Riven Koranthi's Arc

Chapter 1 of 2

Riven stared at the message on his screen. The job was simple enough — move a package across the border between dimensions. The client didn't say what was inside. They never did when it was illegal. The payout glowed at the bottom of the offer: enough to buy him three months of breathing room. Maybe four if he didn't eat much. He met the client in a storage bay that smelled like rust and old fuel. The man placed a sealed container on the table between them. Through the transparent lid, Riven saw an orb wrapped in swirling mist. A galaxy turned inside it, purple and blue light spinning in impossible patterns. Beautiful. Deadly. He recognized it from the interdimensional codes — a reality anchor, banned in every dimension because it could tear holes between worlds. The client named his price again. Riven thought about the compound interest eating through his account while he slept. He thought about the promise he'd made to his colony, the only thing he still owned. He picked up the container without asking questions he didn't want answered. The pickup was set for the old observatory past the border zone. Riven drove through the checkpoint with the orb hidden in a false panel. His hands didn't shake. They hadn't shaken in months. When you stopped caring what happened to you, your body got the message. The observatory appeared through the mist, its shattered dome open to three moons. Vines with glowing flowers crawled up the broken walls. The place existed in legal shadow, technically outside any jurisdiction. That's why people used it. He saw the cage first. Iron bars wrapped around a skeleton, energy crackling between the metal. A reminder from the interdimensional authority about what happened to smugglers they caught. Riven walked past it without slowing. The debt was execution on its own terms, just slower. At least this way, if they caught him, it would be over fast. He entered the observatory and set the container on the broken floor. The client's agent would collect it in an hour. Three months of debt, paid. Then he would do it again. And again. Until the promise was kept or they finally stopped him.