The wind along the Ashen Sky shifted as if it had been waiting for them to arrive. The half-buried obsidian and silver gate loomed before Jin, its script shimmering faintly in the dull light. For a long while, none of them moved. The land around it was still, save for the lazy fall of ash that gathered along the lower frame.
Myra took one step closer, her boots sinking slightly into the blackened sand. "It is not dead," she murmured.
Jin's eyes traced the etchings again. "No. It listens, as the last one did. But this one waits."
Soren gave a quiet grunt, scanning the dunes in every direction. "Waiting for what?"
"Not for us," Jin said, his voice low. "But we have found it before what it waits for has come."
The faint pulse in the ground from earlier returned, steadier now that they stood so near. It was not a violent sensation, more like the soft and distant thud of a heart buried deep below. The rhythm seemed to pass up through their feet, into their legs, and into the base of their skulls, until it was hard to tell if the beat belonged to the land or to themselves.
Myra's gaze lingered on the gate's silver inlays. "If this connects to the shard you carry…"
"It will not open with what I have," Jin said. "The shard is a key, but only to its own door."
Soren shifted his stance. "So we leave it? Again?"
"Not entirely," Jin replied.
He crouched, brushing aside the ash near the lower frame. Beneath it, the ground was not soil but layered stone, carved with smaller, tighter script that spiraled inward toward the center of the gate. His fingers hovered just above it. The markings gave off no glow, yet a subtle chill seeped into his hand.
He straightened without touching it. "This is part of something older than the Ashen Sky."
Myra's brow furrowed. "Older?"
"Yes," Jin said. "The gates are remnants, but this… this is the anchor beneath them."
The air shifted again, this time accompanied by a faint sound, like grains of sand sliding down glass. Soren's hand went to the hilt of his weapon. "We are not alone."
Out beyond the nearest dune, the ash began to move. It rolled downward, slipping into a shallow depression until a shape emerged — not of ember and smoke like the figure they had met before, but of solid black glass, edges sharp, form angular and wrong in a way that made the eye want to look away.
It moved without disturbing the ash beneath it. There was no sound of steps, only the occasional crack of heat-stressed stone from within its body.
Jin's hand drifted toward his sleeve, fingers brushing the hidden shard. "It is bound to the gate," he said softly.
The figure's head tilted, faceless yet aware. Then it pointed — not at Jin, but at the space between him and the gate. A deep line split the ground there, and ash began to spill into it, revealing a narrow path leading down into darkness.
Soren's grip tightened. "That was not there before."
"It is now," Jin said.
The glass figure stepped back, folding itself down until it melted into the surface of the gate. The silver inlays pulsed once, faint and slow, before returning to stillness.
Jin looked toward the path. "It offers a way… or a test."
"Or a trap," Soren muttered.
"Every path is one of those three," Jin replied. "Only the proportions change."
Without waiting for agreement, Jin began to descend into the revealed path. The ash crunched softly beneath his boots, the light from above dimming quickly as the walls rose on either side. Myra followed in silence, one hand on the hilt of her blade. Soren came last, his watchful eyes on the narrowing strip of sky.
The air cooled as they went deeper. The texture of the walls shifted from loose ash to stone veined with pale mineral threads. A faint glow began to rise from below, not enough to light their way fully, but enough to outline their forms in dim silver.
After several minutes, the passage widened into a low chamber. The floor was smooth stone, cracked in places, and in the center stood a circular depression filled with still water. The glow they had seen came from far below the surface.
Myra stepped closer, peering in. "It is deep."
Jin joined her at the edge. The water was perfectly clear, yet the light within it seemed blurred, as though seen through a veil. There was no ripple, no disturbance, no sound.
Soren circled the room once before stopping near the far wall. "There is only one way forward," he said, nodding toward the pool.
Jin studied the glow again. "It is not a way forward. It is a mirror."
He reached into his sleeve and took out the shard. Its faint battlefield reflection shifted as he brought it near the water's surface. The light below responded, pulsing in time with the shard's inner flicker.
When the tip of the shard touched the water, the chamber changed.
The walls expanded outward without moving, as though the space itself had grown larger. The light below flared, and in the reflection of the pool Jin no longer saw his own face, but the fractured spiral symbol they had seen etched into the gates.
Myra's voice was quiet. "It knows you."
"No," Jin said, eyes fixed on the reflection. "It remembers me."
The image shifted again, showing a battlefield drenched in ash, broken gates scattered like fallen monoliths. Figures in silver and obsidian armor fought in silence, their movements slowed by the weight of time. The scene blurred, then cleared to show a single mask lying in the dust… the same half-broken mask worn by the ember-being.
Jin withdrew the shard, and the vision faded. The chamber returned to its earlier size, the pool still and silent once more.
He slipped the shard back into his sleeve. "It was not a door," he said. "It was a reminder."
Soren frowned. "Of what?"
"That we are still walking in the shadow of an old war," Jin said.
They retraced their steps up the path to the surface. The gate loomed unchanged, the glass figure gone. But the pulse in the ground was different now — slower, as though satisfied for the moment.
Jin turned his gaze toward the horizon, where the ash dunes stretched into a haze of dark heat. Somewhere beyond them lay the next place that would test them… the next fragment, the next piece of the spiral.
"We move," he said.
Myra gave a faint nod, and Soren grunted in agreement. Together they left the gate behind, following the faint rhythm beneath their feet, each step carrying them deeper into the Ashen Sky's long memory.