The silence didn't last long.
They felt it first—a low tremor, subtle at first, then growing into a steady pulse beneath their feet. Like a drumbeat.
Kael stood slowly, sword in hand. The blade still shimmered faintly, pulsing in sync with the tremor. As if it knew what was coming.
Sera retrieved her glaive without a word. Her gaze lingered on the place where the shadow Kael had vanished.
"You alright?" she asked, voice low.
Kael didn't answer right away. "It knew things. Felt… like me. But twisted. Like it was made of all the parts I've been trying not to become."
"That's what he wants," Iris said, stepping forward, the glow of her sigils fading. "Velis is playing you. Showing you nightmares, giving you weapons that cost something. That sword? It's not just steel. It's memory. Every time you use it, you pay with who you could've been."
Kael looked down at the blade.
The reflections inside had changed.
Now, among the glimpses of past and future, he saw Velis—younger. Human. Laughing beside someone Kael didn't recognize.
He sheathed it silently.
The ground shook harder.
"Where's it coming from?" Sera asked.
Iris turned toward the rear of the ruin. A faint red glow pulsed in the darkness, from beneath a broken dais.
"The true sixth gate," she whispered. "The one they buried under the false seal. The one even Velis couldn't break until now."
They approached slowly. The light grew stronger with every step, bleeding across the stones like veins.
And then they saw it.
A door—not made of stone or wood, but of something alive. Flesh-like, pulsing with rhythm. Symbols moved across it like creatures crawling beneath skin.
Kael felt his hand tighten around the sword.
This wasn't just a gate.
It was a heart.
"It's breathing," Sera said, stepping back.
"No," Iris corrected, horror creeping into her voice.
"It's waking up."
From deep beyond the gate, a sound echoed—something ancient and wet and wrong.
Not a voice.
A heartbeat.
And it was speeding up.
The heartbeat grew louder.
Kael felt it in his ribs, in his teeth, even behind his eyes. It wasn't just sound—it was presence. The gate ahead pulsed with it, stretching and shrinking like a massive lung struggling to breathe through centuries of stone.
Sera's hand hovered near her glaive. Iris had gone still, eyes fixed on the living door with a kind of paralyzed focus.
No one spoke.
Even breathing felt like a mistake.
Then the gate shuddered—and the skin-like surface tore open just a crack.
Steam hissed out, red and reeking of iron.
Kael stepped forward before he even realized he'd moved. The sword on his back hummed low, reacting to the pull, to the thing that waited beyond.
Iris grabbed his wrist. "Kael, listen to me."
He turned. Her eyes were wide, terrified—but grounded.
"This gate was never meant to open. Not in this timeline. Not in any of them."
"What's behind it?" he asked.
She hesitated.
"…the Seventh."
The name hung in the air like a curse.
Sera's voice was low. "I thought the Seventh was just a myth. The Unborn Gate."
"It's not a gate," Iris said. "It's what's left of a god that died screaming and never stayed dead."
Kael looked at the torn seam again.
Inside, something moved.
A massive shape—slithering, pulsing, waiting.
Kael took a step back.
Too late.
A hand burst through the gap in the gate—pale, bone-thin, with too many joints. It slapped against the floor with a sickening wet crack.
Sera threw a sigil bomb, golden sparks lighting the dark—
The hand didn't burn.
It absorbed the light.
Then another hand followed.
Then a third.
They weren't symmetrical. They weren't even human.
Kael drew the sword.
Behind the gate, something laughed—dry, distant, and echoing through every stone of the ruin.
"Iris," Kael said, never looking away. "How do we kill it?"
She didn't answer.
Because she was no longer beside him.
She was walking toward the gate.
Eyes blank.
Mouth open.
Whispering something he couldn't hear.
And then she stepped through the tear.
Kael surged forward. "Iris!"
But the gate sealed shut behind her like a closing wound, the fleshy surface pulling tight, erasing even the seam she'd passed through.
He slammed his palm against it. "IRIS!"
Nothing.
Not even an echo.
Sera stood frozen behind him, weapon drawn, eyes wide. "What the hell just happened? She—she walked in. She just walked in."
"No," Kael muttered. "She wasn't in control."
His fingers clenched around the hilt of the sword. The pulse in the chamber had slowed again, like the thing inside was satisfied. Full.
"You saw her eyes," he said quietly. "That wasn't her. That thing behind the gate… it called her."
Sera shook her head, stepping closer to the gate. "We have to get her back."
Kael looked at the structure again—no longer bleeding, no longer shuddering. Just still. Too still.
He backed away.
"I don't think we can—not now. Not through that. We need to regroup."
"We can't leave her," Sera snapped, spinning toward him.
"I'm not saying we leave her," he growled back. "I'm saying if we go in now, we lose everything. You saw what that thing was doing—controlling her, using her. If it gets both of us, it wins."
Sera hesitated, breathing hard.
He could see it in her eyes—the fight between rage and reason.
Finally, she nodded once.
Kael turned toward the far corridor. The ruin stretched deeper, and somewhere within it, they could still feel Velis's echo. He had answers. He always did.
But even as they moved, Kael felt something clinging to him.
A whisper, tucked in the folds of his thoughts.
"She was always meant to cross first."
He froze mid-step.
The sword on his back felt heavier.
He reached up slowly, touched the hilt.
It was warm.
And it was whispering, too.
Images flashed through his mind: Iris at the gate… her body collapsing… the world burning around a throne of bone and glass… Kael standing alone atop it.
Then silence.
"Kael?" Sera said behind him.
He turned to her.
And lied.
"Nothing. Let's keep going."
But inside, something had shifted.
And Kael knew:
Whatever that thing was behind the gate—whatever the Seventh truly meant—
It hadn't taken Iris.
It had chosen her.