She who sees

The world held its breath.

When the Gate's light finally faded, the air felt hollow-emptied, but not peaceful. The silence that followed wasn't stillness; it was waiting. Watching.

Aisha stood in the centre of the circle, her hands still trembling, the faint golden glow beneath her skin pulsing slower now. Her chest ached with exhaustion and something stranger, a hollow throb that felt like a missing heartbeat.

She'd done it. She's cast Sadon back—or thought she had. Yet as she stared into the now-quiet gate, she could feel it: a vibration beneath the calm surface, like something coiled and whispering beneath ice.

"He's gone," Nathan said behind her, voice hoarse, hopeful. "You stopped him,"

Aisha didn't answer. Her eyes remained fixed on the faint shimmer within the gate. It looked harmless now, but she knew better. Power like that didn't die—it adapted. Changed. Waited for new cracks to slip through.

"I didn't stop him," she murmured. "I just stopped him here."

Ms. Thorne moved closer, her cloak torn, soot smudging her face. "You severed the link," she said softly, almost reverently. "That's more than anyone in your line has ever managed. The gate isn't his anymore—it's yours."

Tom let out a low whistle, half in awe, half in disbelief. "So you've...claimed it? That's a thing we can do now?"

Aisha's lips twitched in a faint, humourless smile. "Apparently."

She crouched, brushing her fingers over the symbols carved into the stone floor. They no longer pulsed with Sadon's shadow but with a faint golden thread that mirrored the light in her veins. It was her power now—wild, untrained, but hers.

Nathan knelt beside her, his hand warm against her shoulder. "If he's not gone, where is he?"

Aisha hesitated. "Trapped. For now."
Her voice dropped lower. "But he's learning. He'll find another way."

The realisation sank into all of them like cold water. Sadon wasn't destroyed—he'd been forecd to retreat, his essence scattered between realms. And if the gates were paths, not prisons, then it was only a matter of time before he found another to open.

Ms. Thorne's eyes flicked to Aisha's pendant, still cracked but faintly glowing. "That's why the other gates are stirring," she said. "You changed the balance. Now the others will start to respond—both to you and to him."

The room darkened at her words, as though the chamber itself shivered in agreement.

Aisha straightened, fatigue gnawing at her but resolve sharper than ever. "Then we go to them before he does."

Tom frowned. "You mean all of them? There are supposed to be—what—five? Six?"

"Seven." Ms. Thorne corrected quietly. "One for each passage of the old world. Each built to test what no mortal could endure. Each holding a fragment of Sadon's power." Her eyes found Aisha's. "If he gathers them first—"

"He'll be whole again," Aisha finished. "And unstoppable."

The firelight guttered, throwing shadows that crawled across the cracked walls. She looked at her friends—Nathan pale but steady, Tom wary, Ms. Thorne still holding secrets behind her eyes—and felt the same ache of decision she'd fought for weeks.

She couldn't leave them behind. Not now.

"I said I'd choose who to trust," she said quietly. "I choose all of you."

Ms. Thorne's brows drew together. "You understand what that means? If you bind others to your path, their fates—"

"Will be mine," Aisha interrupted. "I know."

The teacher held her gaze for a long moment, then inclined her head. "So be it."

Tom, exhaled, running a hand through his hair. "Well, if we're walking into ancient death traps, might as well do it properly. But maybe not tonight."

A faint smile ghosted across Aisha's lips. "No, not tonight."

She turned toward the gate again, drawn by a flicker of light that hadn't been there before—a tiny spark, hovering at its base. When she crouched to look, she saw it wasn't light at all but writing, carved deep into the stone and half-hidden beneath frost. The same runes that had haunted her dreams.

She reached out, tracing them with a trembling fingertip. They flared in recognition.

He waits in the hollow between heartbeats. Only the true bearer of the crossing can rewrite his name.

Aisha's breath caught. The words weren't Sadon's. Her mother's, maybe. Or someone who had stood here before, someone who had also faced the gate and left behind a warning.

Ms. Thorne leaned closer, eyes narrowing. "Those marks weren't there before. The rewriting has begun."

"The what?" Tom asked.

"The gate didn't close," Aisha said, voice low. "It shifted. It's not holding him—it's translating him. Turning what he was into something else. Something we might be able to control."

Nathan frowned. "That sounds...impossible."

"So did all of this a week ago," Aisha said, rising to her feet. "If the gates can change what they guard, then we can rewrite more than Sadon. We can rewrite the legacy itself.

The words hung in the air—impossible, dangerous, intoxicating.

Ms. Thorne's expression softened, pride and fear interwoven. "You're your mother's daughter," she said.

The statement landed like a stone in Aisha's chest. For the first time, she didn't feel the ache of absence when her mother's name was spoken. She felt possibility. Connection.

She looked towards the gate, where the faint outline of that woman's face had shimmered before fading. "Then maybe she's somewhere close," she whispered. "Maybe she's just...waiting for the world to catch up."

Outside, thunder rolled again—softer now, echoing across the mountains as if the world itself were shifting to make room for something new.

Aisha turned to the others. "We'll rest tonight. Then we start looking for the next gate. If Sadon's fragments are waking, we can't give them time to gather."

Nathan nodded. Tom groaned but didn't protest. Ms. Thorne gave a single, solemn nod.

As they left the chamber, Aisha cast one last glance back at the gate. For a heartbeat, it was still. Then—just barely—it pulsed.

A whisper brushed her thoughts, faint as smoke.

"You changed the path...but every path leads back to me."

Her skin went cold, but she didn't look back.

"Then I'll change it again," she murmured. "And again. Until it doesn't."

The snow outside had melted into mist, curling through the trees like breath. The world was stirring, alive again.

For the first time, the path ahead didn't feel like fate.
It felt like choice.