The place was now dead calm.
The man was gone—vanished like a whisper carried off by the wind.
No footprints. No trace .Only silence.
Riven lay motionless on the surface of the ocean, barely breathing, his limbs limp, his body still broken from the battle.
Above him, Thee Blue Moon loomed—unchanging, eternal. Its cold, pale glow bathed the endless sea in an otherworldly light. Beneath it, the World Tree towered like a divine sentinel, its roots unfathomably anchored in waters that defied depth, its branches scraping the void.
The ocean didn't ripple. Not a single wave.
It was as if time itself had stilled… just for him.
And in that stillness—he finally closed his eyes.
He didn't sink. The ocean wouldn't let him.
It held him. As if the very world refused to swallow someone who had endured what should have been impossible.
He drifted into unconsciousness, his breath slowing, pain dulled by exhaustion and the soothing aura of the Tree.
And so… he slept.
Not for minutes. Not for hours.
For days.
Days where his body remained untouched by the passage of time. Days where his wounds slowly began to mend, not by medicine or magic—but by the quiet, ancient grace that lingered in the Tree's presence.
Its leaves rustled in breezeless air, glowing faintly with a silver-blue pulse that matched his heartbeat.
No one spoke. No one moved. But something watched—something sacred.
As if the tree, silent for a million years, now simply watched over him. Not as a judge. Not as a god. But as a witness.
To pain.
To endurance.
To something new… being born.
Days passed like a forgotten breath in the stillness.
And then—Riven stirred.
His eyes blinked open slowly, greeted by the eternal twilight of the Blue Moon above. The air tasted different now—lighter, sacred, as if it had been filtered through the roots of gods.
He sat up.There was no ache.No torn flesh.No bleeding fists.
His body—was healed.
Not just mended. Restored.
The wounds of war, the shattered bones, the crushed eye—gone. Even the pain that had made a home in his soul now whispered quieter, as if the silence of the tree had lulled it to sleep.
He exhaled.
And just then—The World Tree moved.
Its ancient limbs groaned gently as if acknowledging his awakening.A soft wind, born from nowhere, danced through its canopy.
Dozens—no, hundreds—of glowing silver-blue leaves began to fall.They twirled down like sacred snow, kissing the ocean's mirrored surface with light.
Each leaf shimmered as it landed, casting ripples that gleamed like starlight over water.
Riven watched, breath held, as the light pooled around him like a silent blessing.
And then—he saw it.
The Grimoire.
It lay beside him on the ocean's glassy skin, unmoving—black as obsidian, bound in an unfamiliar material that seemed to swallow all surrounding light.No symbol. No title. Just a cover that seemed to pulse faintly—like it breathed.
He reached for it, fingers brushing over its cold surface.It felt… alive.
A part of him trembled as he opened it—
—but the cover refused to lift.
He tried again.And again.
Still nothing.
Only on the fourth attempt, with fingers now steady and determined, did the book relent—only the cover creaked open.
But instead of pages filled with ink, it revealed a blank black sheet.Glossy. Empty. Silent.
Then—slowly—words began to form.
Not written by hand.
Etched, like glowing scratches on obsidian, forming letter by letter in a language that wasn't his.
The words crawled across the page as if burning their way through the dark matter of the book itself.
He squinted.
But it was no spell.
No chant. No formula.
Instead—it read like a journal.Fragments. Observations. Ramblings. Notes from a mind older than kingdoms.
It was his.
The man who had stood before the World Tree.
The one who had laughed in the silence. Who spoke to the tree like an old friend.
This was his diary.
His thoughts, scrawled across dimensions, etched in shadow.
But the meanings—they escaped Riven.
The grammar twisted mid-sentence. The symbols didn't align with any known tongue. It wasn't even written in a single language, but many—some lost, some ancient, some that might not even exist yet.
He frowned, flipping the page.
The book resisted him again.Only one page would show.The rest were sealed shut—waiting.
He sighed, staring at the glowing ink as it faded into the paper once more, vanishing like a dream.
He didn't understand it.
Not yet.
But something deep within whispered—
"One day, you will."
He held the grimoire to his chest.And for the first time since the nightmare began… he smiled.
Not because he was safe.Not because the battle was over.
But because the journey had truly begun.
And now—he was chosen.