Beneath the shattered basilica of Veradin, past walls etched in forgotten tongues and bones too ancient to decay, the cult moved like shadows through the underworld. Their feet never stumbled, for the stone beneath them remembered. It remembered blood spilled in devotion and bones laid down as foundation. The deeper they went, the less the world above mattered—a world of kings, of rebellion, of crumbling thrones. Down here, there were no nations. Only echoes. Only the Gate.
No torches lit their path. The Second Gate—now fully awakened—throbbed with a pulse that mimicked a heartbeat, casting blood-red light in rhythmic waves. It breathed like a slumbering god, and its breath made the stone sweat. The walls pulsed with damp heat, and the air was thick with the scent of rusted iron, salt, and something sweeter—like overripe fruit rotting in a summer sun. Even sound moved slower near the Gate. Whispers dragged. Footsteps lingered. It was as if the world here was unwilling to let anything go.
At its base, the High Voice of the Choir—Veira the Pale—stood barefoot on the obsidian threshold, her arms raised, her skin covered in scripture written in her own blood. The words danced across her flesh like living tattoos, pulsing in time with the Gate. Veira's hair hung in long strands, matted with oils and ash. She swayed slightly as she chanted, not from weakness, but from ecstasy.
Behind her, the congregation knelt, faces obscured beneath iron veils hammered into shape with prayers and fire. The chanting began low, like a hum beneath the earth, and slowly built in pitch and fury. The language was not known to any surface-born tongue. It came from beneath rivers, beneath mountains—a language shaped by stone and hunger.
"Who speaks the Name?" Veira intoned, eyes closed, her voice a whisper and a scream.
From the chasm beyond the Gate, something answered. Not with words. With pressure. With presence. A shifting of thought and flesh. A tightening of the soul. The stone around the Gate cracked inward, drawn toward a gravity that was not physical. The cultists gasped, some falling forward, others raising their hands as if offering themselves. One woman began to laugh. One man began to weep.
The walls wept with them. Black tears leaked from the carvings, running down the stone in patterns older than memory. The kneeling cultists began to tremble—first in ecstasy, then in agony. One fell sideways, spasming. His mouth stretched wide, wider than bone should allow, and from his lips poured a swarm of black moths that vanished into the Gate's light. They made no sound as they went, but each wingbeat left a taste of ash on the air.
Veira smiled.
"Sacrifices accepted," she whispered.
A figure approached from the shadows behind her. Clad in midnight robes, his face was unseen—but in his hand was a relic of the Old War: a ring once worn by a disciple of Ivan. A fragment of a story long thought buried. He walked with careful reverence, as if the ground itself might judge him.
"My lady," he said. "Caedren lives."
Veira didn't open her eyes. "He was always meant to."
"But he's near. He marches with a child of the storm and the exile-king."
"And still," she murmured, "he does not understand. He thinks he fights us. But the Gate does not oppose—it absorbs. It does not rage. It waits."
She knelt, pressing her forehead to the stone. The obsidian hissed where her skin touched it, but she did not flinch. Her blood marked the floor, and the Gate drank it slowly.
"Let him come. Let the last light of the broken world walk willingly into the womb of the first."
Another cultist stepped forward, pale-faced and trembling. Her voice cracked when she spoke.
"There is... another," she said. "A girl. Bound to Caedren. We traced her dreamwalk. She sees the Third Gate."
The chamber went still.
Even the Gate's pulse quieted, as if listening.
Veira slowly turned. Her eyes, once milky with blindness, flared with crimson light. "You are certain?"
The cultist nodded, eyes glassy with terror. "The Gate showed me. She walks the threshold in her sleep. She hears the names of the unborn."
For the first time in decades, the High Voice looked shaken. Not fearful—thrilled. Her lips curled into something not quite a smile. Something too wide. Too eager.
"The Third Gate stirs," she whispered. "Then the world is ready to die."
She stood tall, lifting both hands high. The veins in her arms stood out like cords, black with the ink of her own blood.
"Gather the Choir. Prepare the Cradle. Begin the Song of Ending."
The cultists moved with purpose, no longer chanting but singing—a melody so low it seemed to come from the stone itself. The Gate brightened, casting long shadows that twitched and danced even when the cultists did not.
And from the Gate, a sound came.
Not a scream. Not a roar.
A lullaby.
And far to the west, as Caedren rode through the ashes of Westvale, Lysa stiffened in her saddle. The road ahead twisted into fog, and the sky had taken on a shade of red that felt unnatural. She reached for her blade, then stopped.
She did not know why—but her heartbeat matched the rhythm of a song she could not remember learning.
The Gate was calling her name too.