The Riftweaver's Gambit Prologue: Fractured Threads

Prologue: Fractured Threads

Falling.

Not your typical type of falling. Not the kind where you trip on a flat surface and try to brush it off. Not even the kind where you’re shoved out a window on the 14th floor of a building.

No, this is a true sense of falling.

Like the ground beneath me never existed in the first place. Sinking into the endless void. Seems I’ve somehow managed to fall into The Rift yet again.

What even is the Rift? There’s no light, I can’t even say there’s darkness. There isn’t anything, at least nothing I can identify. Colors my eyes can’t perceive, shapes that shouldn’t be moving, and sounds that make me regret being born with ear drums.

“Sion Vale”

A voice, both incomprehensible yet impossible not to hear. I turn to face it, not that turning really did anything impactful. Then I saw it.

A vaguely human shaped shadow, its features changing so fast I can’t even describe it. Despite its lack of facial features, I can tell its staring daggers through me.

“Who are you?” I ask, despite not even being able to remember who I am at this point.

The creature's head tilts in the most unsettling way imaginable.

“The better question” it says, “is what are you?”

I can’t say I’m a fan of that question.

Instinctively, my fist tightens. My flesh pulses with a streak of soft blue light. I recognize this feeling but can’t remember why.

“Whoever I am, I’d very much like to leave now.”

The shadow let out a chuckle that sounded like a hundred glasses shattering.

“Yet you find yourself here. Again. What could that mean?”

Memories flash through my mind.

The sunny fields of my hometown, sunlight beaming down, warm and bright laughter.

Screams in all directions.

The sky tearing apart like paper.

I came back to my senses, barely able to remember what I’d just seen.

“Stay out of my head” I shouted.

“You don’t get it, do you?” The shadow leans in closer. “I’m not the one digging.”

The Rift loses stability. The horrible sounds shift into a single voice.

Rewrite the world

Remake it anew

The Rift chants these words over and over, the sound rattling my skull.

“What does that mean?” I screamed, but my voice was nowhere to be found.

The faceless shadow smirked, don’t ask me how I knew.

“The Threads bind us all, but you, Sion Vale, are the blade.”

“A tool. A weapon.”

“Do you think you can escape your fate?”

I step back.

Well, I certainly tried, but at that moment I remembered there was no ground.

Great, more falling.

My vision fades, as I lose consciousness I hear one final message.

“You will come to understand”.

I woke up in an alley. Well, it could be worse. It smells like regret, and by that, I mean it smells like Zephyris.

Oh, that’s bad.

Not the smell (which isn’t great either), but the fact that I recognize this place.

That should mean…I also know who I am.

But I don’t.

Combine that with my splitting headache and aching bones, very bad.

These don’t even feel like my clothes. A long black coat, tattered and full of holes. I reach into my pockets to see if I had anything useful before my little trip. I felt something odd in my innermost pocket.

A faintly pulsing blue crystal.

The second I look at it a vision comes, blurry and distant.

A burning city, crumbling into dust.

A throne. Empty.

A battlefield, torn apart by something impossibly strong.

And something sinister in the darkness, watching.

The vision ends, my heart pounding.

I don’t understand any of this.

But what I do know is that this thing is no joke.

It’s faint pulsing feels almost like my own, connected somehow.

Footsteps and voices, getting closer by the second.

“That’s him boss!”

A group of mercenaries, armed to the teeth. One of them is holding out a bounty poster.

My face.

Bounty: 10 million Argent.

The name below the drawing?

Sion Vale.

Just when things couldn’t get any worse. What a way to be reminded of my name, like it was something foreign. So forgotten that it felt like a glove that isn’t the right size.

Before I can continue my existential crisis, the bounty hunters start reaching for their weapons.

Two options lie before me.

Stand and Fight.

Run like hell.

Running sounds great right now.