The first sound Delaney heard was the wind. It was a low, mournful sigh sweeping down from the ravaged mountain, carrying the scent of ozone and cold stone. It was the most beautiful and terrible thing she had ever experienced. Each rustle of a shattered branch, each skitter of a pebble dislodged by the settling earth, was a symphony of overwhelming intensity. After the absolute silence of the void, the world was a roaring, painful cacophony.
She pushed herself up onto her elbows, her body screaming in protest. Every muscle ached; every scrape and bruise sang a sharp, percussive note. She was alive. The reality of it was a physical blow. She was alive, and she was alone on a mountainside beneath a dawn that felt stolen from another, simpler world.
The weight at the edge of her perception was constant. It was not a sound, not a sight. It was a… knowing. A certainty, like the awareness of her own heartbeat. Lane was there. Not here, with her, but there. In the still point. The gate was held. The chaotic scream of the Schism was gone, replaced by a fragile, tenuous quiet. The world felt thin, stretched, as if a new layer of reality had been laid over a healing wound.
Her hearing, returned with a vengeance, was a clumsy, brutal instrument. The return of the vibrational sense Colton had taught her was a small mercy; it was a familiar language in the sudden Babel of noise. She could feel the deep, groaning settle of the mountain, the frantic, fleeing heartbeats of small animals, the distant, wailing sirens of emergency vehicles converging on the catastrophe.
Colton.
The thought was an ice pick to the heart. She scrambled to her feet, ignoring the dizziness that swamped her. She had to find him. He had been thrown… he had been…
She oriented herself using the new, silent pull of the gate—a gentle, planetary tug toward the epicenter of the ruin. She was miles out, having been expelled from the collapsing fortress like a cork from a bottle. She began to move, stumbling and sliding down the unstable slope, her eyes fixed on the column of smoke and dust that marked the grave of the Oriax fortress.
The journey was a nightmare. The landscape was unrecognizable, scarred by fissures and littered with debris both ancient and horrifyingly new—twisted spires of black crystal, fragments of bone-white machinery, and the occasional, terrible stillness of a fallen acolyte, their robes now just rags. The air grew thicker with dust and the smell of death as she drew closer.
She found him near what had once been the main entrance, now a gaping maw of shattered rock. He was lying half-buried under a fall of stone, one arm flung out as if reaching for something. His leather jacket was torn, his face pale and caked with blood and dirt.
A sound tore from her throat, a raw, broken thing she didn't recognize as her own voice. She fell to her knees beside him, her hands frantically clearing the smaller rocks from his chest.
"Colton?" Her voice was a stranger's—hoarse and unused. She pressed her fingers to his neck, her own pulse hammering so loudly it deafened her.
Nothing.
A sob hitched in her chest. Then, a faint, thready flutter beneath her fingertips. A pulse. Weak, but there.
"Colton," she said again, her voice cracking. She gently touched his face. "Can you hear me?"
His eyelids fluttered. One eye was swollen shut, but the other opened a slit. The familiar, irreverent spark was gone, replaced by a haze of pain. But when his gaze focused on her, a ghost of a smile touched his bloody lips.
"Kid…" he rasped, the word a faint exhalation. "You're… making a racket."
A hysterical laugh-sob escaped her. He could hear her. She could hear him. The simple, impossible miracle of it.
"Don't talk," she said, her hands trembling as she assessed his injuries. His leg was bent at a sickening angle. Several ribs were likely broken. "Help is coming. I can hear the sirens."
His hand moved weakly, closing over hers. His grip was surprisingly firm. "Lane?" he asked, his single eye searching her face.
She swallowed the lump in her throat. How could she possibly explain? "He's… gone. But it's over. He stopped it."
Colton's eye held hers for a long moment, and she saw the understanding there. He didn't need the details. He saw the truth of it in her eyes, in the new, profound silence that had fallen over the world. He saw the weight she now carried.
"Not over," he corrected softly, each word an effort. "Just… different." He coughed, a wet, painful sound that made her wince. "The keykeeper… has a heavy key."
She stared at him. He knew. Somehow, he understood the nature of the bargain that had been struck.
The wail of sirens grew louder, punctuated by the thrum of helicopter blades vibrating through the air. Flashing lights appeared through the dust at the base of the mountain. The world was arriving, ready to dissect the miracle and bury the nightmare.
Colton's grip tightened. "They'll have questions… a lot of questions." He took a shallow, ragged breath. "The official story… will be whatever they need it to be. An earthquake. A gas leak. A cult suicide." His eye bore into hers. "Our story… stays buried. With him."
She nodded, understanding. To speak of gates and other realities, of a man trapped in the silence between worlds, would be a one-way ticket to a different kind of prison. The truth was theirs alone to bear.
Paramedics swarmed up the slope, their voices loud and urgent in her newly sensitive ears. They gently moved her aside, their efficient hands taking over. She stood there, shivering, watching as they stabilized Colton, their words a blur of medical jargon. He was loaded onto a stretcher, his eye closing as the painkillers took effect.
One of the paramedics turned to her, a woman with a kind, tired face. "Are you injured, miss? Can you tell us what happened here?"
Delaney looked from the paramedic's face to the vast, silent wound of the mountain. She could feel the gate, a steady, silent pressure at the base of her skull. A constant reminder. A permanent tether.
"I don't know," she said, her voice small and convincingly dazed. It wasn't entirely a lie. The full scope of what had happened was beyond words. "There was… an explosion. I was running. I just… ran."
The paramedic nodded, buying the story of a traumatized survivor. She wrapped a shock blanket around Delaney's shoulders and guided her toward a waiting vehicle.
As they drove away from the mountain, Delaney pressed her forehead against the cool glass of the window. The dawn was breaking in earnest, painting the sky in hues of rose and gold. The world was waking up, oblivious to how close it had come to ending, unaware of the silent gatekeeper and the keyholder riding in the back of an ambulance.
She was free. She was alive. She could hear the world again.
But as the mountain receded in the distance, the gentle, constant pull at the edge of her soul remained. It was not a bond. It was a responsibility. A vow etched into the fabric of her being.
The war was over. The long, silent watch had begun.