RAVEN'S GAMBIT

The void between moments. A place without time. A place between fates.

Across infinite realms and timelines, death was coming.

A dying space pilot hurtled through decompression.

A betrayed wizard felt the poison burn his veins.

A young woman screamed as the mob’s torch reached her feet.

A soldier reached for a grenade that already exploded.

A monster hunter bled out on cathedral stone.

A wight faced final banishment.

A ranger, crushed under rubble, closed their eyes for the last time.

And then… they vanished.

________________________________________

The Citadel.

A divine plane that defied logic. Floating towers curved like eagle feathers. Stormclouds danced with starlight across a sky too wide for sanity. Mountains upside down. Waterfalls flowing upward. At the center: a great circle of obsidian and spiritwood, cracked by age, pulsing with power.

The air shimmered—and they appeared. More than sixty beings. Sixty-nine to be exact. Some human. Some not. Some divine, undead, mechanical, cursed. Warriors, thinkers, dreamers, villains, heroes.

Each one collapsed. Not from exhaustion, but awe.

A presence filled the air like thunder in the chest.

A voice—deep, rich, impossible to place—echoed through the stone and sky.

“You were to die. But I said no.”

Feathers burst from the air like thrown knives. Lightning cracked in spirals.

From nowhere and everywhere at once, he appeared—Raven.

Skin painted like war. Eyes like suns. A cloak of black feathers. His smile: cruel, warm, amused, knowing.

“I am Raven. Some call me trickster. Some call me god. Some call me liar. All are correct.”

“You were about to die. I took you before the moment came. So, your realities remain intact, unchanged. Your destinies… on pause.”

Kneeling came not from force, but presence. The weight of divinity, the echo of a thousand mythologies—all pressed like gravity on their backs.

Some resisted. A few cowboys twitched. A ghoul clenched its jaw. A cleric muttered a prayer. But even they did not rise. To stand against Raven here would be like screaming against a hurricane.

Raven continued:

“You are not dead. You are… rerouted.”

He swept his hand wide. An arched gateway of living flame formed behind him. Within: mist, flashes of lava, the sound of mocking laughter, the gleam of a spiral staircase.

“That, my little misfits… is White Plume Mountain.”

“A place of puzzles. Of pain. Of purpose. There, in that forged mountain of madness, you may earn what I offer.”

He raised one finger. “A second chance.”

Another. “A true destiny.”

A third. “Or the death you deserve.”

“Enter the mountain, together or apart. Survive it, and you walk the multiverse again—unchained, reborn. Fail... and your deaths continue, as scheduled.”

He leaned forward. Voice low, seductive, dangerous:

“You will not return to who you were. You will become what you might have been.”

Lightning surged. The gateway flared.

“Now go, little flocks. Make me laugh.”

________________________________________

TO BE CONTINUED...