"Why did you find him?"
The bald man had a scar that ran wild from his left eye all the way down to his chin. He stood staring at the young man suspended before him, chains biting into his wrists, head lolling forward, unconscious.
"The Falls," answered the other man, a lanky figure with two huge curved swords strapped to his back.
"The Falls?"
"Yes. If I had to guess, he came from above."
The bald man frowned.
"Wake him up."
Splash.
The cold water hit Riley, and he snapped back to consciousness in an instant.
"Haah... haah... haah."
He gasped, water dripping from his chin to the stone floor beneath his feet. Something felt wrong immediately. His arms were pulled back and up, and when he tried to move them, he felt the resistance of chains.
"Where am I?" he asked.
Silence.
"Ah... my head." He squeezed his eyes shut, waiting for his vision to settle. When it did, he found the bald man standing directly in front of him, watching him without expression.
"Who are you? Why am I here?" Riley asked.
BAM.
A solid kick to the abdomen knocked the last of the fog right out of him.
"Argh!" He clenched his jaw, swallowing the pain.
"Who are you? Where did you come from?" the man asked, his voice flat.
Riley sucked in a slow breath and made himself think. The man was asking where he came from, which meant he genuinely had no idea. That was useful.
"I can't remember," Riley said, 'struggling' to remember. "I remember heading to the Ember Mountains, but after that, nothing. I can't piece it together."
"Ember Mountains?" the man repeated.
"Yes."
The bald man glanced at his companion, gave a short nod, and the two of them turned and walked out without another word.
"Wait," Riley called after them. "At least tell me where this is. Please." He pleaded 'desprately', watching until the door closed and their footsteps faded down whatever corridor lay beyond it.
Then his expression shifted entirely.
"Don't tell me I fell off the mountain," he muttered, a frown creasing his brow.
He looked down at the chains, focused, and pushed a thread of ether into his limbs.
The chains snapped apart like paper.
Riley stared at his hands for a moment. He had intended to test whether ether enhancement would be enough to break free, but he had not expected it to be that effortless. He had briefly entertained the possibility that they were ether-forged chains, specifically designed to suppress or restrain users, but during the conversation he had quietly circulated his ether and confirmed that his flow was completely unobstructed. These were ordinary chains. The fact that someone had used ordinary chains to restrain a person with ether knowledge was, frankly, embarrassing on their part.
Something else was bothering him though.
He tried to recall the deaths of his friends, his family, and found that the weight he expected simply was not there. Not buried or numbed. Just absent. Like pressing on a bruise and feeling nothing. The apathy was so complete, so vast, that it unsettled him more than grief would have.
"What happened?" he asked himself quietly. "Wasn't I supposed to die?"
It was the second time that question had surfaced in his mind, and it came with a strange sense of deja vu.
He was still sitting with that thought when something shifted. A presence, or a pull, something he could not name settled over him, and the air in the room felt suddenly different.
Then it happened.
[....]
[SAY STATUS]
"The system."