The ancient archway twisted and convulsed as the Gate shifted. They snapped against the black heartwood, their needles scraping the stone with a sharp, grating noise. The mountain groaned deep within its roots, reacting to the intruder's foreign frequency.
Beneath Eris's skin, the sharp, metallic current overrode his senses. His thoughts grew slow, but curiosity held him in place. He wanted to see if the Gate's promises were true or false. Straining to pierce the dark, he activated his deep-seeing power. Both of his irises turned to a metallic silver as his pupils narrowed into vertical slits. The Serpent's Eye cut through the shadows, but the Gate's interior remained an empty void that offered nothing to his gaze.
Instead, a sharp itch flared beneath his right eyelid—a deep, physical irritation, as if a hidden lens was forcing its way to the surface of his eye. The power tried to break loose, but his core was too weak to unlock it without assistance.
Behind them, the noises dropped to a distant murmur. The crunch of bone from the distant shafts—where Ful's Legion was being destroyed—turned into faint static. The pull of the void ahead of them completely overrode the slaughter happening behind them.
The ominous gate adjusted its strategy against the intrusion. Its voice returned to the spaces between his thoughts, sounding smooth and familiar, making his old scars throb. "You know this path," it murmured inside his skull. "You've always known it, Eris. Stop fighting what was made for you."
But the invisible thread wrapped around Eris's heart tightened with sudden force. The entity reaching for him from the deep dark refused to let him go. Inside Eris's mind, a cold, metallic ring drowned out the Gate's warm hum. His vision shifted, changing from black to gray as the outside force broke through the mountain's defenses.
A shockwave of pure silver light flared behind his eyelids, forcing the whispering voices of the heartwood to stop. It came from an external, bleeding psychic projection, sent by someone bridging the miles to reach him. It wasn't a plea or a call; it was a desperate, violent strike against the void.
Eris!
The name hit his consciousness like a physical impact, sharp with terror and rejection. His right eye stung. He blinked instinctively.
For a brief instant, his vision fractured. The black heartwood, the braided thorns, and Dara's hands clamping tightly around his leather collar separated into faint, overlapping images. It looked as though another layer of the cavern had surfaced beneath the first.
Then the images vanished. The structural irritation lingered, making his right eye water, and the Gate's hold finally broke.
"Wake up!"
Dara's scream cut through his remaining confusion. Before his locked limbs could drag him back toward the threshold, Dara lunged forward and drove her forehead violently into his.
The hard crack of bone against bone echoed through the cavern. The physical impact jarred Eris, pulling him entirely out of the trance. His brow split, and the impact sent him staggering backward as his boots dragged through the dirt. Dara felt his center of gravity break completely. Throwing her entire weight forward, she used his momentum to wrench him backward, knocking them both onto the cold stone floor. His silver-tinged blood smeared across her lip as they hit the ground.
The screeching noise inside Eris' head stopped, leaving a loud, ringing silence. The sudden energy shift slammed into the rest of the group, knocking the breath from their lungs.
The vacant expressions on their faces vanished all at once, replaced by a sense of disorientation. The children gasped for air, scrambled away from the edges of the cart, and buried themselves beneath the coarse canvas blankets, weeping softly in the dark.
Kaylah stumbled backward over the uneven stone, a sharp cry cutting from her throat as she clutched the back of her neck. The mark beneath her skin throbbed and burned against the sudden spike of silver light.
"I was going to walk in," she whispered. "I knew it wasn't real... I knew it, but I couldn't stop my feet. It felt warm."
Dara was quiet for a moment before answering.
"It wasn't just you," Dara said. Flat. Not unkind. Just fact. She nodded toward the dark tunnels behind them. "Whatever that thing was, it got all of you." Her gaze lingered on Kaylah for only a heartbeat before turning away. "Let's make sure it doesn't get a second chance."
The fear in Kaylah's eyes hadn't faded. Whatever she'd seen beyond the Gate had followed her back.
Barik froze mid-stride with his heavy boot hovering inches above the threshold. The image of his father had dissolved into smoke. His hands trembled violently as he stared down at his palms, his eyes wide as he realized how close he had been to stepping past the boundary.
"What... what did I do?" Barik stammered. He dropped heavily onto one knee, keeping his eyes fixed on the stone floor. "Was I caught in a dream? He was right there, Dara. My father. He stood right there on the path. He told me the way was clear."
"It's a lie Barik. Don't blame yourself," Dara said, steadying her hands. "Eris was caught in the spell too. He was a breath away from touching the wood." She glanced down at Eris, her jaw set. "Something he did broke it by force. 'Saw it—the way his eyes changed. The silver in them... it was like he pushed back."
She turned her gaze back toward the dark tunnel path. "Did you hear what the Brier just did to Ful's men? The mountain was feeding. If Eris hadn't stopped it, or if he had taken one more step into the threshold, the forest would have crushed us afterward."
The cavern turned silent. Jag, the alpha wolf, lowered her hackles and pressed herself flat to the ground, the pack whimpering in confusion. Barny the mule was still trembling, and the black stallion had stopped trying to bolt. The iron chains hung still against the wooden shafts. The only other sound was the heavy silence coming from the deeper tunnels where the Legion had been destroyed minutes ago.
Only Dara remained standing. The others were down on the stone floor, stiff with grief. She kept her blade drawn, her knuckles white as she spun around to face the group. She looked at Barik on his knees, at Kaylah still crying, and finally down at Eris, who lay flat on his back, staring unblinkingly at the ceiling.
Dara dropped to her knees beside Eris, breathing in ragged gasps. She pressed two fingers against Eris's pulse point. His heart hammered a frantic, rapid rhythm against his ribs. His eyes stared blankly at the cavern ceiling, with fully dilated pupils, and his left eyelid twitched deeply and involuntarily. She gripped the lapels of his tunic and shook him.
"Eris? Eris, look at me! Breathe. The threshold is behind us. Talk to me!"
Eris could not answer. His fingers twitched against the gravel as he tried to process the fading echo of the distant silver voice. He remained on his back, clawing weakly at the sharp stone. A thin trickle of dark fluid escaped his left nostril. The liquid caught the dim cave light with an oily, iridescent sheen, marking where his latent power had strained against his physical limits.
Then, Eris's jaw unlocked with a sharp click. He drew in a massive, ragged breath, his spine arching off the dirt. The structural irritation behind his right eye receded, though both eyes remained bloodshot.
"Get up!" Dara hissed, her voice cutting through the damp chill of the cavern as she stood and drew her blade. "Grab your weapon, Barik. Whatever just happened, we are still standing in the middle of a trap."
She grabbed Eris's arm and hauled him upward. He swayed on unsteady legs. The silver current still fought inside him, his own power resisting both the external force and the Gate's residue, locking his muscles.
Kaylah flinched at Dara's sharp tone, then nodded. She grabbed the nearest child—a girl with tracks of tears cutting through the dirt on her face—and dragged her away from the archway.
Barik did not argue. He pushed himself up, scooped up two of the smaller children, one under each arm, and started moving toward the wagon. His face was grim. He avoided looking at the Gate and kept his eyes fixed on the tunnel behind them, the way they had come. He breathed heavily before asking the question troubling his mind.
"Dara... the voices. Did you hear them?"
"There were no voices," she snapped, her eyes warily scanning the twisting black heartwood around them.
Eris reached up, his trembling hand clamping around Dara's wrist with surprising strength. He slowly pushed himself up further from the dirt, his muscles stiffly resisting the lingering aftershocks of the silver surge. His voice was quiet and hollow.
"It wasn't me," Eris choked out, his voice a ruined whisper. He coughed, and silver-tinged fluid stained his lips. Dara caught his back, bracing him against her knees as he swayed precariously.
Dara pivoted, her sword lowering slightly as she glared down at him. "What?"
"Not me," Eris repeated. "The one that broke the trance didn't come from anyone in this cave." Raising his left hand, his palm was no longer burning with the heat of the Brier. Instead, a faint, crystalline frost had formed over the silver tissue—a residual chill entirely foreign to the mountain's heavy pressure.
He closed his fist, feeling the precise, rhythmic hum lingering in his veins. It was a presence he had memorized through months of proximity. It was distinct, but looking at the frightened faces of Barik and Kaylah, he kept the source to himself.
"What do you mean it wasn't you?" Dara asked, her brow furrowing as she exchanged a tense glance with Barik. "You hit the ground right when the light flashed. Your power exploded."
Eris shook his head, a grimace crossing his features as the movement triggered a fresh wave of psychic whiplash. He looked past her, locking his gaze onto the black heartwood of the Gate. The archway no longer hummed with that seductive warmth. The external power had left the ancient wood looking scarred, and its braided thorns smoked with a faint, wispy gray vapor.
Barik stepped closer, his eyes scanning the twisting shadows of the cavern ceiling as his hand gripped the hilt of his axe. "Then who did it? Who has that kind of power to tear through a mountain's Gate from the outside?"
Eris did not answer with words. He walked past them, his boots dragging slightly in the pale dust until he reached the exact spot where he had stood before the shockwave hit.
The braided thorns around the archway had stopped writhing. They were frozen in place, their sap-slick surfaces dulled and blackened as if exposed to an intense, localized frost. The stone floor beneath the arch caught his attention. Woven into the ancient rock, branching outward from the center of the path, was a fractured pattern of glowing, white residue. It lacked the chaotic growth of the Brier; it was structured and cooling rapidly into a fine, silver dust.
Eris knelt, tracing the edge of the fading pattern with his fingertips. "We should ask the elders about this," Eris said. He pointed at the faint outline of a specific geometric seal as it flickered one last time in the stone before fading into the dark.
He wiped his face. Both eyes allowed him to see clearly through the dark, but it was his right eye—his eye of truth—that bled with a silver current that was not his own. The external savior had intercepted the Gate and unknowingly triggered the new power in his right eye. Someone was bleeding for him. The residue was still warm, humming, and actively connected.
He looked back at the group. He saw the white knuckles on Dara's hands, the bruise on her forehead when she had headbutted him, Barik refusing to meet his gaze, and Kaylah holding a sobbing child.
If he closed his eyes and listened past the ringing in his ears, past Dara's ragged breathing, and past the children's hiccups, he could hear a sound. There were no words left; the entity did not have the strength for words. It was a high, thin, breaking scream from miles away. The speaker was bleeding out, yet still holding the thread. Still holding him.
He swallowed, the sound loud in the sudden quiet.
"Stop," Dara said. Her voice was raw and exhausted. "All of you. Just… stop. For one minute."
Nobody moved. Nobody spoke. For one minute, they all just breathed.
Eris looked up at Dara in silence, still thinking about the force that had cut the voice in the dark. He recognized the specific geometry of the frequency that had anchored his heart just moments before. He knew the distinct weight of that power, but looking at the frightened faces of Barik and Kaylah, he kept the identity to himself. To speak it aloud would change their situation entirely.
Could it be—
His thoughts were abruptly cut short.
A sharp, rhythmic sound echoed from the center of the archway, slicing through the damp silence of the cavern. Everyone froze. Jag's hackles snapped back up instantly, and a low growl rattled in the alpha wolf's chest. Dara swung her blade back into a defensive guard, stepping in front of Kaylah. Barik followed, not a second later.
Something rolled across the stone floor, coming directly out from the dark void of the Gate. The object slowed, coming to a dead stop right in front of Eris's dirt-stained boots.
It was an orb. It was a perfect sphere, roughly the size of a human eyeball. The surface was solid to the touch, but a dark glaze coated the exterior.
Eris stared down at it through his slit, deep-seeing pupils. A solitary twitch rippled through his right eyelid, and for a fraction of a second, the surface of the orb shimmered with silver.
The sudden, violent friction of the connection forced Eris's breath to hitch. He let out a sharp, quiet gasp, his shoulders tensing as he instinctively tilted his head back toward the light. Beside the cart, Kaylah's eyes snapped up from the rolling object at the sound of his struggle. In the dimness of the cavern, the flare from his face was impossible to miss.
His right eye suddenly shifted again. A single, silver tear welled at the corner, glinting like liquid metal before it spilled down his cheek.
Kaylah froze, her breath caught in her throat as she stared at the glowing trail on his skin. The cold, metallic brilliance of that drop was a phantom from her own locked memories.
"The tears..." Kaylah whispered, her hand moving from her neck to press against her chest. "I've seen it... in her."
Then, a voice echoed inside his head.
It did not carry the soft warmth of the Gate, nor did it possess the confusing static of the Brier. It was completely clear, cutting through his skull with absolute authority.
"A gift," the voice said, echoing in a chilling, neutral cadence. Eris strained to analyze the sound, but he could not recognize a gender or determine if the speaker was even human. "Come to me when you're strong enough."
The voice vanished, leaving behind an absolute, suffocating silence. On the floor, the glazed black sphere lay perfectly still against his boot. Eris scanned the shadows to look for the speaker. Then he turned his gaze to his companions. The confused expressions on their faces confirmed that they had heard nothing.
He reached out with a trembling hand, his fingers hovering just above the glazed surface.
Dara stepped forward; her blade still raised as she stared down at the sphere.
"Don't touch it," she said to Eris. Flat. An order.
The orb sat there. Drinking light. Waiting.
***