It was Jae who awakened Riven
"What's wrong with you?" Jae asked, voice low?"
Riven rubbed his face and then pinched himself.
"Am I dreaming still?" he mumbled groggily, eyes flicking over towards Jae. "Hey… is this real?"
Jae stared at him, confused. "Huh? Did you bang your head or something? Of course it is real."
Riven looked around. Everyone else was standing, looking at him in silence. His chest tightened.
Was it all a dream?
"Nira. Eros. The dialogue. Had I imagined it?
What the devil is amiss with this facility?"
The world looked normal—if you could call this barren landscape normal. Nothing was different. But twice, now, he'd had no means of telling if reality or a dream. If this were a dream, too… he had no way of knowing.
Jae stepped closer, frowning. "Wake up. We're going."
Riven didn't move. "Heading where…?" His voice trailed off, unsure if he even wanted the answer.
Jae looked at him with confusion
"What do you mean, where are we heading? To the City of Silence, of course."
Jae tossed him a strip of dried meat. "Eat. You'll need it."
Riven was still disoriented from the looping of dreams, but he managed to stand. He had a feeling Ashvale had something to do with the weird dreams, and he couldn't ask Nira or Eros about the conversation to find out if the dream was in fact real. Soon they started walking
The wasteland of Ashvale lay out before them—endless ash desolation, stillness, and lost wars. The wind howled low, scarring grit across burnt earth, exhaling through the skeletons of something long dead. Every step stirred a fine dust that adhered to their boots and skin.
Riven followed behind the others, quiet. His thoughts churned.
Is this even real…
"Keep your eyes open," Jae called out behind him, his voice flat.
The air above was streaked with deathly gray and pale orange. In the distance, a column of smoke glowed like a heat mirage, its tips curling upwards.
They trudged across the wreckage of a ridge. Craters dotted the ground blackened, deep, and broad—like something from the stars had fallen to the earth and torn it asunder. A solitary crater stretched before them, it's was massive, nearly thirty meters wide.
Jae stopped at the edge and frowned. "What the heck happened here?"
Riven stepped to join him. The crater yawned open at their feet like an open wound in the ground.
"Even if this was a battle," Jae remarked, "what could have caused this sort of destruction?"
No one replied. The stillness was thick and arid.
Soon they moved on, entering the crater and passing through it.
About an hour later that they came across a field of swords.
It started with one—half-buried, black-red rust. Its hilt twisted, melted like having been held in a fire. Then another. And yet another. Dozen, Hundreds. Thousands. Swords planted in the ground like discarded grave markers. Some were broken in half. Others warped by fire. None shone.
Riven stopped, his boots crunching over dry bone and ash. At his feet, he saw a human skull—broken, desiccated, looking upwards. Bones littered the field, human, Beast. Creatures he did not have names for.
He stopped next to a sword and looked at it.
"Did they die here?" Eros breathed, his voice barely audible.
Riven looked up. Eros wasn't looking at him—just out towards the distance with a lost expression.
Nira tied her scarf tighter around her face. "A graveyard of swords…"
"Who buried their swords?" Riven whispered.
No one replied. The silence said it all.
Shivers coursed under Riven's skin even in the dry heat. They kept going, making their way through the metal and bone forest.
He glanced sideways. One of the swords in front of him was bent inward at the bottom, as if it'd been struck by something massive. There was a small crater around it, blackened at the edges.
Then—just for a moment—Riven saw movement.
In the distance, It was a figure, a knight to be precise, who was trying to tie a rope to a tree. Suddenly, the rope was knotted around his throat.
Riven blinked and he was gone.
He gasped, shook his head. His fingers trembled.
"Snap out of it"
He caught up with the others.
Behind them, the fields of rusted blades stretched out motionless.