THE FOG
The next two days passed in a haze.
Leon moved through the castle like a ghost in his own life, watching himself from a distance. A fog had settled in his mind and it wouldn't clear, no matter how much he tried to think through his situation logically.
Soldiers bowed when they saw him. Not the casual nod of acknowledgment, but deep, respectful bows that made him want to apologize. Some looked at him with something approaching reverence, whispering to each other as he passed. People jumped to the side as he walked the corridors, clearing the way like he's royalty.
The mages were worse.
They sought him out constantly. In the dining hall, in the corridors, once even catching him as he tried to escape to the gardens. They came with questions about their magic, complex theoretical problems about spell matrices and energy flow and concepts Leon had no framework for understanding.
"High Mage Leon," a young mage caught him after breakfast on the second day. "I've been working on a barrier enchantment, but the resonance keeps destabilizing at the third harmonic. Do you think the issue is with my anchor points or the frequency modulation?"
Leon stared at him. The words sounded like English but meant nothing.
"Have you considered..." Leon started, then trailed off, hoping the mage would fill the silence.
"The inverse correlation!" the mage's eyes lit up. "Of course! If I reverse the anchor points and use them as resonance dampeners instead of amplifiers... High Mage, you're brilliant! Thank you!"
The mage hurried off before Leon could clarify that he said literally nothing helpful.
This happened again. And again. The mages came with problems, Leon made vague noises, and they answered their own questions while crediting him with profound insight. Each time, the fog in his mind deepened. He was not even trying to deceive them anymore- they were deceiving themselves, and he was just... present.
On the evening of the second day, a servant knocked on his door.
"High Mage Leon," the man said, bowing so low Leon worried he'd tip over. "A delivery from His Majesty the King."
The servant presented a wooden box, ornately carved, with the royal seal stamped in wax. Inside, folded carefully, were robes. Deep blue, almost black, with silver embroidery that caught the light. Beneath them, a staff- tall, made of dark wood, with a crystal set into the top that seemed to glow faintly from within.
There was a letter, written on parchment so fine it was almost translucent:
To High Mage Leon of Pelenna,
In recognition of your service to the realm and your leadership of the mage contingent, we bestow upon you the title of Expedition Commander. May your wisdom guide our forces to victory.
The expedition departs at dawn.
His Majesty, King Alderon III
Leon stared at the letter. At the robes. At the staff.
Tomorrow.
They would leave tomorrow.
The fog cleared like someone threw open a window. Reality crashed back in with the force of a freight train.
He was leading an expedition. To fight... something. At a place called a gate. And he had no idea what any of that meant.
The panic that had been lurking at the edges of his consciousness for two days finally broke through. He needed answers. He needed to know what he was walking into. He needed to understand what gates actually were before he led thirty mages and two thousand soldiers to their potential deaths.
Leon left the robes and staff in his room and went looking for Aldric.
...
Leon found Aldric in what appeared to be a converted storage room on the castle's third floor.
The older mage had claimed it as a workspace, and it showed. Tables covered in books, papers scattered everywhere, chalk diagrams on every available surface. In the center of the room, Aldric had drawn an elaborate circle on the floor- geometric patterns, symbols, lines intersecting at precise angles.
It looked suspiciously like a math diagram.
Aldric was muttering to himself, checking something in a book, then returning to the circle to adjust a line with chalk. He didn't notice Leon in the doorway.
Leon stared at the circle. The patterns were complex, but there was an underlying structure that felt... familiar. Like something he had seen before. Angles and ratios and geometric relationships that reminded him of-
"High Mage Leon!"
Aldric had noticed him. The older mage straightened up quickly, brushing chalk dust from his robes.
"I apologize, I didn't hear you enter. I was just working on a-" he gestured at the circle, frustrated. "I've been trying to improve my shield matrix efficiency, but something's wrong with the resonance pattern. I've drawn this circle two dozen times and it keeps destabilizing."
Leon barely heard him. He was still staring at the circle, his engineer's brain automatically analyzing the geometry. There was something off about it. The angles weren't quite-
"What do you think?" Aldric asked, following Leon's gaze.
Leon frowned, stepping closer. "It looks... familiar. Just differs a bit from my calculations."
The words slipped out before he could stop them. It was true, though. The pattern was almost identical to a stress distribution diagram he'd worked with in graduate school, used for analyzing forces in bridge construction. The math was the same, just applied to... whatever magic did.
"Your calculations?" Aldric's voice went sharp with interest. "You've worked with shield matrices before?"
"Something like that," Leon said vaguely, still studying the circle. The angle at the third vertex was wrong. Five degrees off, maybe six. It would create an imbalanced load distribution in engineering terms, which probably translated to this "destabilization" Aldric mentioned.
"What's different?" Aldric pressed. "Please, I've been working on this for weeks."
Leon shrugged. "It isn't exactly different. It's just... mathematically wrong."
He bent down before he could second-guess himself, erased a section of the circle with his palm, and redrew it with the correct angle. The pattern clicked into place, satisfying in the same way a solved equation was satisfying.
"Yes," Leon straightened up, brushing chalk from his hands. "That's how I remember it."
Aldric was already moving. He stepped into the center of the circle before Leon could say anything else, his hands moving through gestures that left glowing trails in the air. He was chanting something, words that sounded ancient and rhythmic.
The circle flared to life.
Blue light erupted from the chalk lines, bright enough to make Leon stumble back and shield his eyes. The light rose like a dome, encasing Aldric in a sphere of pure luminescence. The air hummed with energy, making Leon's hair stand on end.
Then it stopped.
Aldric stood in the center of a perfect, stable shield of blue light. It held for three heartbeats before he released it with a gesture, the light fading back into the chalk lines.
The older mage turned to Leon and dropped into a deep bow.
"Thank you!" His voice was breathless with excitement. "After dozens of tries, I finally succeeded. With your help, High Mage, I've broken through a barrier I've been fighting for months!"
Leon nodded subtly, his mind racing. That was math. Basic geometry. The kind of thing he'd done hundreds of times with structural calculations. And it had somehow translated directly into functional magic.
Can magic really be that? Just... math?
"I have other matrices I've been struggling with," Aldric continued, turning toward a pile of books on the table. "If you have time, I believe you could solve this circle-"
Leon was already backing toward the door. "I just remembered something I need to-"
"-and this one has been particularly troublesome, the harmonic calculations-"
Leon reached the door.
"-if you could just look at the frequency modulation in chapter seven-"
Leon shut the door on Aldric's rambling, cutting off the stream of technical magical terminology.
He stood in the corridor, breathing hard.
That was math. Magic was apparently just math with glowing lights. He'd accidentally solved a magical problem using engineering principles, and now Aldric thought he was even more brilliant than before.
The fog threatened to return, but Leon pushed it back. He couldn't afford to get sidetracked. His immediate worry was still unanswered.
Gates. What are they?
He'd hoped to ask Aldric, but that plan had derailed the moment he'd walked into the room. The older mage had transformed into a question-filled fan of "High Mage Leon" the second that shield had worked, and getting actual information from him now would be impossible.
Leon sighed, running a hand through his hair.
He needed someone who would actually answer questions instead of asking them. Someone who didn't think he was a legendary mage. Someone who might actually explain things without assuming he already knew.
The boys from Pelenna.
Finn, Torren, Marcus, and Jace. They were just regular soldiers, probably as confused about all this as Leon was. They wouldn't expect him to already know everything. They might actually tell him what a gate was without making it weird.
Leon headed for the barracks.
...
The barracks were an organized chaos of activity.
Leon found the Pelenna boys in the eastern section, their bedrolls clustered together in a corner that marked them as a unit. They were cleaning equipment when he arrived—Finn sharpening a sword, Torren oiling leather armor, Marcus and Jace checking over spear shafts for cracks.
"High Mage Leon!"
They noticed him immediately, dropping their work and scrambling to their feet. The excitement on their faces was painful to see.
"We heard!" Finn blurted out. "The whole barracks is talking about it. You're leading the expedition!"
"The king himself granted you the title," Marcus added, eyes wide. "Commander of the mages."
"We had no idea," Jace said, shaking his head in wonder. "I mean, we knew you were powerful, but a high mage? Recognized by the king?"
Torren just grinned. "My mother is going to lose her mind when she hears. She always said you were blessed, but this..."
Leon held up his hands, trying to calm their enthusiasm. "It's not—look, can we just talk for a minute?"
"Of course!" They arranged themselves on their bedrolls, looking up at him with the same attention they'd probably give a general. It made Leon feel like a fraud all over again.
He sat on an empty crate, trying to figure out how to ask his question without sounding completely ignorant.
"Tomorrow, we depart," he started, keeping his voice level. "As the leader of this expedition—" the boys' faces glowed with admiration, making him want to crawl into a hole "—I need to ensure that everyone understands what we're facing. That you're all prepared."
They nodded seriously.
"So first," Leon said, trying to make it sound like a test rather than a desperate plea for information, "do you know what we will be facing?"
"Yes sir!" they answered almost in unison. "A gate!"
Leon felt hope bloom in his chest. Finally. "Yes. Exactly. And... what is a gate?"
Finn spoke first. "Gates are dangerous, sir. Very dangerous. Brave soldiers have to fight them to protect the kingdom."
"Gates have enemies," Marcus added. "Enemies that threaten the lives of farmers and children. Our families."
"My father told me," Jace said, "that gates are the greatest threat the kingdom has ever faced. Worse than any war with neighboring kingdoms."
"The heroes of old fought gates," Torren contributed. "There are songs about them. The Battle of Westmarch, where High Mage Corvin held back a gate single-handedly for three days while the army evacuated civilians."
They continued like this, each adding pieces that sounded dramatic and important but told Leon absolutely nothing useful. Gates were dangerous. Gates were threats. Gates required heroes. Gates had enemies.
But what were they?
Leon tried redirecting. "But physically, what is a—"
"They say the monsters from gates are terrifying," Finn interrupted. "Huge creatures that can tear through armor like cloth."
"Some breathe fire," Marcus said.
"Some are invisible until they attack," Jace added.
"I heard," Torren said quietly, "that the first gate's initial clear cost ten thousand lives."
The conversation spiraled into increasingly unhelpful territory—speculation about monsters, heroic tales, warnings their parents had given them. Leon sat there, hope dying, cursing himself for thinking that kids from a backwater fishing town would know anything concrete about what the kingdom's military considered a strategic threat.
He'd wasted the entire day.
"High Mage?" Finn asked tentatively. "Would you stay and watch us train? The sergeant says we need to work on our formation fighting."
Leon should leave. He should find someone, anyone, who could give him actual information. But the boys were looking at him with such hope, such pride that their town's mage was here with them, that he couldn't bring himself to refuse.
"Sure," he sighed. "Let's see what you've learned."
They trained for the rest of the afternoon, and Leon watched, half-paying attention while the boys showed him their sword drills and formation techniques. They regaled him with more stories of heroes—legendary warriors and mages who fought impossible odds and won. The tales were probably exaggerated, possibly entirely fictional, but the boys believed them with the fervor of young men about to go to war.
Leon stayed despite himself. Despite knowing he was no closer to understanding what he was about to face. Despite the growing dread in his stomach.
The day ended with no answers.
THE MARCH NORTH
Dawn broke cold and gray.
Leon stood in the castle courtyard wearing the king's robes- deep blue, almost black, with silver embroidery that caught the early light. The staff felt heavy in his hand, the crystal at its top pulsing faintly with what he assumed was actual magic. He looked the part of a high mage, which made the deception feel even worse.
The expedition assembled around him.
Fifty soldiers in formation, weapons and armor polished, faces set with determination. The thirty mages in their various styles of robes and reinforced clothing, some already showed signs of the combat focus they would need. Supply wagons loaded with provisions. Horses stamping in the cold morning air.
Lord Casimir addressed the assembly, his voice carrying across the courtyard. Words about duty, honor, the kingdom's need. Leon barely heard them. He was at the front of the formation, visible to everyone, the supposed leader of this expedition.
The other two thousand soldiers and additional supplies would follow within the week. The forward group's mission was to assess the situation, prepare defenses, and begin magical analysis of the gate.
They departed at sunrise.
The journey north was easier than Leon's month-long crawl to Castle Ravenna. The carriages were better-"magic imbued," Aldric explained, though Leon suspected it was just better suspension and wheel design passed off as enchantment. The pace was quicker too, the horses fresher, the roads better maintained this close to active military operations.
They covered in two days what would have taken a week before.
Leon rode in the expedition leader's carriage, which was somehow both an honor and a prison. Aldric joined him, along with two other senior mages, the sharp-eyed woman whose name he'd learned was Vera, and a quiet man named Tomás who specialized in detection magic.
They tried to discuss strategy. Leon mostly nodded and made noncommittal sounds while they debated magical theory and combat tactics. He was learning things- gates apparently gave off "magical saturation" that could be measured, different types of magic were more or less effective against different creatures, shield matrices needed to be coordinated across multiple mages for maximum efficiency.
But he still didn't know what a gate actually was.
Every time he tried to ask directly, the mages assumed he was testing them or making a philosophical point. When he asked Vera "what do gates look like," she'd launched into a ten-minute explanation of how visual perception of magical phenomena varies by individual sensitivity and training level.
Leon had learned nothing useful.
He spent the journey staring out the carriage window at the passing landscape, trying not to think about the fact that he was leading these people toward something he didn't understand.
At one point, he did the math. Two days of travel at maybe twenty miles per day. Forty miles total. A fully packed family car could have made the trip in under an hour, even accounting for those medieval roads. Could have made the round trip ten times by then, with breaks for lunch, sleep, and picnic stops in between.
The thought was absurd enough to almost make him laugh.
They arrived late afternoon on the second day.
The forward camp was already established - a military installation in the middle of being built, with earthwork fortifications, supply tents, and a command pavilion flying the kingdom's colors. Soldiers saluted as the expedition rode in. Officers met them with reports and logistics updates.
Leon was escorted to the command tent where a briefing was already underway. Maps spread across tables, officers pointing out positions, supply lines, defensive arrangements. He was relieved to discover he didn't need to say or do anything yet, this was just a status report on the current situation.
The gate was first detected three months ago. The crack had been growing steadily. Magical saturation had been increasing exponentially. Based on previous gates, they estimated it would open within two to three weeks, possibly less.
"Defensive positions are being prepared here, here, and here," an officer indicated on the map. "We're fortifying the tree-line to create a killing ground. Archers will be positioned on elevated platforms. Pike formations will hold the center."
The briefing continued. Numbers, positions, supply calculations. Military logistics that Leon could actually follow, since it was just project management with weapons.
Finally, the officer turned to him. "High Mage Leon, do you wish to inspect the gate now or wait until morning?"
Every eye in the tent turned to him.
Leon kept his voice steady. "Take us to it. We'll make our analysis as well."
Nods from the other mages. Salutes from the soldiers- that arm-across-chest gesture he'd seen repeatedly. They filed out of the tent, the authority in his voice having apparently been sufficient.
They boarded carriages again. The ride was shorter this time, maybe twenty minutes through forest that grew increasingly quiet as they travelled. No birdsong. No rustling of small animals. Just an oppressive silence that made Leon's skin prickle.
The carriages stopped.
Leon climbed out, following the others along a path that had been cleared through the underwood. The other mages were tense, their hands glowed faintly with ready magic. The soldiers had weapons drawn.
They emerged into a clearing.
And Leon finally saw what a gate was.
It was breathtaking.
A fracture in reality itself. The air didn't just shimmer- it was torn, like someone took a knife to the fabric of the world and cut a jagged wound through it. The edges buzzed with power that Leon could actually feel, a vibration that went through his bones, making his teeth ache, setting every nerve on edge.
It was maybe thirty feet across right then, hanging in the air about five feet off the ground. The tear was irregular, branching like lightning frozen in place, and along every edge there was this wrongness that hurt to look at directly.
Beyond it -through it- there were glimpses.
The scene appeared and disappeared inconsistently, flickering like a bad video feed. When it was visible, Leon could see another world. Looming cliffs of dark stone. A sky that was too purple, too dark. And creatures.
Countless creatures.
They milled about the cliffs in the distance, and even from here, even through the flickering unstable view, Leon could see they were huge. Some moved on four legs, others on two. There were things flying. Things crawling on the cliff faces. An entire ecosystem of alien life, and every single one of them looked like it was designed to kill.
"Not long now," a mage stated beside him- Vera, her voice tight. "And it keeps widening. Growing more stable."
Leon stared at the gate, at the scene beyond it. The creatures hadn't noticed the tear yet, or didn't care, or couldn't see it from their side. They were just... there. Living their lives in their world, with no idea that a portal was opening that would connect them to this one.
"How many?" Leon asked, his voice coming out rougher than intended.
"Unknown," Tomás answered quietly. "We can only see about a half-mile radius through the distortion. But based on the magical saturation readings and comparison to previous gates..." He paused. "Thousands. Maybe tens of thousands."
Leon's stomach dropped.
He'd been imagining a gate like a dungeon in a video game. A defined space with a boss at the end. Something that could be cleared.
This wasn't that.
This was a window to an entire world. A world full of monsters. And in less than three weeks, that window was going to open wide enough for them to come through.
All of them.
Leon finally saw the horror of gates. Not as an abstract concept. Not as something the mages feared or the soldiers prepared for. But as a reality he was standing in front of, watching the edges of the tear widen imperceptibly with each passing moment.
They were not fighting an invasion force.
They were fighting an apocalypse.
And he was supposed to lead the defense.