Kalem pressed his palm against the gate again.
He didn't know why.
He had done it already. He had heard them already—those voices that weren't his own, that weren't even the voice. This was different. Deeper.
His hand trembled against the strange, warm surface. The gate pulsed under his touch—not visibly, not physically, but in rhythm with some presence inside it. Like the heartbeat of something vast and slumbering. Not alive, but dreaming. And Kalem, standing there with torn flesh and tattered armor, was a single breath in its lungs.
He exhaled—and they came again.
Not one voice.
Many.
A layered tapestry of whispers, fragments overlapping each other with no concern for space or time. Each one distinct, yet impossible to follow. They didn't echo through the clearing. They echoed in his mind. Inside the marrow of him.
"We see you."
A voice old as stone.
"One more layer down."
A child's whisper, amused and cold.
"What will you leave behind?"
This one was closer—familiar—like someone he had once known but couldn't name.
Kalem flinched and stepped back. His palm slid off the surface, leaving no mark. The door stood unchanged. Silent. Immovable.
But now it watched.
He could feel it again—that horrible, tingling sensation across the back of his neck. The certainty that if he turned around fast enough, something would be behind him.
He didn't turn.
He stared at the gate for a long while.
A low wind began to blow, curling along the edge of the clearing. Where it came from, he didn't know—this place was sealed. Entirely. No sky above. No tunnels branching out. Just the gate… and the dead.
The corpses at its base hadn't moved, but they felt closer now. As if the gate had acknowledged his presence, and so had they. Their bones told stories: broken blades clutched in dying grips, armor split from the inside, weapons corroded as if by time itself.
And in that moment, Kalem realized something:
They weren't all from the same time.
Some of these warriors had fallen long, long ago. Ages. Centuries, maybe. And others were more recent. Their gear wasn't rusted. Their wounds were fresh.
Someone had been here not long before him.
And failed.
Kalem turned and staggered toward the nearest body.
A glaive lay beside it, the haft split down the middle. The corpse had once worn robes—perhaps a mage or cleric. Now, only tatters remained. What caught Kalem's attention was the medallion still hanging around the figure's neck. It glinted faintly, etched with a symbol he recognized.
It was from the surface.
His homeland. A soldier's mark, used nearly a decade ago.
Kalem took the medallion gently and closed the dead man's eyes.
He sat beside the gate.
Not because he wanted to. But because his body had no more strength to give. His legs folded under him, crumpling without resistance. His breath came out in slow, uneven pulls. The wound on his side throbbed dully, crusted over with dried blood and bruising.
The fire sword rested across his lap, its faint glow the only warmth in this damned place.
He closed his eyes. Not to sleep. That would be too dangerous. But just for a moment. Just to be still.
The voices returned.
Not loud.
Just present.
Breathing with him.
"You're closer now."
"Are you the one?"
"So many tried. So many broke."
"You carry no name. Only weight."
Kalem gritted his teeth. "You talk a lot for things that can't do anything."
Silence.
Then one voice replied—not the familiar one, but a stranger still:
"Yet here you are. At our door."
He chuckled. Dry, bitter.
"Yeah," he whispered. "Here I am."
He reached down and touched the dirt at his feet. It was cold, almost slick with a film of something like frost. Or maybe rot. He didn't care anymore.
Slowly, deliberately, he carved a line with the tip of his fireblade. Then another. Then curved it inward.
A simple mark. His own.
Not a rune. Not a spell.
Just his.
Below the corpses, beneath the faded symbols written in someone else's blood, Kalem scratched his name into the world—not in letters, but in meaning.
I was here. I lived. I chose.
He leaned back against the gate.
The metal hummed faintly beneath him. Like it had accepted the gesture.
The whispers grew quieter again.
Still there. Still listening.
But less hostile now. Curious.
The fire blade flickered in his hand, almost like it, too, wanted to speak.
Kalem stared ahead. The walls shimmered in the heatless gloom, stretching outward into the unknown. Behind him lay days of death. Days of pain. His crate was gone. His armor broken. His mind fractured, stitched together by sheer will.
But he was alive.
That counted.
At least for now.
The gate stood unmoving.
But no longer silent.
The many voices whispered once more—less question, more statement:
"Soon."
Kalem didn't answer.
He simply sat.
Waiting.