Page 24 of The Scars of War (Of Ruin and Fire #1)

Riven’s mansion was built to impress, to intimidate, not to comfort. And yet, we’re both sitting on opposite sides of this fire like it might hold something sacred between us. The shadows crawl up the stone walls, long and distorted like they’ve been unhinged from the bodies they once belonged to.

The room is too quiet. The scar on my thigh from earlier is still healing, a faint line that aches in the cold. I haven’t washed it away. Not because I forgot. Because I didn’t want to .

Across from me, Riven grips a crystal glass tight enough that the veins in his forearm are standing out. The decanter on the table beside him is already half-empty. He’s drinking like he wants the burn. Like he thinks it might keep him human…

I don’t think it’s working.

“You lied,” I say, quiet, even. “Not just about the prophecy. About me.” He doesn’t answer right away. Just stares into the flames like they might whisper a better version of the truth. “You knew I was drawing that sigil before it showed up. You knew it was Famine’s. You knew what it meant.”

“Yes.” The word is flat. Unforgivable.

I press harder. “And you said nothing.”

His jaw tightens, throat bobbing once as he downs the rest of the glass.

Then he sets it down and leans forward, elbows on his knees, finally meeting my eyes.

“I wanted to believe it wasn’t real. That you weren’t who they said, that if I could just keep you long enough, mark you deep enough, you’d stay. ”

My stomach turns. “You thought you could overwrite fate with possession? ”

He doesn’t flinch. “I thought I could delay it.”

“And now?”

He exhales. The kind of breath people let out before a gun goes off.“Now, I know better.”

The fire cracks, and something deep in the logs gives out, a burst of sparks shooting upward in a brief flare of orange. “I’m not a weapon,” I say. “I’m not a prophecy. I’m not yours to use.”

“I know.”

“Then what am I, Riven?”

His eyes flicker as he mentally measures how much of the truth I can take.

“You’re the key.”

I’ve heard it before, but never from his mouth in that tone, like it’s terrifying. He leans back, lets the shadows reclaim part of his face. “There’s something older than us. Older than the Horsemen. Older than Death, even.”

I blink. “I thought you were the beginning.”

He shakes his head. “We’re just the echoes of something that came before. Aspects. Shaped and sharpened. The core, the source, was locked away. Buried. Sealed”

“And I’m supposed to unlock it? ”

His gaze is steady. “No. You are it.”

I laugh. Bitter. Small. “You think I’m some dormant apocalypse?”

“No.” His voice doesn’t rise. “I think you’re what comes after.”

“That’s the same thing.”

“No, Lux.” He stands slowly and walks toward the fire. “An apocalypse ends things. You’ll begin something else.”

I stare at him, heart in my throat. “I never asked for this.”

“I know.”

“Then why the fuck did you make it worse?”

He turns to face me, and for once, he doesn’t look like a god, or a monster, or a man. He looks like someone drowning in the flood he set loose. “Because I wanted you before I knew what you were.” My breath catches. “And even once I knew,” he continues, “I didn’t care.”

The firelight dances across his scars, the old ones—raised and ragged along his ribs—and the newer ones, blooming along his neck like warnings.

I walk to him. Slow. Controlled. “You wanted me? ”

“Yes.”

“Still do?” He doesn’t answer. He doesn’t have to. I stop a foot away. Let the heat from the flames lick up between us like a question mark neither of us knows how to answer. “Then tell me what happens when all four of you…take me.”

He closes his eyes. “I don’t know.”

“You do.”

He nods once. “Everything reshapes. The veil breaks. The world bends.”

“To me?”

“To what you choose to become.”

I step closer, slow and sure, the air charged between us like a storm just waiting for the scream of thunder.

The flames in the hearth behind him cast long shadows, but I don’t look at the fire.

I look at him , the shape of War made flesh, rage wrapped in restraint, watching me with a silence that says he already knows he’s about to lose.

“I’m not theirs,” I say, voice sharp, grounded. “And I’m not yours either. ”

His throat works around a word he doesn’t say. His eyes drop to my mouth, then drag back up, slowly. “I know,” he murmurs.

I press a hand to his chest, like an anchor. His pulse is thunder under my palm, ancient and unyielding. It doesn’t beat like a man’s. It drums like a war cry, steady, inhuman, relentless.

“I’m done,” I say, each syllable heavier than the last. “Done being told what I am. What I’m for.

” His body tenses, but he doesn’t stop me or argue.

He just takes it. All of it. Like he knows he deserves every jagged edge.

“I’m not a prophecy. I’m not your delay tactic.

I’m not here to be kept in a box until the world ends.

” I lean in close, lips brushing the shell of his ear. “I’m here to break it.”

The room feels different now. It’s not the fire burning lower or the shadows pulling longer across the walls…it’s me. I’m not the same woman who stepped into this night. Something in what I’ve learned, or maybe just the weight of knowing at all, has settled into my bones and made me…more .

I stand in the middle of the room, bare feet on stone, the warmth from the fire brushing the backs of my thighs. My blood still hums from what we did hours ago, from what we said, what we didn’t. It’s more than that now. It’s deeper.

It’s the feeling you get when something ancient wakes up inside you and realizes it doesn’t want to sleep again.

Riven hasn’t moved. He stands a few feet away, back straight, shoulders drawn like a man ready to fight. He’s watching me the way a king watches a blade he once kept chained, now rising, gleaming, unbound. “You sure about this?” he asks, voice low.

“I’ve never been sure of anything,” I say. “But I know what I’m done with.”

“And what’s that?”

I look him in the eyes, voice sharp, direct. “Being fucking used.” The words don’t explode. They settle into the walls, the floor, the marrow of my spine.

He nods once, walks to the desk at the edge of the room, and opens a drawer.

He pulls something out, a small, polished box.

The box is small. It feels heavy when Riven sets it down.

Not the kind of heavy that comes from physical weight.

It’s the kind that presses at the edges of the room, quiet and humming, like the moment before a lightning strike.

It’s carved from dark, likely ancient wood, almost black, the surface covered in symbols that shimmer faintly when the firelight hits them.

Something that looks like it was meant to be hidden.

He places it between us on the stone ledge beside the fire.

“Don’t touch it,” he says quietly, as if speaking too loudly might wake something.

I don’t. Not yet.

He flips the latch, which is a strange, twisting mechanism that doesn’t look mechanical, more like it responds to intention, and the box opens with a soft, breath-like exhale. Inside, nestled in deep black velvet, is a dagger.

Calling it that feels… wrong . This isn’t a weapon. It’s a fucking relic.

The blade is short. Curved like a crescent moon.

The steel is dark, almost smoky, etched from base to tip with symbols that match the ones on the box.

They are meant for purpose, not beauty. It is beautiful, in the way a predator is beautiful just before it strikes.

The hilt is wrapped in worn leather, darkened with age, smoothed by hands that probably haven’t belonged to mortals in a long time.

Riven watches me as I take it in. His voice is low. Controlled. “It’s called the Blade of Binding.”

My eyes don’t leave the dagger. “Yours?”

He nods. “Each of us has one. Carried from the beginning. They were made before names, before time, before the first veil dropped.”

I drag my gaze from the blade to his face. “What’s it for?”

His jaw flexes. He doesn’t speak right away. “To mark what’s ours,” he says finally. “To seal bonds. To make them real.”

“Like a blood oath.”

“No. Like a tether.” He kneels beside the fire, pulling the box closer. The flames behind him burn lower now, more focused like they’re listening. Like they know what’s about to happen.

“You said I had a choice,” I whisper. “That this wasn’t a claiming. That I wasn’t just yours.”

“You’re not,” he replies. “This isn’t about taking. It’s about choosing .” He picks up the blade with both hands, reverent, like he’s holding something sacred. When he offers it to me, hilt first, the moment stretches taut, waiting to snap. “This will bind you to me,” he says. “But not just me.”

I frown. “What do you mean?”

His voice is quieter now. Measured. “There’s a ritual for each of us. The blade, the blood, the bond. If you offer it willingly, if you draw it yourself, you’re not just opening a connection between us. You’re unlocking something older. You’re drawing the others in.”

I blink. “The others,” I repeat. “You mean…”

“Yes.” He doesn’t say their names. Doesn’t need to.

Vale. Elias. Niko.

“They’ll feel it,” he says. “Every time you choose. Every time you bleed for one of us, the rest will feel the pull. The threads tighten. The prophecy tightens.”

“And if I don’t?”

“You can walk away,” he says. “It’ll hurt. But it’s yours to decide. There’s no bond without blood. No connection without consent.” That word lands between us like an anchor.

Consent .

It’s about power. About willingly stepping into the storm. I look down at the blade.

The moment I reach for it, my skin prickles with awareness. It’s as if the dagger recognizes my hand, and it’s been waiting for me longer than I’ve been alive.

I wrap my fingers around the hilt. And the world shifts. Just slightly. Enough.

The world goes silent. Light bends. My body doesn’t move, but something inside me wakes up . The blood in my veins doesn’t feel like mine anymore. It feels ready .

Riven says nothing. He doesn’t guide me. Doesn’t instruct. Just waits because he knows. This part must be me .

I lift the blade. The weight of it is strange…balanced, familiar, like a memory that was once carved into my bones and forgotten.

I draw it across my palm. Clean. Precise. Blood wells instantly, bright and thick, curling along my wrist, dripping onto the floor between us.

Riven exhales, like a man who’s waited centuries to breathe. And the fire behind him erupts. The air snaps. The glass windows hum. Something ancient and deep shifts under my feet, like the bones of the house are groaning.

I feel them. The others.

Watching…waking.

The bond isn’t just forged. It rings . Like a bell struck in a cathedral where gods go to die.

Riven moves to me now, slowly, hand out, palm up.

I press mine to his. Blood to blood. And the second our skin meets, the bond tightens like a knot around my heart.

I gasp. War leaves scars. I just didn’t expect to want mine.

His eyes darken. We don’t speak. We feel. I step back first. Let the connection settle. Let the echo of whatever just happened roll through the house, through me, through us .

The blade still drips. The bond is sealed. But I’m not finished.

I meet his gaze. My voice is steady, and unshaking. “This was my choice.” He nods once, with understanding and acceptance of what I gave. And I say it again, not as a vow. But as a warning. “I choose the fire.”