Above the Mistbound Ruins, nothing seemed unusual.
The sky was already thick with clouds, and mist hung low like a permanent wound upon the land. The wind carried the scent of damp earth and decay, moving lazily between broken structures and rotting wood.
No one looked upward.
No one ever did.
From beyond the cloud cover, a brush descended silently.
It did not blaze with light.
It did not tear open the sky.
It simply fell.
Slowly.
Unnoticed.
Not even the mighty overseer stationed at the ruins sensed its arrival. The brush slipped through the mist like a forgotten memory, drifting toward the settlement below.
It passed through the cracked roof of a rundown hut, sliding between broken planks, and landed softly upon the dirt floor.
Inside the hut, there was only a single figure.
A half-blackened body slumped against the wall.
Eyes half-open.
Breath long gone.
The brush lay beside him.
Silent.
...
Two days later.
The same two burly men approached the hut, grumbling as they walked.
"I thought once was enough," Scarface muttered. "But this fool thought we were joking."
"Two days skipping mining," the other scoffed. "He needs to be taught properly."
They reached the door.
Without hesitation, one of them kicked it.
The rotten wood shattered instantly.
They stepped inside and froze.
The body in the corner was unmistakable.
Blackened skin. Sunken cheeks.
Neither of them had checked, and no one had noticed because in the Mistbound Ruins, prisoners disappeared all the time.
And no one cared enough to count.
For a moment, neither spoke.
Then Scarface cleared his throat. "What now?"
The other scratched his head. "We toss him outside the bounds. Let the forest take him."
One of them brought a dirty blanket, and they wrapped the stiffened body and carried it towards the gate.
One of the guards at the gate noticed them and stopped them.
"Hey there, you two, what are you doing here?"
The burly man forced a smile and said, "Nothing, sir, just a dead body, we thought we should throw the dead body outside so as not to bring any troubles to others."
The guard's face darkened. "You killed him?"
The man hurriedly shook his head and replied, "No, sir, he had been dead for who knows how long, and from the looks of it, he had some kind of illness."
The guard, still not believing their words, just looked at the blanket-covered body and said, "Bring him inside. Elder Wei will examine him."
Both of them followed the guard inside a small stone building near the gate, a man sat cross-legged in meditation. His robes were plain, but the aura around him was steady and oppressive.
Hearing someone enter, he slowly opened his eyes.
"Now who did this?" he asked calmly.
The guard gestured toward the two men, and they started to explain how they went to remind the new boy of coming to the mine, as they hadn't seen him, and he was already dead when they got to him.
The elder sitting there just unravelled the blanket and looked at Riven's body and told the guard to follow both of them to Riven's place and check it.
The guard then followed both of them to the hut, where he saw the broken-down hut with nothing much inside, but then his gaze turned to the brush lying on the ground.
The brush looked nothing special, the strands of the brush covered in dust.
Seeing there was not much, he just took the brush and went back.
When they returned near the gate, the elder had already done the investigation on the body and said, "He was injured for quite some time already and wasn't treated, and he must have caught an infection during mining."
After hearing the explanation, the guard just nodded and said, "I found this old brush in his hut."
Seeing that the brush was nothing noteworthy, he said, "Just burn this brush with his body, lest we attract his ghost with the brush."
The two burly men stiffened slightly at the word ghost.
They hurried outside the gate and laid Riven's body in the forest. Then the guard lit up the body with the fire torch he brought with him.
Fire caught slowly at first, then spread.
The guard tossed the brush onto the burning body.
After that he looked at the two men and said jokingly, "Want to stay and watch him burn to ashes?"
The two men shook their heads vigorously and went back through the gate. As they walked, the wind began to rise.
A chill crept up their spines.
They did not look back.
What they didn't notice was that the fire on the body had already been extinguished. No rain fell, no force intervened, and the flames simply... died.
The strands of brush lying on Riven's body started to darken.
It deepened until...
Shifted into shade so red that it looked like it was dipped in fresh blood.
Then, like ink sinking into parchment, the red bled downward, flowing into Riven's body.
...
The sky rumbled, though no rain came. The red-tinged brush pulsed faintly, a silent heartbeat in the ashen remains of the fire. Burn wounds began to close, the blackened skin regaining a semblance of life. The infection, instead of festering, retreated, drawn into the brush.
Moss began to glow faintly beneath the corpse.
Dull grey leaves shifted as vibrant green tendrils pushed upward from the soil. Vines thick as arms slithered silently between trees, converging toward the center of the clearing.
The air grew heavy.
Not oppressive like mist.
Ancient.
The brush lifted from Riven's chest and hovered above him, spinning slowly.
Red streaks painted the air as it rotated, forming images.
A collapsing mine shaft.
Two burly men sneering.
The guard's indifferent gaze.
The meditating elder.
Each vision shimmered like ink on invisible canvas.
Then dissolved.
"What… is this place?"
The voice was ancient, raspy, and unfamiliar.
And it did not belong to Riven.