The sky bled like a wounded god.
Smoke curled upward in thick coils as flames consumed the outer research compound. Sirens shrieked, mixing with human screams and the monstrous howls of something not from this world. The earth trembled as another impact shook the facility—deeper, closer.
Shen Riven stood at the edge of the breach, barefoot and still, watching the world unravel.
Above him, the heavens had torn open—a jagged rift of crimson and void. Lightning arced through its core like veins pulsing with malevolence. From within spilled creatures too twisted for dreams. Limbs where there should be none. Faces with eyes that didn't blink. Flesh that didn't die fast enough.
The monsters fell like rain.
Behind him, the compound burned.
Riven didn't move. He didn't flinch. He simply watched the world begin to look like what it had always felt like to him—hell.
---
A nearby scream drew his attention. A beast—bulbous and wet with glistening plates—ripped a guard's spine out like peeling string from meat. Another fell upon a fleeing scientist, devouring him before he hit the floor.
Riven's lips twitched. Not in fear.
In silence.
They were the same guards who once strapped him to surgical tables. The same researchers who turned his body into an experiment.
He stepped over the bodies without pause.
---
In the dim corridor near Sector D, he found him—Dr. Xian, hunched against the wall, chest heaving with blood-soaked breaths. One leg was mangled, the other burned. His eyes widened as they met Riven's.
"S-Subject Seventeen…" he rasped.
No name. Just the number they gave him.
"You survived," the doctor wheezed. "You're… still alive."
Riven said nothing.
Xian coughed violently, crimson spilling over his chin. "Listen… inside my coat. Take it. It's yours now."
Riven crouched and reached inside the man's shredded coat, withdrawing a rolled scroll of dark leather, sealed with a deep red glyph that shimmered like fresh blood. The moment he touched it, heat surged into his palm, crawling beneath his skin, tracing through his veins like fire and hunger combined.
It felt… alive.
---
He unfurled a sliver of it, just enough to read the name inscribed in ink that shimmered like molten iron:
> Blood Qi Manual – Crimson Vein Variant
Below it, maddening script danced like it resisted stillness.
> A parasitic cultivation art born from the Crimson World. Draws power from absorbed life essence.
Warning: Causes irreversible mutation of the soul root. Will induce blood madness if user is unprepared.
Do not initiate binding without resonance. Unauthorized contact results in death.
Riven felt it — the resonance.
A low thrum vibrating in his bones, as though the scroll had finally found its vessel. As though it had been waiting for him.
Xian smiled through the pain. "You were always the only one it reacted to. The only one it wanted."
"What is it?" Riven asked, voice low.
"A martial path from the other side," the doctor whispered. "The Crimson World doesn't just send monsters… it sends power."
"Power that feeds on death."
"Yes," Xian gasped. "Power made for someone like you."
There was a long silence between them. Riven stared into the man's eyes.
"You knew what I was. What I could become. And still, you kept me in chains."
"I… had orders…"
"So do I," Riven murmured.
His hand moved like a whisper. The doctor's neck snapped with a wet pop.
---
Riven stood.
The scroll pulsed in his hand. Not threatening. Not demanding. Welcoming.
He had never felt Qi before—never truly. His body had always failed the compatibility tests. The doctors said he lacked the spiritual harmony for cultivation.
But this… this wasn't spiritual. It was instinctual. Savage. Real.
The Crimson Vein didn't require peace. It required blood.
He left the corridor behind as the facility collapsed around him. Above, the rift cracked wider, and for a brief moment, Riven looked up—and saw through it.
A world of bone and flame. Crimson rivers. Towering black citadels. Winged shapes flying between torn skies.
His future.
---
Riven walked past the burning gates, past the last bodies, into the shattered world. The scroll tightened around his arm, binding to his flesh like a second skin.
For the first time in his life, Shen Riven wasn't in a cage.
He was the cage.
And the world would learn what it meant to rattle its bars.
---