CHAPTER 11: The Ruins Beneath the Fog
The fog had long since swallowed the sun by the time they reached the edge of the forest. Trees rose like blackened claws against the gray sky, twisted and gnarled, their bark split with rot. The air grew colder here—unnaturally so. Each step Arielle took seemed to pull her deeper into something ancient and wrong.
"Stay close," Riven said, without looking back.
"I know how to walk through a forest."
"This isn't a forest."
That silenced her.
Arielle wrapped her cloak tighter and followed, her ankle still sore from the pit fall earlier, though she refused to limp. She couldn't afford to look weak—not with him.
The trees were packed too tightly. The light barely touched the moss-covered floor. The air was damp and thick, clinging to her lungs like silk soaked in blood.
After what felt like hours, they came to a clearing.
And there it stood.
The ruins.
Broken columns jutted from the earth like ribs from a corpse. A collapsed archway led into a structure that had no roof, only a web of roots and ash-dusted stone. Black vines choked every surface, pulsing faintly with a rhythm that didn't match the wind.
Arielle's breath hitched.
She could feel it.
The residue of death. The echo of rituals long abandoned. This place had once been holy.
And now it was something else.
Riven stood motionless beside her, his eyes narrowed.
"This was a temple," she said. "I can still feel the sanctity under all the rot."
"Sanctity won't protect you here."
"Do you feel that?"
He didn't answer.
But she noticed how his shoulders shifted—like a predator sensing something beneath the surface.
They stepped forward.
The ground cracked beneath their boots. Arielle walked slowly, staff held tightly, magic pulsing faintly in her palms. The shrine they passed had been desecrated—runes scrawled over with crude sigils in a language she didn't recognize. Bones littered the edges of the path, broken and gnawed.
Something moved in the darkness.
She spun. "Did you see—"
A blur shot across the corner of her vision.
She braced.
Riven stood utterly still, head tilting slightly. The air around him… changed. Thinned. Like the forest itself was holding its breath.
A shape materialized ahead of them. A woman—or what once had been. Her body was elongated, wrong, stretched like melted wax. Her mouth was too wide, her eyes hollow and glowing. Her fingers scraped the ground, trailing shadows that writhed like serpents.
A wraith.
No—something worse.
A soul-bound aberration. Twisted by rage. Bound to the ruins.
Arielle's voice faltered. "That's not natural."
Riven stepped forward, slow and controlled. "It's not."
The creature shrieked and launched itself at them.
Arielle raised her staff to cast a barrier—too slow.
It was already midair.
And then—it stopped.
Frozen mid-lunge, a hand clutched its throat.
Riven had moved so fast, she hadn't even seen it.
He stood calmly, holding the creature by its neck, his expression unchanged. Unbothered. His fingers glowed faintly with black and crimson sigils. The wraith writhed, shrieked—but didn't escape.
His voice was ice.
"You are loud."
Arielle watched, stunned.
The demon prince didn't strike with fury. He didn't scream war cries or invoke dark gods.
He simply was.
Power, silent and lethal.
Riven leaned in. The creature shrieked louder.
He whispered something—ancient, in a language Arielle didn't know but could feel beneath her skin.
The creature convulsed.
Then turned to dust.
Arielle stumbled back.
He looked at her.
"More are coming."
As if summoned by his words, the trees screamed.
Figures rose from the roots—not just one or two, but dozens. Twisted bodies, hollow-eyed spirits clawing from the very earth. Once-people, now nothing but cursed hatred.
Arielle raised her staff. "I'll cast a ward!"
"Don't."
"What—"
"They're drawn to divine light."
He stepped forward, slow and deliberate.
And then the fog moved.
No—not fog.
Him.
His aura bled outward, black mist coiling around his feet, crawling up the walls, clinging to the broken shrine. The very air trembled.
Riven's runes lit with eerie crimson, crawling across his hands, up his neck, under his collar. His voice echoed—but it wasn't loud.
It was final.
"Return."
The spirits halted.
Then screamed.
They tried to run—but it was too late. His power exploded outward in a pulse of silence.
And they fell.
All of them.
Disintegrated. Ashes in the wind.
Silence returned.
Riven stood in the center of the clearing, his coat untouched, his breathing steady. The mist recoiled from him like prey from a predator.
Arielle could barely breathe.
That wasn't a man.
That wasn't something born.
That was made.
He turned to her, eyes glowing faintly, cold as space.
"You're shaking."
"I—"
"Breathe."
She did. Slowly.
"You fought like that," she whispered. "Without flinching."
He walked past her, as if the massacre was nothing. "They weren't worth fear."
She stared at the burned-out clearing. "That was… you didn't even break a sweat."
He paused.
"Should I have?"
She didn't answer.
He looked at her again, and something in her twisted.
Because she saw the truth in that moment. All the arguing, the sarcasm, the quiet restraint he wore—it wasn't just attitude.
It was control.
Control over something terrifying.
He hadn't shown her who he was before.
Not really.
That… that was power.
And he hadn't even needed to raise his voice.
She sank to sit on a broken stone, breathing heavily.
She mocked him, called him names. Threw holy salt at him. But he did kill her, even when he could.
Perhaps it's because of the bond but still.
A pause.
Silence until she broke it.
"… I mocked you, Why didn't you kill me?"
He turned his head slowly.
Hazel eyes met hers, bright with quiet fire.
Silence.
He didn't answer her immediately.
"Because of the bond, He said flatly like it was nothing to him, Then he turned his gaze straight." Whatever hurts you gets to me, that I have no power over,"
That was what he said but still.
What kind of girl would slap a prince of hell… and live.Was this bond really what stopped him from killing her.
She blinked.
Then—God help her—laughed.
Just a little.
They made camp beneath the broken arch.
Arielle built a small fire. Riven watched her, sharp and still.
When she finally spoke, her voice was quieter.
"You were terrifying today."
"I know."
"I mean that as a compliment."
"Good. I took it that way."
She glanced at him from across the flames.
"You scare me," she admitted." What came from you was too dark, so much void.... unholy."
A beat.
Then silence.
He lokked away.
"You should be scared."He replied coldly.
Though she was hate but she hated that she's not more scared than she should be and not for the right reasons.
"But you don't scare me, enough"
He met her gaze this time, something dark dancing in them." You will be," A beat." ... Eventually,"
She pulled her cloak tighter.
Everywhere silent again until she broke it.
"Was that… the full extent of your power?"
He looked into the fire.
"No."
She shivered. Not from cold but she tried not to let him see it.
Silence stretched.
Then she asked, softly: "What's it like?"
He turned to her.
"To be a monster?"
"To hold that much… darkness. And still sit quietly by a fire."
He looked into the flames for a long moment before answering.
He didn't answer at first, a few seconds passed and she thought he wouldn't say anything but then he broke the silence.
" it's Lonely,"
That surprised her.
Not the truth of it.
But the fact that he'd said it at all.
Her eyes searched his face. His perfect, cold, unreadable face.
"Do you ever feel anything?"
"Rarely."
She nodded slowly.
"Do I scare you?" she asked.
He didn't answer right away.
But when he did, his voice was quiet.
"You confuse me."
She didn't know why that hurt more.
And when she lay down that night, eyes on the broken stone above her, she didn't dream of kisses or forbidden touches.
She dreamt of a man with fire in his eyes and ash on his hands.
And the way he never raised his voice.
Even when death surrounded him.
Even when she was watching.
Even when she realized—
He was everything her Order had trained her to destroy.
And she was… falling into the fire.