ARC 1: THE FALLEN GOD
The first thing Riven Ashmore felt was cold.
Not the distant, abstract cold of the void between stars—he remembered that, remembered dissolution, remembered the Radiant Throne's judgment as his divine essence scattered like ash on celestial wind. This was different. This cold had texture. It bit into skin that shouldn't exist, seeped through cloth too thin to matter, and settled in bones that had no right to ache.
He opened his eyes.
Stone. Rotting wood. The acrid stench of human waste and desperation.
Riven lay in a narrow alley between buildings that leaned against each other like drunken conspirators. Morning light—pale, anemic—filtered through gaps in the structures above, illuminating dancing motes of dust and the slow crawl of something that might have been a rat. His fingers curled against cracked cobblestone, and the sensation was so immediate, so visceral, that for a moment he could only stare at his own hand.
Mortal. Human. Flesh and blood and all the fragility that entailed.
"No," he whispered, and his voice was wrong—too rough, too low, lacking the resonance that had once made shadows tremble at his word. "No, this isn't—"
Memory crashed over him like a divine hammer.
The Celestial Court. Thirteen thrones arranged in judgment's circle. He stood at the center, chains of solidified light binding wrists that had never known restraint.
"Riven Ashmore, Lesser God of Shadow and Forgotten Truths." Solarius's voice had filled the space between stars, each word a proclamation that reality itself bent to hear. The High God of Radiance sat tallest among the pantheon, crowned in light so bright it burned to perceive. "You stand accused of heresy against the divine order. Of spreading forbidden knowledge. Of claiming the Pantheon itself was born of mortal ambition rather than eternal truth."
"I claim nothing," Riven had replied, meeting that burning gaze without flinching. Even then, even knowing how this would end, he'd refused to bend. "I revealed what I discovered. The original texts. The ascension ritual. The truth you've spent centuries burying."
"Truth?" The Goddess of War, Thera, had leaned forward on her throne, golden armor singing with barely restrained violence. "You speak of dusty lies and forgotten heresies. The Pantheon has existed since the dawn of creation."
"The Pantheon has existed for eight hundred years." Riven's shadow had spread beneath him despite the binding chains, a pool of darkness that reflected nothing. "Before that, you were human. All of you. You performed the First Ascension and locked the door behind you, then rewrote history to erase your origins."
Silence. The kind that preceded cosmic storms.
"A vote," Solarius had declared. "As is tradition for matters of divine judgment. All in favor of dissolution?"
Ten hands rose. Only three remained lowered—Mortheus, God of Death, whose skeletal fingers had stayed folded in his lap. The Goddess of Forgotten Roads, whose domain was already dying. And one other whose face Riven could no longer recall.
Not enough. Never enough.
"The Pantheon has spoken." Solarius descended from his throne, and each step made the void brighten until Riven's shadow began to burn. "For crimes against divine truth, for sedition against the eternal order, for daring to claim godhood is anything less than our inherent right—you are hereby unmade."
The light had come then. Not purifying. Not merciful. It was the light of erasure, of cosmic censorship, of truths too dangerous to exist.
Riven had screamed as his divine essence unraveled. Had felt his authority over shadow scatter, his domain collapse, his very name begin to fade from the memory of mortals who'd once whispered prayers in his name.
Had felt himself die.
Should have died.
Riven pushed himself upright, and his body protested with a dozen small agonies. His muscles were weak, untrained. His lungs burned with each breath of the slum's foul air. He was young—maybe twenty winters by mortal reckoning—but the flesh felt foreign, ill-fitting, like a coat tailored for someone else.
He looked down at himself. Threadbare clothes that might have been gray once, now stained with grime and something that could be old blood. His hands were calloused but thin, the hands of someone who'd known hunger. No divine marks. No shimmer of authority. Nothing to suggest he'd ever been anything but another forgotten soul rotting in the capital's underbelly.
Except...
Riven closed his eyes and reached inward, the way he'd done a thousand times before. Searching for the core of his being, for the Authority that had defined him since his ascension centuries ago.
Nothing.
Nothing.
Nothing.
Then—there. A flicker. A dying ember in the darkness of his soul. So small he could barely perceive it, so fragile a strong wind might extinguish it entirely. But unmistakable.
A fragment. A shard of Shadow Authority that had somehow, impossibly, survived his execution.
Relief and rage warred in his chest. Relief that he wasn't completely powerless. Rage that this was all that remained of what he'd been. Centuries of accumulated power, entire networks of belief and worship, the ability to step between shadows across continents—reduced to a spark that couldn't even darken a room.
A sound interrupted his inventory. Footsteps. Multiple sets, armored and precise.
Riven's head snapped toward the alley's mouth. Through the gap between buildings, he could see the main street of what had to be the Iron District—the capital's industrial slums, where those who fed the empire's forges lived and died without anyone above caring to notice.
Three figures moved past. Divine Knights, unmistakable even at a distance. Their armor bore the holy symbols of the Pantheon, each piece inscribed with prayers that made the metal gleam with borrowed radiance. The leader carried a spear crowned with light, and where his boots touched the cobblestone, small halos of luminescence briefly marked his passage.
Blessed. All of them. Warriors granted a fraction of divine power in exchange for absolute loyalty to the gods who'd murdered him.
Riven's hand moved to his side, searching for a weapon that wasn't there. Old instincts. Useless now.
"—don't know why we're wasting time down here," one of the knights was saying, his voice carrying in the morning quiet. "The weekly heretic sweep isn't for another three days."
"Orders came from high up." The leader's tone suggested he didn't question such things. "There's been reports of... irregular activity. Shadow sickness, they're calling it."
Riven went very still.
"Shadow sickness?" The third knight sounded younger, uncertain. "I thought that was just a myth. Something the old priests invented to scare people."
"Apparently not." The leader paused, and Riven could see him scanning the alley openings with eyes that glowed faintly gold. A blessing from one of the sight-gods, probably. Minor divinity that let the faithful pierce darkness and deception. "Keep alert. If there really is a shadow cult reforming, command wants it purged before it spreads."
They moved on, but Riven didn't relax. Shadow sickness. Shadow cult. They were hunting for exactly what he was—a fragment of the power their masters had tried to erase.
He waited until the footsteps faded completely, then forced himself to stand. His legs shook, but held. He needed to understand where he was, what resources he had, how much time before—
A flash of color caught his eye. At the alley's far end, mounted on the wall where it joined the main street, hung a devotional shrine. Small, cheaply made, the kind even the poor could afford. It showed the Pantheon in all their glory: Solarius at the center, radiating painted light. Thera with her golden sword raised. The God of Harvest with his sickle. Knowledge with her tome. Death with his scales.
And beneath them, at the shrine's base, a proclamation board.
Riven approached it slowly, each step deliberate. The board held notices—decrees from the divine temples, laws handed down from the priesthood that administered the capital in the Pantheon's name. Most were mundane. Tax rates for the faithful. Schedules for mandatory prayer sessions. Rewards for turning in heretics.
But one notice was newer than the rest. The ink still held a faint sheen.
BY DIVINE DECREE OF THE RADIANT THRONE
Let it be known that on the Fifteenth Day of Radiant Ascension, the heretic god known as Riven Ashmore, who styled himself "Lesser God of Shadow and Forgotten Truths," was rightfully executed for crimes against the eternal order.
His corruption has been purged.
His name shall be forgotten.
His followers were given mercy through purification.
The Pantheon stands eternal. The Pantheon stands true.
Praise be to the Light that cleanses all shadows.
Fifteen years. The date on the proclamation was fifteen years old, faded and weathered but still legible. They'd kept it posted all this time, a warning and a triumph.
His "followers were given mercy through purification."