Riven's breath hitched as the world crumbled.
The battlefield dissolved into motes of dying light, and for a single heartbeat, there was silence—pure and total.
Then—
A surge.
His mana heart detonated with force from deep within his chest—not in destruction, but expansion. The three rings orbiting it—already vast, forged from abyssal will and fire-touched fury—shuddered as the fourth began to form.
Lines of fire carved through the space around his mana heart, searing a spiral path through the dark void of his inner self. Shadows bled from the edges of each mark, coiling and tightening with power.
The fourth ring was not smooth.
It was jagged. Wild. Formed from fracture and flame.
Where the first three had taken shape with control, this one erupted with violence—born of war, of death, of the thousand lives taken in the battlefield trial. Every scream, every burst of mana, every divine clash echoed in its forming.
