Boundless Evolution: The Summoning Beast
Chapter 85: Riven

Chapter 85: Riven

A/N: I don’t do this often but I couldn’t help but give them credit. Big thank you to FunCat for suggesting and inspiring me to make this change in the story. Please enjoy! I know the story got a lot more fun for me now.

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"Tch! Pathetic..."

"You are useless... as a human and also as a beast..."

"Look at how you act..."

"You aren’t a person... nor do you qualify to be a weapon either."

Ash’s eyes snapped open.

Or so it felt.

He looked around.

He was somewhere else. Somewhere he’d never seen, never even dreamed of...

No sky.

No wind.

No frost.

There was nothing. Yet somehow, there was shape. A strange topography of shifting black and gray, like shadows pretending to be terrain. The ground beneath his feet felt soft, like mist pressed into form. Faint flickers of something- light? memory? - danced at the very edges of his vision, vanishing the moment he tried to focus.

The place that didn’t follow the logic of the Aegaryn or Terranis- because this was neither. It was not forest nor ruin, not battlefield nor memory.

This place didn’t feel real.

But it strangely felt like it belonged to him.

Ash didn’t know if he was dying.

But he knew he wasn’t alive either.

Everything in him felt heavy. Still. Numb.

He took a breath- or maybe a thought of breath- and the memories came flooding back.

The cold... the explosion... the roar of the tyrant that he had so brazenly challenged... the frozen tendrils striking him... The last breath that didn’t come. And then...

That voice.

He had never heard it before. And yet- it had come from inside him.

It was his voice.

But laced with venom. With judgement. With an ancient, worn anger that had been growing for a long time.

At that moment, that same voice spoke again- closer now.

"Pathetic, isn’t it? The way you froze... The way you let it crawl up your spine and take your limbs like they didn’t belong to you anymore. You didn’t even scream at the end. Just laid there... waiting. Like all those other spirits who died with names no one remembers."

"You call that dying with pride?"

Ash froze.

The voice rang out like a curse but it became even clearer to him. It was indeed his own voice. Twisted. Hardened.

His ears twitched instinctively, scanning for the source, but the space was too strange- no echo, no direction, no scent. Only that voice, hanging in the air like a blade.

He looked around slowly, confusion tightening around his chest. His claws curled without realising, eyes narrowing as he tried to make sense of this place- this voice.

Where was he?

His heartbeat quickened. Not out of fear, but disorientation.

What was this?

And who-no, what- had just spoken in his voice?

The void stirred, and from the center, it appeared.

A carbon copy of himself if Ash had been carved from smoke and stone. Its fur was wilder, his muscles leaner, strung with scars etched like claw marks from battles long forgotten.

Eyes like molten amber. Shoulders like iron tension. Every breath was a warning,

But not of danger.

Of survival.

Ash’s mouth opened before his mind caught up.

"Who are you?" he asked, the words raw with disbelief.

The figure gave a humourless grin- just the twitch of a lip, more instinct than emotion.

"I’m the part of you that never forgot how to crawl."

"Riven... Do you remember me?" it asked.

Ash turned slowly and blinked. Confused.

There was recognition in the voice- but not in his mind.

He searched the figure’s eyes, his stance, the scars across his body, the way he stood like a blade ready to be drawn. Everything felt familiar but he could not put a finger on it.

"I... don’t exactly..." Ash admitted, the words raw.

The figure scoffed.

"You’ve already started to forget this part of you? Gods... how out of sync with your soul are you?"

He turned away slightly as disappointment filled his frame and the silence stretched for a moment.

Then, glancing with a sharp glint in his eyes, he muttered, "Let’s see if this jogs your memory."

The shadow twisted.

And then shrank.

With a ripple, the lean, beastly form melted into something smaller. Rounder. Bare.

A boy.

A child.

Ash stared, stunned... The four-year-old version of himself stood barefoot in the dark- dirt-streaked face, bruises blooming along his arms, one eye swollen from a beating. His small fists were clenched. His ribs poked through skin too thin for his age.

And suddenly- it all clicked.

Ash was stunned into silence.

The child simply stared for a moment with its intense amber eyes that narrowed with ancient weight.

"I was born the first time you refused to die. Do you remember District 7? That winter night when the orphanage keeper sold you to the debt house?"

Riven’s voice grew quieter, darker.

"You ran away. Straight back to him. Thought he’d protect you. And when he found out, he shredded your ribs and left you to rot in the pit."

Riven paused, his gaze steady and hard.

"That night... when your face hit the dirt and you couldn’t breathe, when your chest felt like it was caving in and your vision blurred from the pain... that was when I was born. Not in strength. Not in rage. But in refusal. Refusal to die. Refusal to vanish. The desire and sheer instinct to survive."

Ash swallowed hard, his voice barely above a whisper.

"I remember now... I remember that night... crawling out of that pit."

Riven’s expression didn’t change. But his silence said enough.

"Then why?" he growled, "Why were you lying on that floor like a corpse waiting to be collected?"

Ash gritted his mental teeth.

"I couldn’t move-"

"You didn’t move," Riven snapped, "There’s a difference."

He stepped closer, walking forward with his little steps before tugging hard at Ash’s neck, bringing his head down to his.

"That wolf pack tore through our skin, yet you still crawled through their fangs and tore out their throat."

"That bastard farmer stabbed us in the back... You still got up."

"Those summoners left us for dead on the battlefield. You still got up."

Each sentence was a drumbeat.

"Even during the ritual... you fought for your dear life. Back then, when the odds there were worse off than now, you displayed a far more paramount display of wanting to live."

Each memory lit up like scars on Ash’s soul.

Riven leaned in close. There was no cruelty in his eyes. Only something fierce. Something ancient.

"I’m not here to save you," he said.

"I am you."

"Remeber where I emerged from," he said, "I am what you become when there’s no one left to fight for you."

"When the world wants you to die, I’m the part that spits blood and laughs."

Ash trembled.

He didn’t know if it was fear.

Or recognition.

"You’re not supposed to win," Riven said, his voice lowering, "You’re supposed to survive... by any means necessary."

He then pointed his hand which had transformed into a claw, to Ash’s chest.

"And as long as I exist, you do not get to die like that... Not on a floor... Not in chains... Not to some cold-blooded bastard pretending to be a god."

Ash tried to speak- but guilt came first.

"I was... I was tired..."

Riven didn’t scold him. Instead, he crouched beside him as he let Ash go.

"I know."

Ash blinked.

Riven’s voice was different now. Rough, but not hard. Almost... gentle.

"That’s why I’m here. You broke. I’m what’s left."

He placed a hand on Ash’s shadowed shoulder now.

"And even if you lose every scrap of aether in your body..."

"Even if the whole world wants you gone..."

"I’ll still drag your broken ass forward. Inch by bloody inch."

Ash shook.

"How was I supposed to fight that thing?"

"That was never the question," Riven said, "It was supposed to be why,"

Ash shook again.

Silence fell as he contemplated what Riven meant by saying that.

"I am not saying your ’how’ was insignificant," Riven began to explain after sighing, "but it was far too significant."

"You focused far too much on how to beat it that you forgot to remember why you have to beat it," Riven continued, "That’s why when your strategy failed, you completely lost yourself."

Click!

In that instant, Ash felt it. A wave of realisation washed over him. That was exactly it.

The hum beneath the dark. The old pulse of breath and instinct. Of grit and blood and fire beneath the frost.

He had got himself into a place where he had almost lost everything. But now it was revealed and he was not going to continue and let it be lost.

He was not giving up.

Not yet.

"Get up," Riven said again, now transformed into a shadow hyena and rising to his full height.

His eyes burned like a rising sun.

"You want power? You want revenge? You want to protect them?"

"Then fight like you’ve got something to lose."

Ash didn’t move.

But inside the void, something shifted.

A flicker.

A crack.

A spark of shadow.

Riven’s figure remained silent now, fading slightly, but still there. Watching.

"I’ll be here," he said. "Always."

Ash’s eyes fluttered.

Not in the void.

In the real world.

His body ached, heavy and numb, but there was breath in his lungs again. Cold air stung the inside of his chest as his senses returned, sluggish and raw.

Somewhere distant—echoes of movement. Mist. Footsteps. Voices.

He was awake.