Page 23 of The Scars of War (Of Ruin and Fire #1)

Burn What Remains

The table’s still warm beneath me, it’s the kind of warmth that lingers after something violent, after the pulse stops pounding and the air settles like ash. One of the legs is cracked, tilted just enough that my weight makes the whole thing tilt slightly to the side.

There’s blood smeared across the wood in a slow, drying arc. Not enough to cause panic. Just enough to mark it. Like a seal. Like a vow made in sweat and ruin.

Riven stands across the room with his back to me, one hand braced against the counter, the other curled into a fist tight enough to tremble.

He’s still shirtless, still dripping from the storm he walked through to get here, but the heat that used to pour off him is gone.

What’s left is a different kind of pressure, one that makes the air feel heavier, like it’s waiting to collapse .

He’s not speaking, just breathing in that controlled, clipped way that says he’s either holding himself together…or about to come apart.

I don’t speak. I don’t cover myself. The towel he tossed onto the table is balled under my hip, untouched.

I sit up slowly, my muscles aching in ways that aren’t unpleasant. I can still feel the sting of his blade, a thin line carved into the skin of my thigh, and the dull ache in my throat from the brutal way he took my mouth like it owed him something. And maybe it did. Maybe I wanted it to.

I don’t regret any of it. But that doesn’t mean I’m not changed.

He doesn’t look at me when he speaks. His voice is low, like he’s trying not to wake something. “I felt him before I saw you.”

I blink slowly. My body’s humming. My heart hasn’t settled into place since he touched me, not Riven. Vale “You mean Death.”

He nods, just once. A shallow movement that barely registers. “It’s like standing on a fault line. Right before the quake. Everything stills with restraint. The kind that knows it won’t last.”

I swing my legs off the table and stand barefoot on the wood floor, staring at him. “You sound like you respect him.”

He doesn’t move. Doesn’t flinch. “You don’t live this long without learning what deserves your fear.”

I take a step toward him, my voice barely a whisper. “Do I?”

This time he does look at me, over his shoulder, eyes rimmed in shadow and heat, expression unreadable. “Yes.” The word lands between us like a drawn blade.

I don’t stop. I close the distance slowly, the floor cold under my feet, my pulse a steady drumbeat beneath the surface of my skin. “You’re afraid of me.”

“No,” he says quietly. “I’m afraid for you.”

“Same thing.”

His mouth curves, not a smile. More like a crack in stone. “No. It isn’t.”

He turns fully now, arms still braced behind him, like he doesn’t trust himself to reach for me. “You’re not what we thought,” he says. “You’re not a tool…and you’re surely not a warning. You’re a fucking anomaly.”

The words sting more than I expect. “You make it sound like I’m a mistake.”

“You’re not. You’re the correction.”

I stop a breath away from him. The blood is still drying on my thigh. My hair’s still tangled from his hands. There’s a part of me that wants to curl into him. Let him pretend we’re whole. But we’re not.

We never were.

“You’ve been hiding something,” I say. His silence is answer enough. “The prophecy,” I continue. “What does it actually say?”

He closes his eyes like the weight of it is trying to break through his chest. “It doesn’t say your name. But it describes you. A woman born outside the line. A convergence point. A vessel. A key.”

“A key to what?”

His voice is barely audible now. “To all of us.”

I stare. “So, I’m not just connected to you.”

“No. ”

I swallow. My hands are shaking now, but I don’t let him see it. “Elias. Vale. Famine. All of them?”

“Yes.”

I back away slowly, each step like peeling off skin. “You knew.”

“I suspected.”

“You knew.” I’m not yelling, but my voice is sharp enough to slice. “You used me.”

He finally moves, steps forward, closes the space like he’s walking into a fire he’s already decided he deserves. “No. I tried to keep you from them. I thought if I could hold you long enough, mark you deep enough, it might delay the pull. But you’re not something that can be kept.”

I feel the heat rise behind my eyes. Rage . “You should have told me.”

He stops inches away. Looks down at me with something close to guilt, but not close enough. “I didn’t want to lose you.”

“You never had me.”

The silence that follows is worse than the fight because it’s honest. He lifts a hand, brushes a knuckle down the side of my face like he’s already memorizing the parts he’ll have to let go. “You’re unraveling,” he whispers. “And I don’t know what comes next.”

I lean into his touch, just for a second. Just enough to feel the power behind his pulse. Then I step back. “I do,” I say. He blinks; I meet his gaze dead-on. “I burn.”

The silence snaps.The crack is sharp. Real. A sound that doesn’t belong in a place that was just holding the shape of an almost-truth between two bodies.

Then a second sound follows, the unsteady slam of a fist. Flesh on wood. Bone on something harder.

I’m already moving before Riven curses under his breath. His whole frame shifts, tension recoiling from spine to shoulder like a blade being drawn. He doesn’t hesitate. Doesn’t stop to explain.

“Clothes. Now,” he snaps. His voice is steel, no room for argument.

By the time I drag on yesterday’s jeans, he’s at the door. The lock turns. Not careful, not cautious. He throws it wide like he already knows what’s waiting.

A man stands there, staggering, his weight pressed into the frame. His sleeve is in ribbons, his chest dark with blood. One word leaves him before he collapses forward—

“Breached.”

Riven catches him before he hits the floor. His jaw is stone, his voice colder. “Where?”

The man’s eyes flutter, but he gets the word out again. “The mansion…”

Riven’s head lifts, already calculating. He doesn’t have to look at me when he says, “We’re going.”

The hallway is long. Gray. Bleak in the kind of way that belongs in horror stories and hospitals. One flickering light overhead. The bulb’s dying, or it senses the way the air just turned predatory.

There’s a man on the floor.

Slumped sideways against the baseboard, his coat shredded along one sleeve. Blood has soaked half his chest and most of the rug underneath. His head lolls when he looks up, but his eyes lock on Riven instantly.

“Sir…” he chokes out. “It’s breached.”

Riven drops to one knee, gripping his shoulder, the commander rising to the surface like a mask being reapplied .

“What did you see?” he asks.

“Not what.” The man’s voice is wet. “Who.”

I step forward, something tightening in my chest.

He turns to look at me. “Red hair,” he rasps. “She was already inside before it started.”

Riven stiffens.

I feel the words hit. He looks at me like he wants to ask, Were you there? But he doesn’t. Because he already knows the answer.

“Where?” he asks the man.

“The Eighth Gate. Warehouse wing.” A cough interrupts the words, flecks of blood catching on his lips. “It wasn’t just a rupture. Something was pulled through.”

“Pulled?” I echo.

Riven’s face has gone cold. Set. Not blank. Just ready . “Get him to the house,” he tells someone behind us, one of the quiet ones who always seems to appear from nowhere.

“Are you going?” I ask .

“Yes.”

“Then so am I.”

He doesn’t argue. That silence? That’s how I know it’s bad.

The car is blacked out and fast, the city streaming past in blurred streaks of red and gold.

We don’t speak. We don’t touch. He offers no hint of what waits for us on the other side of this drive.

We sit in silence, letting the hum of the engine and the rush of the streets swallow the space between us, until all that’s left is the thrum of anticipation crawling under my skin.

Riven straps on a shoulder holster. Checks a blade. Doesn’t offer me one. Doesn’t ask if I’m ready. Because this isn’t the type of war that waits for preparedness. It just happens.

The compound is further out than I expect, near the edge of the city where streetlights thin and the air starts to taste electric, a sharp metallic zing. It’s the taste of danger. Fences topped with barbed coils. High stone walls lined with floodlights. Something here doesn’t feel fortified.

It feels tainted.

Riven gets out first. I follow him through two layers of security, past a locked gate and a stairwell that hums with something deeper than electricity .

Then we enter the space, and my breath catches in my throat. It isn’t a building. It’s a vault. Carved from steel and silence, reinforced with seals older than language, meant to keep things in , not out.

Something broke it.

A single rupture tears through the far wall.

A wide, blistered gash of scorched metal, like the world itself was peeled back from the inside.

The damage spreads in clean arcs, too intentional to be an accident.

Light above us stutters, uneasy, and the ground at my feet feels brittle, like it’s holding its breath.

At the epicenter, scorched into the wall like it belongs there, is a sigil I know too well.

A twisted stalk of wheat, cracked, dying, coiled with thorns.

My stomach flips.

Famine.

I don’t need to ask.

Because I’ve seen this one before, not just in my drawings or my dreams, but on the scroll in Riven’s archive. I remember the way his voice dropped when he explained it. How his fingers brushed over the ink like it meant more than the others.

It wasn’t just a warning. It was a pattern. A pull. And now it’s here. In the flesh. Burned into the walls of a place that was supposed to be sealed. “Why here?” I ask, voice sharper than I intend. “Why now?”

Riven doesn’t look at me. I don’t need him to. Because deep down, I already know… Whatever’s coming through the veil isn’t coming alone.

The fire burns low in the hearth, but it’s not for warmth. It never was.