Chapter 3 - Bound in Blood

According to Draven customs, when you turn five, you become truly Draven.Not because you’ve earned it. Because you’re claimed.
The stone beneath Riku’s feet was colder than usual. The walk down to the Binding Chamber was long, and quiet. No guards. No servants. Just Riku, Amon, Mother, and Father.
She was still thinking about the duel. About how the blade felt in her hand. How Amon looked at her after she won.And how he hasn’t looked at her the same since.
They reached a door that pulsed with veins of black light living obsidian, carved with shifting sigils. It opened not with a creak, but a breath, as if the chamber itself recognized blood that belonged.
Inside, the air was heavy with silence. Torches burned with violet flame. The walls were etched with the names of the bloodbound generations of Draven children sealed in stone. Some names glowed faintly. Others had cracked.
At the center stood the Altar of Oaths a sharp, gleaming slab of black crystal that reflected nothing.
Riku stepped forward, small against the looming darkness. Her hands were steady. Her heartbeat wasn’t.
Laziryn stood beside her, lifting a ceremonial dagger with a silver hilt shaped like a serpent. She didn’t smile. She never smiled during rituals.
“Your blood, sealed in stone,” the Queen said. “Your soul, offered to legacy.”
Vaeroth raised his cup. “If the blood is ever broken, the soul fractures. You are not just our daughter now. You are Draven.”
A cut. A sharp sting. Red bloomed against her palm.
Her blood dripped onto the altar, where it hissed and sank into the obsidian like rain into ash. The black crystal trembled. For a moment, the flames dimmed.
A flicker passed through the chamber quick and wrong. Like the shadows had bowed.
Amon flinched. Barely. But Riku saw it.
When the altar stilled, her blood was gone. In its place: a sliver of dark stone, now embedded with a glowing emerald thread. Her name etched itself into the wall -Riku Draven- and beneath it, a symbol none of them recognized.
Vaeroth stared at it a moment longer than he should have.Laziryn said nothing, but her eyes narrowed.
Amon stepped back into the shadows.
Riku turned and bowed, as tradition demanded.
But as they walked away, she could feel it. Not the magic. Not the weight of the ritual. Her family's silence.
And the way it felt heavier than the blood she'd just given.As they ascended the spiraling stairs back toward the throne wing, the silence followed like a second shadow.
Riku looked down at her palm. The cut was gone, but she could still feel the warmth where the blood had touched the altar. Not warmth like fire more like being watched.
She looked up at her father’s back, then to her mother’s calm, distant expression. Their footsteps echoed in perfect rhythm, regal and slow.
“…What was that symbol?” she asked, her voice small but clear.
Vaeroth didn’t slow. “It is not yet your concern,” he replied, smooth as glass.
Laziryn didn’t answer at all. She only glanced at her daughter briefly, then forward again.
Amon said nothing, though Riku noticed the way his jaw tensed. Just for a moment.
They kept walking.
Riku stared at the floor, then back toward the chamber doors fading behind her.
She wasn’t supposed to know everything.But she did know the records. The old tomes. The sacred texts, copied by hand and kept in locked vaults she’d read in secret more than once.
She had seen every symbol etched into Draven history.That one wasn’t there.
They didn’t know.
They weren’t saying it but they didn’t know what it meant.
And that, more than anything, made her feel cold.

(Amon’s POV)Amon stood in the upper corridor long after the others had dispersed.
The Binding Chamber doors had closed. The flicker of unnatural light behind them had vanished. The symbol the one etched beneath her name still lingered in his mind.
He hadn’t seen it before.And Amon had studied more Draven records than most priests ever touched.
He told himself it didn’t matter.Not really.
She was just a child. His sister. A prodigy, yes, but still a child. What happened today was… a fluke. A curiosity.
And yet.
The look Father gave the altar. The slight narrowing of Mother’s eyes. The way the shadows themselves had moved when her blood touched the stone...
He crossed his arms. Tight. His jaw clenched.
Riku didn’t flinch. Not once. Not when the blade cut her. Not when the chamber shook. Not when the unknown symbol carved itself into stone.
When he was her age, he had cried.
He still remembered that.He doubted she even noticed.
Amon stared down the hall where she had walked moments ago, her small figure disappearing beneath the weight of their legacy.
He didn’t hate her.He wasn’t supposed to.
But in that moment, he realized something sharp and unspoken had settled in his chest.
Something he wouldn’t name.
(Riku’s POV)That night, when the halls had gone still and the torches dimmed, Riku sat alone on her bedroom floor with a candle and a stolen scrap of parchment.
The glow flickered over her ink-stained fingers, her small brow furrowed in concentration.
She was trying to remember the symbol.
It had appeared only for a second sharp, angular, foreign. It wasn’t in any of the books. Not the ancient grimoires, not the lineage texts, not even the obscure magical theory scrolls she’d read in secret. She knew every symbol. This one didn’t belong.
Her tongue pressed to the corner of her mouth as she sketched, scratched it out, tried again. Lines wrong. Curves too shallow. Start over.
She had to get it right.
Not because anyone told her to.Because no one else would.
Because no one else cared to.
And because if they didn’t know what it meant…
Then she would find out.
Riku stared down at the half-finished mark, the ink still glistening.
“I won’t forget,” she whispered.
Then she blew out the candle, tucked the parchment under her pillow, and climbed into bed.
Outside her window, the sky cracked with silent lightning.