[There's no telling when this happens, only that it does]

The sky was a wound—dark and bleeding.

Riven stood alone, blade half-buried in cracked earth, fingers brushing the faint pulse of music humming beneath the metal. His breath came uneven, a rhythm tangled between hope and despair.

Behind him, the silence cracked.

“Riven,” the voice came—low, fractured. Xion.

He didn’t turn.

“I warned you,” Xion said, stepping forward, shadows swirling like grief around him. “You can’t rewrite the past without tearing the world apart.”

Riven’s jaw clenched.

“Three years. Three years chasing echoes in dreams,” he whispered. “All for a chance to save what’s lost.”

A bitter laugh. “And you call that strength? It’s your Resonant Drive bleeding you dry—your soul unraveling with every note.”

Riven’s eyes flickered, pain flashing behind them. “Better to break fighting for them than to live broken without them.”

Xion’s gaze faltered, shadowed by regret. “I was supposed to guide you… keep you from this madness. But I failed. And now—”

His words cut short by the widening rift behind Riven, bleeding light and possibility.

Around them, shades stirred—no longer Riven’s to command, but Xion’s legion now. Silent witnesses to the final reckoning.

Only one figure remained close to Riven—her presence a question marked in silence.

Xion’s voice dropped. “If you cross that threshold, you risk everything—the future, the fragile balance we fought to keep.”

Riven tightened his grip on the blade, the music’s pulse matching the storm inside him. “I’m not running from the cost anymore.”

Xion’s shadow flickered like a dying flame. “Then you leave me no choice.”

Steel sang as they collided.

The world held its breath.

---

[End Prologue]