It wasn't Spandrex.
Kael stared at the figure in front of the black flame, her mouth slightly open, lungs straining as if the air was thinner here. The robes, torn and burned at the sleeves, bore Spandrex's colors. The figure's build—the shoulders, the messy hair—was nearly the same. But the resemblance stopped there.
The thing before her stood like a memory forced into shape. Its skin wasn't skin—it was obsidian veined with molten gold, glyphs carved into every inch of it like ancient tattoos carved by godly hands. Its eyes were hollow voids filled with spinning characters—symbols Kael had seen only in her nightmares, the same that danced on the cover of the Vehrash Book.
It turned toward her.
"I was once Spandrex," it said in a voice that echoed as if it were speaking from ten mouths across a canyon of time. "Now I am the Gatekeeper. The Vehrash claimed me. I answered."
Kael's fingers trembled. "Where am I?"
The room responded before the figure did. The stone around her pulsed—not with life, but with presence. The walls weren't made of earth, or rock. They were parchment. Massive, endless parchment stitched into folds like flesh, forming an impossible geometry of corridors and corners that defied all sense.
"You stand within the Vehrash Gate," the Gatekeeper said. "This is the seam between realms—between the Book and the World. Few have passed through it and kept their minds intact."
"I didn't pass through," Kael whispered. "I just touched the Book."
"And it touched you back."
She backed away as he stepped closer, but there was no escaping. The air had thickened. The glyphs lining the parchment walls pulsed faster, their glow accelerating with her heartbeat. She could hear them now. Reading her. Remembering her.
"I don't want this," she said. "I just wanted to help Spandrex."
"That name no longer belongs to anything alive," the Gatekeeper said.
A roar trembled through the chamber. Kael turned. Something massive stirred beyond the altar flame—something vast and awake.
From the far end of the parchment cathedral, a shape coiled and unfolded. It had no consistent form, but eyes—hundreds—opened along its surface. Some blinked, others stared. Glyphs bled from its skin like sap from a tree.
Kael couldn't breathe.
"The Vehrash," the Gatekeeper said solemnly.
She could feel it. It was reading her, too.
"Why is it… watching me?" she whispered.
"Because it remembers you," the Gatekeeper said. "You are the hinge."
"I'm not part of this—"
"You are. You were written on the final page before you were ever born."
"No," Kael said, stepping back. "I'm not some chosen one. I don't want prophecy. I'm a reader. That's all."
The Gatekeeper turned toward her completely now. The cracks in his body deepened, leaking gold light. "Then why did the shadows obey you when they took the others? Why did the Book open without blood? Why does the Vehrash bow?"
Kael froze.
Because it had. Just now. Slowly, the massive form at the end of the room lowered itself. Not like a beast… but like a servant.
It acknowledged her.
A new voice whispered behind her ear—close and cold.
"You were not chosen. You were left behind."
Kael spun.
Dozens of thin, inky arms shot out from the shadows behind the glyph-stitched altar. From every hidden corner of the parchment world, they emerged. Limbs of scripture. Tongues of smoke.
Grasping hands of darkness ripped open the seams of the Vehrash Gate.
And in that instant—Kael remembered the screams.
From the real world.
The academy.
Students—others like her. She saw it in flashes, like memory bleeding through space: students running in panic, shadows crawling along the walls, limbs latching onto fleeing forms.
Some were dragged into the walls, screaming as glyphs devoured their mouths.
Others melted into shadow themselves, their minds cracking under whispers Kael couldn't yet hear.
A few—a precious few—hid in closets, crawlspaces, prayer nooks.
And one—Vashen—had run.
He had seen the dark limbs burst from Spandrex's dorm, had seen the way they'd twisted bodies into new shapes, had barely escaped. He had fled the library, slamming doors behind him, screaming Kael's name—
—and then Kael had vanished.
In that moment, he had called the guardians. Called the last desperate line of defense at the academy's edge.
Kael returned to herself.
The Vehrash bowed lower. The altar flame turned silver.
"You are the hinge," the Gatekeeper repeated. "If you step forward, the gate opens forever."
Kael looked at her hands. They were glowing faintly now, the glyphs crawling up her wrists like vines made of ink and memory.
She was changing. Already.
"I don't want to be a gate," she whispered.
"You were born one."
And behind her, something stepped through the final fold.
Kael turned to see—
—and the world shattered.