She who sees

The light swallowed everything.

For a heartbeat, Aisha felt nothing—no cold, no sound, no weight of her body. Only a pulsing brightness that seemed to breathe, alive and waiting. Then the world slammed back into place.

She stood in a hall that wasn't a hall at all. It was a shifting corridor of glass and shadow, the walls shimmering like frozen smoke. The ground beneath her feet rippled like ink dropped in water. Every step sent echoes that came back a second too late, as though time itself lagged behind.

"Aisha?" Nathan's voice cut through the hum. He stumbled forward, face pale and eyes wide. "Where—what is this?"

Tom followed, his boots crunching on the uneven floor that wasn't quite solid. He turned in a slow circle, taking in the impossible vastness. "It's a threshold," he said, almost reverently. "A place between."

Ruby appeared beside Aisha, her form flickering at the edges like candlelight in a draught. The crossing is open, her voice whispered directly into Aisha's mind. Few have stood here and kept their shape. You must move carefully.

A shadow moved in the distance. Then another. Dozens—no, hundreds—shifting figures, just beyond the thin veil of light, their outlines wrong, bending and folding in ways the eye couldn't follow. Aisha's skin prickled.

"They're watching us." she muttered.

"They're testing us," Ms. Thorne corrected, stepping into view from behind a jagged column of light. Her face was drawn, her cloak heavy with frost that steamed as she approached. "This place doesn't open for the unworthy. The gate doesn't just lead—it judges."

Tom flinched. "Judges what?"

Ms. Thorne's eyes settled on Aisha. "Blood."

The word echoed too long. The floor beneath Aisha's boots pulsed faintly, matching her heartbeat. Every instinct screamed at her to turn back, but the pendant around her neck flared instead—steady, certain, answering something in the air that only it seemed to understand.

A path unfurled before them, threads of light weaving together into steps that descended deeper into the shimmering dark. The others looked to her, waiting.

Aisha swallowed hard. "We keep moving."

They followed.

The deeper they went, the thicker the air grew, like wading through water. The whispers started next—low, sibilant voices curling through the glass. Words she couldn't quite hear, but could feel. Memories that weren't hers brushed against her mind: the clang on swords, the stench of fire and iron, a woman's scream swallowed by wind. The scent of blood and earth filled her lungs.

"Sadon's war," Tom breathed. "You're hearing it. The first fall."

Aisha's hand shot out, gripping his wrist. "How do you know that?"

He hesitated. "Because I've dreamt it too."

Before she could press further, the ground ahead shimmered and split open. A fissure of light rippled through the corridor, flinging shards of glasslike fragments into the air. Nathan grabbed her arm, pulling her back as a figure emerged from the break—a form made of mist and shadow, towering and thin, its face a void.

Ruby hissed, stepping between them, her form expanding, claws of white flame cutting through the dark. Wraiths of the Gate, she warned. Guardians of the threshold.

The wraith lunged.

Aisha moved without thinking. Her pendant blazed, her body answering some instinct older than language. The light leapt from her chest and coiled around her hands, forming a weapon she hadn't summoned—a blade, not quite steel, not quite flame, vibrating with power. The force of it thrummed up her arms, into her bones.

She met the wraith's strike head-on.

Their clash tore sound itself apart. The air rippled, the corridor shaking with every blow. Aisha ducked, spun, slashed—the movements too fluid, too precise to be learned. This wasn't training. This was memory.

Her blood remembered.

The pendant's glow deepened, lines of gold branching up her arms like veins. The wraith faltered under her next strike, its form splintering into wisps of black smoke that dissolved into the air.

When the echo faded, silence crashed back.

Aisha stood panting, her hands still trembling around the vanishing weapon. Nathan stared at her, mouth slightly open. "You—you fought like you'd done that before."

"I haven't," she said quietly. "At least... not that I remember."

Ruby hovered close, her outline flickering in approval. The bloodline awakens.

But Ms. Thorne's gaze was distant, uneasy. "It's awakening too fast," she murmured. "Too soon."

"What do you mean?2 Aisha demanded.

Ms. Thorne stepped closer, her cloak brushing the fractured floor. "That power—what you just used—it's the same source Sadon drew from before he fell. Your family's line was meant to end that connection, not reignite it."

"So you're saying I'm like him?" Aisha's voice sharpened.

"I'm saying you might be the only one who can finish what he began," Ms. Thorne said softly. "Or repeat it."

The corridor trembled again, and light fractured overhead. More figures moved beyond the glass—closer this time, whispering her name. Aisha... come see... come remember.

Her heart pounded. They sounded like her mother.

"Nathan—did you hear that?" she asked, turning—but Nathan's face had gone pale. He was staring past her, eyes wide in horror.

Behind Aisha, one of the glass walls was shifting. Shapes moved inside it—memories forming like reflections. She saw her father's face for an instant, eyes filled with terror, reaching for someone she couldn't see. And beside him, a woman—her mother—turning, her lips moving soundlessly, mouthing a single word:

Run.

The image shattered.

A gust of freezing air swept through the corridor, and the light of the path flickered, dimming to embers.

Ruby's voice pressed hard againstAisha's skull. You've been seen. The Gate knows who you are now. You can't stay.

"What happens if I do?" Aisha whispered.

Ruby's form flickered violently, her edges coming apart. Then the Gate will decide you belong here.

Ms. Thorne's hand shot out, gripping Aisha's arm. "Move!"

They ran. The corridor twisted behind them, closing in, shards of light slicing through the air. Tom stumbled, Nathan caught his shoulder, and together they threw themselves through the next archway as the entire hall folded in on itself like paper.

They landed hard on the other side—on stone, wet and cold. The echo of collapsing light roared behind them, then silence.

When Aisha looked up, they were no longer in the glass hall.

They stood in a vast circular chamber, the ceiling lost in shadow. In it's center rose a stone dais carved with the same sigils from the parchment. The air smelled of ancient rain and blood.

Ruby reformed, her voice trembling now. You've crossed the Gate.

Aisha pushed herself to her feet, her heart still hammering. "Then where are we?"

Ms. Thorne looked around slowly, eyes reflecting the faint light from the walls. "Where all legacies are tested," she said. "Where the past demands its reckoning."

Aisha turned her gaze to the dais. The symbols pulsed faintly, matching the rhythm of her heartbeat.

Whatever waited here—whatever the Gate had shown her—it wasn't done with her yet.

And neither, she realized, was her destiny.