; the transformation was not yet complete. "Madness... This is madness! Without the Silence, magic will rot! The universe... The universe will collapse!"
"Let it collapse," I said, standing up and turning my back to the massive tower behind me. "Let everything turn upside down. Let your holy silence drown in your noisy screams."
The fierce blue in the sky suddenly began to turn to purple and a bleeding crimson. The forests at the foothills of Virell murmured, rustling their leaves as if poisoned rivers had flowed into them. Thousands of wizards had risen; some crying out in terror, others showering sparks from their hands in the intoxication of power and anger they were feeling for the first time.
The flawless, icy empire built by Riven was no more.
In its place was a world with its faults, sins, blood, and breath—a world real to the very end. And I was walking not by holding the hand of the man who dropped the first tear of that world, but as the very drop itself.