The end of the Throne Road dissolved into nothing not darkness or void, but simple cessation of the path they had been walking. One moment they stood on bones that whispered with the memories of the fallen, the next they stood on nothing at all, suspended in a space where the concept of ground had become optional. Before them, the Gate that had been a presence, an influence, a corruption spreading through Selena's veins, finally revealed its true form.
It opened.
Not like a door swinging on hinges or a portal shimmering into existence, but like an eye that had been closed since before the universe learned to measure time. The opening was gradual and inexorable, accompanied by a sound that existed in frequencies consciousness was never meant to process the groan of cosmic machinery operating on scales that made galaxies seem insignificant, the whisper of possibilities shifting like sand dunes in an infinite desert.
