She who sees

The path to the next gate didn't appear all at once.

It unfolded.

By morning, the snow had retreated to the edges of the trees, a glittering skeleton of the storm that had once buried the world. The ground beneath was slick, raw, alive. Aisha's boots sank into the thawing earth, every step releasing the scent of moss and something older—something like metal and memory.

They had been walking for hours, following the pull of the pendant. It didn't glow or whisper, but it tugged softly in one direction, like a compass that no longer obeyed the rules of the world.

Nathan walked beside her, his scarf pulled high against the cold. "You sure about this?" he asked, voice low. "We could wait. Rest. Regroup."

Aisha shook her head. "If the next gate's stirring, we don't have time. Sadon's fragments could already be moving."

Tom snorted from behind them. "Fragments of an ancient warlord walking around in the snow—what could go wrong?"

"Everything," Ms. Thorne said simply, her cloak whispering over the ground as she moved. She carried a small satchel now, the same one Aisha had seen in her classroom, stuffed with maps, runes, and parchment that fluttered whenever the wind shifted—as though they were breathing.

They reached the old road by mid-day. One cobblestone, now fractured and half-swallowed by frost, it stretched toward the northern hills where the mist gathered thick and silver. Aisha stopped. Her pendant pulsed once, bright enough to catch the light.

"This is it," she said softly. "The second gate's close."

Ms. Thorne stepped forward, examining the stones. "Not close," she murmured. ""It's beneath us."

Tom frowned. "You mean underground?"

"No," Aisha said before she realised how she knew. "Not underground. Beneath. Hidden between."

The words felt borrowed, not her own, but they hummed with truth.

The teacher's eyes flickered with quiet pride. "You're starting to hear it, then."

"Hear what?" Nathan asked.

"The old language," Ms. Thorne said. "The one the gates were built from. It's not spoke. It's felt."

Aisha opened her mouth to ask more, but the ground trembled. Just a shiver at first, then a steady, rolling pulse that spread outward like the heartbeat of something buried deep. The air thickened, pressure building her ears until it was almost painful.

"Move back," Ms. Thorne snapped.

They scattered just as the first fissure split open across the road, a line of burning gold tearing through stone. Aisha shielded her eyes as light erupted upward, forming a circle in the air above them—rotating, alive, humming with symbols that shifted faster than thought.

Tom swore. "That's not normal, right?"

"No," Ms. Thorne said grimly. "It's waking."

The Gate didn't open like a door. It unfolded, layers of light and shadow peeling back to reveal a corridor that seemed to stretch through both the sky and soil. Beyond it, the air shimmered with colourless flame.

And then came the sound—a low, rhythmic chant, too distant to be human.

Aisha's breath hitched. The pendant on her chest burned cold, and for a fleeting second, the world tilted. Shadows stretched unnaturally long. The edges of the gate bled darkness.

"Something's coming through," she whispered.

A hand brushed her arm. Nathan. His eyes met hers—steady, grounding—and for a moment, she could breathe again. "Then we face it together," he said.