THE MAN BENEATH THE MASK

### Chapter 3: The Man Beneath the Mask

The forest didn’t fear him—but it watched.

Riven moved through the trees like a shadow, his cloak catching on brambles that recoiled rather than tear the fabric. The pine needles beneath his boots never crunched. The wind carried no scent of him. The gods had taught him long ago how to walk unseen.

But tonight, the forest whispered her name.

Seraphine.

He had never spoken it aloud. But it bloomed like a forbidden flower in the quiet of his mind, strange and beautiful, a name that sounded like a prayer he wasn’t worthy to say.

Riven reached a clearing and paused beneath a ring of weathered standing stones. Here, the air thrummed with old magic, thick with memory. He pulled off one glove, baring the mark that had bound him since the day he died.

A delicate black sigil curled from his wrist to his palm—thorned, elegant, and cruel. The Vowmark.

It burned softly now. Not pain. Not heat. Just… presence. Connection. As if somewhere across the world, the other half of the mark had stirred to life.

His thoughts wandered backward. As they always did.

---

**He had been twenty-six when they took his name.**

Not in age—he’d stopped counting years centuries ago—but in form, in spirit. That was when the gods made their demand. When they called upon the blood debt his ancestors had offered: a life in exchange for the future of the D’Argent line.

He had died to fulfill the vow.

And the gods, in their mercy—or cruelty—returned him.

Not as he was. But as something between man and myth.

Cursed never to feel the full depth of love, never to belong, never to choose. Only to fulfill the vow. Only to serve. Only to endure.

Until Seraphine.

She was the last heir. The final binding.

The one person who might break the cycle… or doom them both to another eternity.

He pulled his glove back on and walked.

Not toward her.

Toward the end of something old. And the beginning of something he couldn’t name.

The forest did not fear him—but it remembered him.

Riven Ashlor moved through the shadows with the practiced silence of something not quite mortal. The pines whispered overhead, branches creaking like old bones, as if the very trees could feel the ancient vow vibrating through the air. Every step he took toward her—the heir—sent a pulse through the cursed mark on his palm, a low hum tethering his soul to a fate centuries in the making.

He paused in a clearing just past the northern edge of the cliffs, where stone monoliths jutted from the earth like the teeth of gods long buried. The air was thinner here, colder. Sacred.

His hand rose, slow and deliberate, and he peeled off the black leather glove covering his right hand.

The mark curled across his skin like a living tattoo—elegant, thorned, and merciless. Its edges shimmered faintly under the moonlight, reacting to her magic even at this distance. The gods had etched it into his flesh the day they remade him: not as a man, but as a vessel of their will.

He remembered the moment vividly.

Not because of the pain.

But because of what they took.

He had once had a name—his own. A life, a family, a lover whose face he could barely recall. But the gods required sacrifice to uphold the ancient bargain, and so they gave him immortality, cursed with emotional stasis. He could desire. He could hunger. But to truly *love*—to feel it without consequence—was forbidden.

If he did, the curse would consume him. And possibly, her.

He had carried the burden in silence for years uncounted. Watching the world turn, lovers meet and part, empires rise and fall. He had been the hidden hand that kept the bloodline alive through whispers, warnings, and war.

Now only Seraphine remained.

The final heir.

The girl whose name tasted like prophecy on his tongue.

Riven pulled the glove back on and resumed walking, his cloak trailing behind him like spilled ink across the snow-dusted forest floor. Every step forward felt heavier than the last. Not with fatigue—his body had long forgotten such mortal inconveniences—but with tension. With dread. With *curiosity*.

He had not expected the bond to feel this alive.

He hadn’t expected *her* to feel… familiar.

That was the part that disturbed him most.

Even from afar, her magic had reached out—tentative, unsure, but soft. Not demanding. Not cold. It had brushed against him like a sigh, and something ancient in him had stirred.

A memory? A premonition? He didn’t know.

But he felt it in the way the air shifted. In how the gods had grown quiet.

And the quiet always came before change.

---

By the time Riven reached the crest of the hill overlooking the manor, the sky had darkened to a bruised velvet. The sea glistened below the cliffs, endless and merciless. And there, carved from stone and shadow, stood the estate—isolated, forgotten, and wrapped in mourning.

His gaze settled on the door.

He didn’t know what waited beyond it—obedience, resistance, fire—but he knew she was there. Awake. Watching.

The vow thrummed like a second heartbeat against his chest.

He raised a gloved hand and knocked—three times.

Soft. Measured. Inevitable.

Then he waited in the dark.

Not as a man.

But as fate itself.