They say that time heals all wounds.
Riven doesn't agree.
Gaps, breaks, and cracks: her armor was full of it when the poison fell like rain. The toxin seeped through her cuts and ate through her skin before spreading like wildfire.
Did she scream? She can't remember. Her ears rang, and all she could hear was her own frantic heartbeat, loud and clear.
Ten years later, her wounds remain. Ten years later, she's still fighting.
Jagged scar tissues now litter her body instead of the eaten, scorched skin, but they will never go away.
The flames of Coeur never extinguished. Every day after was just another another battle, another fire, another defeat.
Another coughing fit that wracked her entire frame until she's doubled over and heaving what little food she'd managed to ingest that day.
Another bout of shakes that rippled and pulsed through every muscle in her body, coming and going every hour like clockwork, until she's too drained to thrash around any longer.
Only then, exhausted and weak, can she finally sleep. That is, until the morning comes and she has to do it all over again.
She still feels Singed's creeping toxin in her veins, scorching her blood and lungs with an unrivalled fury.
Ten years later, her wounds remain. Ten years later, she's still fighting.
Riven marches through the valley of death for the second time with only the yawning fog as company. The land hardly speaks tales of the horrors that had occurred there a decade ago.
Soils that were once damp with blood had given life to the greenest grass Riven has ever laid eyes on. The murky streams now run crystal clear, and there is even a flower or two here and there.
She reaches down to pick one, but stops before she could rip the perennial from its home. The land has recovered; something she hasn't been able to do. She leaves it alone. There will be no destruction this time.
Riven walks until she comes across an abundance of graves marked by rusted weapons in the process of being swallowed by the ever growing vegetation.
This is where she should've died.
Riven thrusts her broken sword into the ground near a patch of white flowers with as much strength as her body will allow and sits herself against it.
When Katarina returns tonight with another reputable healer and this month's supply of food, she will find no sign of Riven.
For the first time in a long time, Riven isn't haunted by the poison's lingering effects. She waits for the coughing and retching to come, for the convulsions to render her helpless, for her blood to ignite, and an unmatched pain to consume her.
But tonight they do not come.
When dusk settles she dreams of Katarina's warm body sliding up against hers in the frosty passage and a smile tugs at her lips.
She feels no anger, no sadness. The borrowed time had allowed the dreams to become a memory.
Ten years later, her wounds remain. Ten years later, she's done fighting.