They stepped through the obsidian gate together, and the world behind them collapsed into silence.
Kaela felt the change before her boots touched the new ground. The air shifted thinner, ancient, almost reverent. It wasn't just a different place; it was a different realm, a plane stitched between memory and dream.
Their boots met solid stone, cool and slick beneath the soles. Light came from nowhere and everywhere dim, silvery, ethereal. A wide bridge extended before them, floating above a rift of glowing mist. Beyond that, the skeleton of a city loomed.
Velcrath.
Kaela didn't need a guide or a nameplate. She knew it the way you recognize your own face in a mirror. The towers were dark spires etched with runes older than her bloodline. Buildings slumped in silence, neither ruined nor whole. Streets wound into spirals, rooftops bore hollow statues, and glass-like trees had grown from the cracks, their crystalline branches humming faintly.
A whisper brushed her neck. She turned no one.
Seralyn exhaled slowly. "It's... not dead."
"No," Kaela said. "Just sleeping. Watching."
Velcrath was a city made of echoes.
They crossed the bridge in silence. The stone was mirror-smooth, and each step reverberated too long, as if the city was memorizing them.
At the base of the bridge stood an arch of twisted black marble, shaped like the ribs of a serpent. Carved into the stone was a single word:
Witness.
Beyond it, the street opened into a vast plaza paved entirely with enchanted mirrors. Some cracked, some whole. The reflections they offered were not truthful. In one, Kaela saw herself in chains. In another, she stood on a throne of bones.
Seralyn stood motionless before a shard.
Kaela watched her stiffen.
"What do you see?" she asked.
Seralyn's voice was a whisper. "Myself. Alone. In snow. Lighting a pyre."
Kaela moved beside her and glanced down. Her own reflection in a nearby mirror showed her bathed in light, surrounded by wolves, her sigil blazing across the sky like a new constellation. But everyone around her Titan, Azrael, Marcus, even Seralyn was gone.
Kaela recoiled.
"They're not real," Seralyn said, though her voice lacked conviction.
"They're not lies, either," Kaela replied.
More shards lined the streets, embedded into walls, hanging like lanterns from crystalline branches. Each mirror offered a different story. Some glowed warmly. Others screamed with cold possibility.
As they walked deeper into the city, it felt like time unwound.
The cathedral waited at the heart of Velcrath. Its doors were ajar, swung open long ago by hands no longer living. Pillars lined the path inside, each etched with looping text in a language that danced and flickered when stared at directly. Runes pulsed with life across the floor.
Kaela stepped inside. Seralyn followed.
It was quiet but not empty.
At the altar stood a mirror, untouched, whole, shaped like a teardrop and taller than either of them. It shimmered like water but never rippled. Kaela approached it instinctively.
Her fingers brushed the glass
And everything went white.
She stood in a garden.
Not just any garden. It was familiar painfully so. There were cherry trees blooming under moons she didn't know, and the wind smelled like promise.
Then Seralyn appeared.
Barefoot. Dressed in shades of twilight. Her hair was unbound, cascading in dark waves. Her face was soft, eyes unguarded.
"I've been waiting," Seralyn said.
Kaela tried to speak, but no words came. Only the ache in her chest.
Seralyn approached, slowly.
"You don't have to fight anymore. Not here. Just… stay."
Kaela's throat tightened.
Seralyn lifted her hand and touched Kaela's cheek. The warmth undid her. Kaela leaned forward, drawn like gravity.
Their lips met.
The kiss was not lustful. It was a surrender. A confession. A vow.
Kaela's heart cracked open.
She felt it all the longing, the fear, the guilt, the want.
And then the kiss deepened, becoming something molten and undeniable. Kaela's hands found Seralyn's waist, pulled her closer. The world fell away, just the brush of skin and the pulse of shared breath.
Then
A sharp crack split the dream.
Kaela's eyes snapped open.
She was on the cathedral floor.
Gasping. Sweating.
Across from her, Seralyn jolted awake.
Their eyes locked.
Neither of them spoke.
For a long moment, the silence held them. Not awkward charged.
"You saw it too," Kaela said finally.
Seralyn nodded slowly. "I felt everything."
Kaela swallowed. "Was it real?"
"I think… it could be."
Kaela stood and paced. Her steps echoed off the high ceiling. "Velcrath doesn't show illusions. It shows possible truths. That's what this place is."
"A prophecy garden," Seralyn whispered.
Kaela turned to her. "And the Gate wanted us to see it."
Behind them, the great mirror they had touched cracked down the center with a thunderous sound, releasing a pulse of raw silver energy.
The city stirred.
From the shadows of the cathedral's upper balconies, faint shapes began to emerge. Not solid. Not living. Echoes.
Ancient inhabitants, clothed in the raiments of nobility and warriors, their eyes blank, their expressions mournful.
They pointed.
To a door at the back of the cathedral, one that hadn't existed before.
Kaela drew her dagger. "Looks like we're not done."
Seralyn rolled her shoulders. "When are we ever?"
They pushed through the door, entering a spiral staircase lit by floating runes. The air grew warmer the further they descended, and the walls began to hum softly, vibrating with a rhythm that matched Kaela's heartbeat.
At the base of the stairs, they emerged into a massive chamber filled with stone columns wrapped in ivy made of crystal. At its center stood a dais… and floating above it, a single orb of dark light, pulsing faintly.
Kaela stepped closer.
"It's calling to you," Seralyn said.
Kaela nodded. "It's… familiar."
As she reached out, her sigil began to glow again this time in full. Not just her mark, but the runes across her arms, down her spine, and even her eyes lit silver.
Then Seralyn's sigil glowed too.
The orb cracked open.
Inside was a fragment of the moon.
White. Pristine. Radiating.
Kaela's voice was a whisper. "This is a piece of the First Moon."
And in that moment, her vision blurred she saw herself standing beneath a sky torn open by war. Wolves behind her. Fire before her. And in her hand, this fragment.
She turned to Seralyn.
But Seralyn was watching her with awe… and fear.
"Kaela…" she said slowly, "your sigil… it's changing."
Kaela looked down.
Her mark was no longer a single symbol.
It was a constellation.
Shifting. Evolving. Alive.
And somehow… it matched Seralyn's.
Like two halves of a map.
Or a bond.
Kaela opened her mouth to speak.
But before she could, a sound echoed through the chamber
A bell.
A warning.
Not from Velcrath.
From outside the Gate.
The world was moving again.
And something terrible had found their trail.