He stood atop the monolith ridge, overlooking the shattered coastline below, where the sea had pulled away for miles, revealing the jagged skeleton of the seabed. It was unnatural. It pulsed. The breath of the Gate was seeping through cracks in the world.“Do you feel it?” Ilara asked as she approached. Her voice trembled, not with fear, but exhaustion. “It’s like the air’s thinning. Something ancient is pushing through.”Samuel nodded. “They’re coming. All of them.”“Sentinels?” she asked.“No. Worse.”Behind them, Sarah and Dareth climbed the final stretch of the ridge, dragging a reinforced beacon core between them. Its energy signature had been dormant for years. It was only to be used if all communication systems failed—if the old flame networks went dark. And now… all had.Joey was the last to arrive, limping. His wounds still fresh from the last confrontation with the corrupted shard army in Shatterplain City. He said nothing, just dropped beside the beacon and began calibratin

Samuel stood alone at the peak of Flame’s Rest, the wind cutting through his coat like blades of ice. All around him, the sky had turned the color of a dying ember—rusted red, streaked with pulsing black veins that reached toward the heavens like claws. Every breath he took tasted like ash.This was it.They had trained. They had gathered. They had bled.And now… the Gate was opening.A low hum filled the air, vibrating in the bones of the mountain. Not thunder. Not wind. Something older—a song of unraveling, of worlds splitting at the seams. It rose from beneath the earth and echoed across the jagged rocks, up through the clouds, and deep into the hearts of every Guardian below.Ilara joined him silently, the lines on her face more defined than ever. She’d aged ten years in the last ten days, and not one of those lines came from weakness.“It’s begun,” she said, not as a question.Samuel didn’t answer right away. He stared toward the western horizon, where a crack had appeared in the

The sky beyond the Gate cracked like glass under strain, leaking streaks of green and violet light that sucked the color from everything it touched. On the other side of the threshold, the earth was not earth at all—but a scarred reflection of the real world. Wilted forests pulsed with unnatural veins. Lakes simmered like open wounds. Buildings—once familiar shapes—hovered, half-suspended in the air, crumbling upward as if gravity had forgotten its duty.Samuel stood at the front, eyes narrowing against the swirling winds that carried whispers too faint to be real.Behind him, the Guardians fanned out, their boots pressing into the ash-gray soil that seemed to drink the warmth from their skin.“Stay close,” Samuel warned, his voice barely carrying over the humming wind. “This place… it’s not just another world. It feels like—”“—a forgotten piece of ourselves,” Ilara finished from behind him. Her tone was flat, but not emotionless. There was something ancient in the way she said it. L

The landscape shifted again as the Guardians advanced through the withered remains of a forest. The trees here were like skeletons—tall, silver-white trunks without leaves, their bark marked with glowing runes that pulsed slowly, like breaths. The sky above was no longer purple but gray, dense with ash, and though the air was still, a dry whisper rustled constantly between the trees, as if the forest remembered speaking.Samuel walked slightly ahead of the group, jaw tight. His right hand hadn’t left the hilt of his blade for the past hour. His flame pulsed faintly beneath his skin, unsettled by something he couldn’t name.Ilara walked beside him. Silent, as usual—but not withdrawn. She had been watching the trees. Studying them.“They weren’t planted,” she murmured. “They grew in the shape of runes. Grown to bind something… or someone.”Samuel didn’t look at her. “How do you know that?”“Because I’ve seen forests like this before. In dreams.” She turned her head slightly. “But dreams

The shard’s pull grew stronger as the Guardians approached the lowest chamber of the crater. The air had changed—now humid and buzzing faintly, like electricity beneath the skin. Threads of violet mist snaked through cracks in the stone walls, pulsing with slow light, as if the shard had veins and the land was its body.The team moved cautiously along a wide ledge that circled downward. The walls dripped with condensation, and wherever it landed, the stone hissed, sizzled, then hardened into crystal.“Don’t touch the walls,” Ilara warned, brushing her hand along the air instead of the surface. “The shard’s presence is rewriting the stone itself. This entire crater is becoming a conduit.”Samuel walked at the front, eyes narrowed. His internal flame was unsettled. The moment they’d passed a boundary—one invisible to the eye but heavy as fog—he’d felt Lin change behind him.“Lin,” he said without turning, “how are you holding up?”No answer.He slowed and looked back.Lin had stopped wa