Chapter 228: The Dead Pass On, But The Living Suffer

(A few seconds later, Riven’s POV)

By the time Riven regained consciousness, Sky-Cleaver had already retracted around his waist, its ancient blade washed clean of every trace of blood beneath the relentless downpour.

One of his eyes remained badly swollen from the beating Gary had given him, while bruises covered much of his body as he stood alone beneath the rain and stared across the Northwatch Grounds in complete confusion.

’Huh...? Where am I?’

Riven wondered, as he struggled to remember what had happened.

The last thing he clearly remembered was Gary.

He remembered being beaten into the ground, remembered his friends being overwhelmed by the Aureate Second Years, and vaguely remembered Cyrus ordering Gary to keep him conscious so that he could be humiliated before House Aureate.

However, everything after that moment was simply gone.

’Wasn’t I supposed to be tied up? Why am I still standing upright and free?’

Riven wondered, as he slowly turned his head and looked around, only to realize that there was nobody standing anywhere near him.

The Northwatch Grounds, which had been filled with students only moments ago, now appeared eerily empty, with the only thing catching Riven’s attention being a faint trail of blood flowing from behind a nearby boulder.

Following it with his gaze, Riven noticed a large crimson pool several meters away, partially concealed behind the boulder as the heavy rain slowly carried thin streams of red through the surrounding mud.

’Blood?’

Riven thought, as an uncomfortable heaviness immediately settled within his chest while his gaze followed the thin stream of crimson water flowing around the edge of the nearby boulder.

He hesitantly moved closer, his boots splashing through the increasingly red rainwater until he finally stepped around the massive stone and saw what was lying upon the other side.

"H-Hic...."

Riven’s breath caught painfully inside his throat as for a moment it felt like his lungs had forgotten how to breathe in air, while every coherent thought disappeared from his mind beneath the sight waiting before him.

THUMP!

His heart slammed violently against his chest.

There, lying motionless upon the rain-soaked ground, was Mary... his Mary.

Her familiar face remained unnaturally still beneath the pouring rain, while blood surrounded her body and flowed steadily into the nearby mud from the horrific wound that had torn through her throat.

Her arms were gone.

Both had been brutally severed near the wrists, leaving her hands lying several feet away from the rest of her body as the rain continued washing blood from their pale fingers.

"H-Haa...."

Riven tried to inhale, yet the breath entered his lungs in broken fragments as his swollen eyes moved desperately between Mary’s face and the mutilated body beneath it.

For several seconds, his mind couldn’t understand what his eyes were showing him.

It was Mary.

He recognized her face instantly, recognized the familiar hair now plastered against her skin by the rain and yet everything else about the sight was so horrifyingly wrong that Riven’s mind simply refused to accept that the body belonged to her.

’No....’

Riven thought, as his heartbeat began pounding harder inside his ears.

THUMP! THUMP!

’No, that’s not....’

His knees trembled.

The surrounding Northwatch Grounds seemed to disappear from his awareness as his vision narrowed entirely around Mary’s motionless body, while even the thunder rumbling across the heavens gradually became distant beneath the violent pounding inside his skull.

"Mary...?"

Riven muttered, although her name escaped his throat so weakly that it was almost swallowed by the rain.

There was no response.

"Mary?"

He called again, louder this time, as something desperate began creeping into his voice while he stumbled towards her.

His foot slipped against the blood-soaked mud.

SPLASH!

Riven crashed onto his knees beside her, barely noticing the pain shooting through his already battered body as both hands immediately reached towards Mary’s shoulders.

"Mary! Hey.... Mary, wake up!"

He shook her, although he already knew that she was dead.

As although logic told him that she was not going to answer, emotion over-rode logic at this moment, and made him act unlike himself.

However, despite his best efforts, Mary’s body simply moved limply with the motion.

Riven froze for half a second before shaking her again, harder this time, as though enough force could somehow drag life back into the body beneath his hands.

"Come on.... Come on, Mary, wake up!"

Nothing.

"Mary!"

His voice cracked.

"MARY!"

Riven screamed her name as he continued shaking her, his fingers tightening desperately around her shoulders while the horrible emptiness in her expression remained unchanged.

"H-Hic.... Fuck.... Mary, please...."

Riven’s breathing collapsed into short, broken gasps as he released one shoulder and immediately pressed trembling fingers against the side of her severed neck, searching frantically for a pulse despite the enormous wound beneath his hand.

However, naturally, he couldn’t find one.

"No.... No, wait...."

He shifted his fingers.

Nothing.

"Come on...."

Riven pressed harder, desperately moving his hand across her neck as though he had simply chosen the wrong place.

"Come on, where the fuck is it?"

There was nothing beneath his fingers.

Riven moved his trembling hand beneath Mary’s nose, waiting for the faintest warmth of escaping breath to touch his skin, before lowering his ear towards her mouth when even that failed.

"H-Haa...."

His own ragged breathing was all he could hear.

"No...."

Riven whispered, as something inside his chest seemed to tighten until his heart itself felt trapped beneath an unbearable weight.

"No, no, no.... Mary, please."

He grabbed her again.

"Please wake up."

Riven shook her harder, his desperation becoming increasingly frantic as tears gathered within his swollen eyes and immediately disappeared among the rainwater streaming down his face.

"Please!"

Her body remained limp.

"FUCKING WAKE UP!"

Riven screamed until his damaged throat burned, yet even after his voice disappeared into the storm, Mary’s eyes remained closed as the rain continued striking against her lifeless face.

And slowly, despite every desperate excuse his mind attempted to create, the truth began forcing itself upon him.

Mary was dead.

The realization struck harder than any blow Gary had landed upon him.

"H-Hic...."

Riven’s chest convulsed as he attempted to breathe, yet the air seemed to stop halfway down his throat while something painfully heavy wrapped around his heart and squeezed until he genuinely wondered whether it might stop beating.

He had lost her.

The thought felt strangely impossible because Riven had never properly understood what Mary was to him in the first place.

Ever since meeting her again, she had been a question he couldn’t answer, a familiar presence attached to memories that seemed to disappear whenever he reached too deeply for them, while some buried part of himself continued reacting to her in ways his conscious mind couldn’t explain.

Yet now, kneeling beside her corpse, Riven suddenly understood the magnitude of that connection through the unbearable emptiness her death left behind.

It hurt.

Minerva, it fucking hurt.

The pain didn’t resemble the injuries covering his body, because there was nowhere Riven could touch it and nothing he could do to make it lessen.

It existed somewhere beneath his ribs, crushing against his heart with every beat while an inexplicable sense of loss spread throughout his body until even keeping himself upright became difficult.

Images began forcing themselves through his mind as he remembered Mary laughing during their journey from Ashfang, the strangely loving way she sometimes looked towards him, and every occasion where she had spoken as though there was something more she desperately wanted him to someday become.

There should have been so much more between them, perhaps more conversations and laughter shared together, or even an entire life that Riven had never allowed himself to seriously imagine.

Yet now there was nothing.

Whatever desires she carried for them had died with her, and the realization that he was never going to hear her voice again suddenly became so unbearable that Riven bent forward over her body.

"AAAAAAARGHHHH!"

A broken howl tore from somewhere deep inside his chest as he screamed towards the ground, his fingers digging violently into the mud while tears continued pouring from his eyes.

"WHY?!"

Riven screamed, as he slammed one fist against the earth.

THUD!

"WHY THE FUCK DID YOU HAVE TO DIE?!"

THUD!

His fist struck the ground again, splashing bloodied rainwater across his clothes while the grief inside him searched desperately for somewhere to go.

"I NEVER EVEN GOT TO GIVE YOU THE FLOWERS, I NEVER GOT TO TELL YOU HOW MUCH YOU MEANT TO ME!

AFTER MY MOTHER, YOU WERE THE MOST PRECIOUS TO ME!"

Riven shouted, as his voice cracked apart beneath the words.

"I DID NOT EVEN TALK TO YOU ONCE IN THE ACADEMY!"

That hurt more than anything else.

Mary had spent weeks looking at him as though the person standing before her was someone she had already known, while Riven had repeatedly tried to keep his distance as the Dawnriver heir.

And in doing so, he had lost his chance to talk to her forever.

"I’M SORRY!"

Riven howled, as he bent over her body and pressed his trembling forehead against hers.

"I’M FUCKING SORRY, MARY!"

His shoulders shook violently while he remained there, his tears falling freely onto her face before disappearing beneath the rain.

"I should’ve trusted you...."

Riven muttered, as his voice finally collapsed into something barely audible.

"I thought I would someday.... I just—"

His hand rose towards Mary’s cheek, gently brushing away several strands of soaked hair that had fallen across her face.

"Please...."

Riven whispered, as his thumb trembled against her cold skin.

"Please just wake up and tell me."

Nothing answered him.

KABOOOOOM!

Thunder exploded across the heavens, briefly illuminating Mary beneath the storm as Riven remained hunched over her body with his forehead pressed against hers.

For several seconds afterward, he couldn’t bring himself to move.

Then his swollen gaze gradually drifted away from Mary’s face and towards the horrifying wound across her throat.

Something changed inside him.

The grief remained every bit as suffocating, although another emotion began crawling through it as Riven finally stopped looking at Mary as someone who had simply died.

Those wounds had been made by someone.

Someone had murdered her.

"Who...?"

Riven muttered, as his trembling fingers slowly curled against Mary’s cheek.

His jaw tightened.

"Who did this to you?"

Riven carefully lowered her head back against the ground before rising unsteadily onto his feet, his entire body still trembling while his hand reached towards Sky-Cleaver around his waist.

His gaze snapped across the Northwatch Grounds.

"WHO?!"

Riven screamed, as grief and fury tore through his voice together.

"WHO THE FUCK DID THIS TO HER?!"

Sky-Cleaver expanded within his hand.

SHING!

"COME OUT!"

Riven spun around wildly, searching the rain for whoever could possibly have done this while whatever remained of his usual noble composure completely disappeared beneath the rage consuming him.

"I’LL FUCKING KILL YOU!"

His furious gaze swept towards the Northern Forest.

Then Riven finally saw them.

Bodies lay scattered everywhere near the distant edge of the forest, their blood mixing with the rain while several mangled figures remained difficult to identify from where he stood.

Riven’s rage faltered beneath the sheer confusion of the sight.

"What the fuck...?"

He muttered, as his grip around Sky-Cleaver loosened slightly.

His gaze shifted towards the center of the Northwatch Grounds, where a large patch of earth had been completely blackened and two familiar figures lay motionless beside it.

Gary Ironveil and Cyrus.

"What the hell happened here?"

Riven whispered, as the horrifying scale of whatever had occurred finally began settling over him before he retracted Sky-Cleaver and broke into a frantic sprint towards them.