Silence.
That was the first thing Riven D’Arkael noticed.
Not the kind earned after a clean kill. Not the quiet satisfaction of a mission completed without a trace. Not even the stillness of a city at dawn, where life merely paused before rising again.
This silence was… wrong.
It felt hollow.
Artificial.
Like the world itself had stopped breathing.
Riven’s mind surfaced before his body did. Awareness came first—sharp, precise, immediate. Then sensation followed.
Cold stone beneath his fingers.
Dry air brushing against his skin.
A faint metallic taste lingering at the back of his throat.
His eyes snapped open.
And the silence shattered.
Wind roared violently past his ears as if the world had suddenly remembered motion. Distant echoes followed—steel clashing, voices shouting, something collapsing far away. The noise came all at once, overwhelming, chaotic.
Riven moved instantly.
He rolled to the side, body low, hand already reaching for his wrist—
There.
The hidden blade.
Intact.
His breathing slowed in an instant, control returning as if it had never left. Muscles loosened—but not fully. Never fully.
He rose into a crouch.
Still.
Silent.
Alive.
“…This isn’t my world.”
The realization came not with panic—but with certainty.
Riven lifted his gaze.
The sky above him stretched endlessly, deeper than any he had ever seen. It wasn’t just vast—it felt heavy, like it pressed down on everything beneath it. Clouds drifted unnaturally fast, twisting and thinning in ways that defied the wind’s direction.
Denser.
Charged.
Every breath filled his lungs more than it should.
His eyes narrowed slightly.
Not poison.
Not altitude.
“…Something else.”
He pushed himself up slowly, senses expanding outward.
The environment revealed itself piece by piece.
Ruins.
But not ordinary ruins.
Massive stone structures lay broken around him, their scale far exceeding anything built in his former world. Pillars the width of towers lay shattered across the ground. Walls, once imposing, now stood like jagged teeth clawing at the sky.
Nature had begun reclaiming it—but not completely.
That was the first anomaly.
Vines crept across stone, yes—but inconsistently. Some areas were heavily overgrown, while others remained untouched, as if something had prevented nature from fully taking hold.
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Chronicles of the Veiled Assassin
FanfictionRiven D'Arkael was a weapon forged in silence-an elite assassin who lived and breathed the shadows. But when death should have claimed him, fate had other plans. Thrown into a vast and unfamiliar world-one far larger, far more dangerous than his own...
