The world was asleep.
No bells chiming for the city, no merchants carting and calling, no kids bickering and yelling. No barking dogs. The only thing to remind Riven that the world still existed, was the cold breath of wind passing through the half-closed windows and broken roofs.
Riven sat up at around 3 AM in the morning, as if something deep inside had tapped him awake.
His eyes flicked to the ceiling.
Still.
Quiet.
He felt it again--the pull. Not loud and not painful. Just... there. An invisible rope pulling down hard from the chest. A gentle tug on something that might have been closer to a string inside him.
He rose to his feet, and grabbed the small cloth bag he had packed the night before--some stale bread, a flask of water, and a cracked knife he had stolen from the kitchen. Nothing else.
No one saw him leave.
No one wanted to watch.
There were no guards at the orphanage. Just bad locks and a group of tired children. He was a shadow; after years of learning how to be invisible, moving like a shadow came easy.
There were certain boards in the hallway that creaked. He was careful to skip those.
The staircase groaned only if you didn't lean left. He just so happened to lean left.
A tiny hatch behind the rusty shelves at the rear, close to the storage room, was a holdover from the time the building was something else. He had once discovered it by chance.
Tonight, it was his exit.
The hatch opened with a soft click, revealing the stone crawlspace below.
To get to the opening in the outer wall where the bricks had crumbled over time, he knelt, dropped in, and crawled beneath the foundation.
He managed to get through.
The city lights were distant now.
And he was outside.
On either side, the grass swayed gently. With the tiniest glimmer of dawn far behind it, the horizon was nothing more than a line of black.
Riven didn't look back.
There was no point.
"Whatever's calling me… it's not here."
He walked.
He continued despite the cold biting through his flimsy clothing. His boots crunched softly against the dirt and old pebbles as his breath clouded in front of him.
After a while the path was lined with trees, tall, twisted trees that murmured as the wind blew through them. A bird screamed somewhere in the woods. Perhaps it wasn't even a bird.
He hesitated.
listened.
Nothing changed.
His heart was still pounding, but it wasn't from fear, but something else.
"So this is the world outside the city…" , he murmered.
It seemed larger. Wilder. Uncontrolled.
Once—gently—the mark on his chest pulsed.
Through his shirt, he touched it.
It's still cold. Faintly glowing still.
He continued walking until the stars dimmed.
Until the sky turned deep indigo instead of black. Over the treetops, the first signs of morning appeared.
Behind him, the city had vanished.
And going forward...
An obstacle in the way.
In the direction of the trade towns, one road curved eastward.
The other swerved into the misty hills, unmarked, untraversed.
The tug in his chest intensified.
He was aware of his destination.
"No idea what's waiting for me out there…"
"But I can't stay weak forever."
He stepped off the path and into the mist.