The night wind swept through the mountain trail, brushing past thorny trees like a distant sigh. Elara walked in silence, her fingers clutched tightly around the pendant. The strange artifact pulsed with a soft warmth that contradicted the chill crawling over her skin. Behind her, Cael followed, one hand on the hilt of his dagger, the other tracing sigils in the air—just in case.
"You sure it's this way?" he asked.
"Yes," Elara answered without looking back. "I can feel it calling."
They were following a map older than any written record, engraved into bone and sealed inside a crypt found beneath the city ruins. The destination: the Ruins of Drelmire—a forbidden place whispered of only in cautionary tales, said to be where the first Gatekeeper fell.
As they approached the ravine, a low hum reverberated in the air. It wasn't natural—it was the kind of sound that burrowed into the chest and lingered like the echo of forgotten grief.
"There," Elara pointed to a stone arch jutting out of the earth like a broken tooth. "The relic is reacting."
Suddenly, the sky flashed white. Thunder cracked without warning. A pulse surged from the arch, knocking both of them to the ground. Elara gasped, the pendant flaring brightly at her chest.
"Elara!" Cael rushed to her side, but she pushed herself up, eyes wide.
"It's opening…"
The archway shimmered, and between its stones, a veil of silver fog coalesced. Shapes moved inside—too tall, too thin, and just wrong. Elara felt a pressure in her mind, a voice whispering in a language her blood somehow understood.
"Do not step closer," Cael warned. "That's not a relic. That's a gate."
"No. It's both."
Before Cael could stop her, she stepped toward it. Her body passed through the shimmer, vanishing from sight.
"Elara!"
But there was no scream. No sound. Just stillness.
Cael cursed under his breath, drawing his dagger. He wasn't going to let her face whatever lay beyond alone. He stepped through.
—
Elara blinked, eyes adjusting to the golden twilight. She stood on a shoreline where waves of light rolled instead of water. Trees bent backward. The sky had three moons.
"You were not supposed to find us."
The voice came from a figure cloaked in living flame, standing where the waves broke. It had no face, yet Elara could feel its gaze.
"I didn't come to find you. I came for the truth."
"There is no truth without sacrifice."
Behind her, Cael emerged, gasping. "What the hell is this place?"
"A memory," Elara said. "Or a warning."
The flame-being turned toward Cael. "The Warden has returned. The cycle begins anew."
"What do you mean?" Elara asked.
But the entity raised a hand. A spark leapt from its palm into her chest. The pendant burst, unraveling into shards of glowing script that wrapped around her wrists and burned themselves into her skin.
"The path is written now. You cannot go back."
Elara collapsed to her knees, breath ragged.
Cael caught her. "Elara—"
"I'm fine," she whispered, though her eyes were wide, haunted. "We have to find the other relics. Before they do."
"And who are they?"
"The ones who locked the gate in the first place."
A rumble tore through the strange realm. Cracks opened in the glowing soil.
The entity spoke one last time: "Run."
They didn't argue.
—
They emerged from the archway just as it collapsed into rubble, the shimmer gone.
"Well," Cael said breathlessly, "next time you decide to walk through ancient portals, let's maybe talk about it first."
Elara gave a weak smile. "Deal."
But as they looked at the ruined arch, and the stars above that were no longer in the same place, they both knew something had shifted.
And they were not the same anymore.
---