The ship's hull shuddered as it slipped past the edge of the Veil, the semi-transparent quantum barrier that shimmered like frozen lightning across the void. Arin's hands tightened on the controls, his eyes fixed on the black expanse beyond. Space here didn't look like space. It swirled in impossible colors—violet spirals that bled into molten gold, ribbons of teal that pulsed like the breath of some sleeping god.
Vakya's glyphs hovered in his vision, thin as spider silk, constantly shifting. Each symbol was a rule, a whisper of the universe's hidden grammar. He didn't fully understand them yet—not like he needed to—but they were the only reason the Seraph's Wing hadn't been torn apart by the Veil's distortion fields.
"Arin," said Lira, her voice tight but steady. She stood just behind him, one hand resting on the back of his chair. "Sensors are… wrong. We're picking up mass readings that don't match the maps. Something's inside the Rift."
"Inside?" Arin's brow furrowed. "I thought the Rift was empty space."
"It was supposed to be," she replied. "But if these readings are right, there's… something big in there. And it's moving."
Talon's voice crackled through the comm from engineering. "Correction—several somethings. And whatever they are, they're bending gravity in ways I've only ever seen in collapsed star remnants."
The temperature in the cockpit seemed to drop, even though Arin knew it was just the suggestion of danger working its way into his thoughts. Vakya's glyphs pulsed brighter, as if reacting to whatever lay ahead.
He flicked a control, and the ship's forward viewport magnified the Rift's core. At first, there was nothing—just the chaotic shimmer of the Veil's inner layers. But then the shadows moved. A vast, jagged silhouette emerged from the colors, its shape too irregular to be a natural formation. It looked like the bones of some titanic creature, half-buried in the swirling void.
"What in the—" Lira caught herself. "That's a structure."
Arin leaned forward. "No… not just a structure. That's a gate."
It was unmistakable now—a colossal arch, forged from material so dark it seemed to drink in the surrounding light. Etched into its surface were runes eerily similar to Vakya's glyphs, except older, sharper, and somehow… angry.
The comm hissed again, and Talon's voice came through lower this time, almost hesitant. "Arin… I don't think it's just a gate. I think it's alive."
Before Arin could ask, the runes on the arch flared. The Rift's colors twisted violently, and the Seraph's Wing lurched sideways as if the space around it had shifted. Gravity here wasn't obeying the same rules anymore.
Vakya's symbols flared in his vision, but they weren't calm and measured this time—they were frantic, spilling across his sight faster than he could follow. He caught fragments of meaning: containment… fracture… hunger.
The arch's center rippled, and a shape began to emerge. It wasn't fully visible—more like a shadow half-cast into reality. Long, jointed limbs curled out, each one ending in talons that shimmered like glass. Its head—if it was a head—was crowned with impossible geometry, edges that twisted away when you tried to focus on them.
Lira took an involuntary step back. "That's not a ship."
"No," Arin said softly. "It's a sentinel."
He didn't know how he knew, but the truth was heavy in his chest. Vakya wasn't just showing him glyphs now—it was speaking in thoughts, in instincts. The sentinel wasn't moving toward them in aggression. It was waiting. Guarding.
The ship's systems flickered. Talon cursed in the background. "We're losing stabilization. That… thing is pulling power straight out of the quantum core. It's feeding on it."
Arin's jaw tightened. "Not feeding. Testing."
Vakya's symbols coalesced into a single string, pulsing with urgency. He didn't have time to decipher it word by word—the meaning hit him all at once: Answer, or be unmade.
The cockpit seemed smaller now, the silence between the crew members stretching thin. Arin reached out—not physically, but with the connection he'd been trying to avoid ever since the first time Vakya had spoken to him. His mind brushed against the sentinel's presence, and it was like touching the surface of an ocean in a storm.
The voice that came back wasn't a sound. It was a ripple in thought, layered with a thousand others. Bearer of the Word. Speak your right.
Arin's breath caught. He didn't know the formal response, but the glyphs rearranged themselves in his mind, forming something like a sentence. He spoke it aloud without fully understanding it.
The Rift reacted. The sentinel's talons curled inward, and the light in its geometry-crown dimmed. The gravitational distortion eased—slightly.
"You're talking to it," Lira realized. "You're actually—"
"Shh," Arin hissed.
The sentinel's thoughts pressed harder. The Rift is sealed. None may pass.
Arin glanced at the arch, then back at the shadowed figure. "We're not here to take," he said. "We're here to find what was lost."
For a long, agonizing moment, nothing happened. Then the sentinel tilted its head—or whatever passed for one—and a faint rumble filled the Rift. The arch's runes shifted color, from hostile red to a cold, deep blue.
Vakya's glyphs steadied in Arin's mind, no longer frantic. He understood: Trial granted.
The space inside the arch cleared, revealing not more void, but a swirling tunnel of fractured starlight. It was a path.
The sentinel withdrew, folding its limbs back into the Rift's colors. But Arin could still feel its gaze—an unblinking, alien watchfulness.
Lira's voice broke the silence. "So… trial?"
Arin's hands moved over the controls. "Yeah. And something tells me it's not the kind you walk away from easily."
As the Seraph's Wing drifted toward the gate, the Rift closed in behind them. Ahead lay the unknown. And in the deepest part of Arin's mind, Vakya whispered—not in words, but in the steady pulse of inevitability.
They had been allowed in.Leaving… would be another matter entirely.