Night fell over the twin peaks like a heavy, star-strewn mantle. The group had taken refuge in a cavity among the rocks, deep enough to shield them from the icy wind but open enough to maintain a constant watch on the Threshold. Fifty meters away, the rip in reality continued to throb, an unstable oval of energy about three meters high that flashed every few minutes, offering fleeting visions of an interior lit by an amber light: a hallway of polished stone, stairs leading up to nothingness, silhouettes moving.
No one slept. Tension was a living animal among them.
Azrael watched, motionless, from the entrance of the cavity. His eyes, accustomed to the gloom, missed no detail. Every flash from the Threshold was a heartbeat that echoed in his own veins. 'How many like me are in there? How many believe the lie that almost devoured me?'
James was sitting against the rock, meticulously disassembling and cleaning his vials with hands that barely trembled. The ritual calmed him. "The mental clarity potion lasts about three hours," he murmured, more to himself than to the others. "If we go in, everyone should carry at least two. Mental confusion will be their first defense."
Sara, beside him, traced faint runes in the air with a finger, making them glow for an instant before they faded. She was practicing containment, the art of holding a spell half-cast, ready to be released. "I can't feel normal magic from there," she said quietly. "It's like a constant hum, background noise. Hard to pick out anything specific."
Antoni was the most restless. He paced the limit of the cavity, rubbing his arms. He wasn't cold. "The echoes here are... different," he said suddenly, drawing everyone's attention. "They're not pain, not memories. They're... expectation. Like the tension before a bell rings. Something is about to happen."
Azrael nodded, without taking his eyes off the Threshold. "Something is always about to happen in a war." His voice was dry. "The question is whether we'll be spectators or part of the blast."
It was then that the Threshold activated.
It wasn't a flash, but a convulsion. The energy rippled violently, and the oval expanded for a second. From its center, a figure was expelled, or perhaps came running out. It fell to its knees on the rock, just twenty meters from their hiding place.
It was a young man, perhaps Azrael's age in his previous life. He wore simple robes, but in his hands glowed the residual aura of a recent spell. He gasped, spitting a thread of blood that froze instantly in the icy air. He looked back over his shoulder at the Threshold, animal terror in his eyes.
From the portal emerged a long, skeletal, translucent hand made of pure amber energy. It reached for the young man, sweeping the air with fingers that crackled with magical static.
Azrael's instinct screamed. 'Don't get involved. Observe. It's a test. A trap.' But another instinct, deeper—the one he had learned when hugging his father after lying about the wizard, when accepting Nikol's stuffed toy—moved first.
"James, fog! Sara, cut that thing!" he hissed fiercely, already in motion.
James didn't question it. He threw a vial to the ground between them and the scene. A thick, gray cloud exploded silently, enveloping the area in seconds. Sara, her eyes shining with concentration, made a scissoring motion with her fingers. A subtle, almost invisible blade of light hissed through the fog and sliced through the energy hand at the wrist. The hand disintegrated into silent sparks, and a dull roar of frustration, seeming to come from miles away, rumbled from inside the Threshold before the portal contracted sharply, returning to its normal size and pulse.
Azrael reached the fallen youth. He was conscious but in shock, staring at the fog around him without understanding.
"Quiet," Azrael ordered in a low, relentless tone, grabbing his arm. "If you want to live, come now."
The authority in his voice, forged in hundreds of hours of solitary training and the certainty of having something to protect, took effect. The young man, nodding dazedly, let himself be dragged.
In less than a minute, they were back in the cavity, James's fog beginning to dissipate. Sara had erected a faint shield of silence around their hideout, muffling any sound.
The newcomer looked at them all, breathing raggedly. He had light hair and blue eyes, now wide with shock. 'Who... who are you? Hunters? Did you come for the bounty?'
"Bounty," James repeated, exchanging a look with Azrael.
"Explanations later," Azrael cut in. He knelt in front of the young man, leveling his gaze with his. He had seen that same emptiness, that same desperate confusion, in the reflection of his own eyes in puddles, in his past life. "What's your name?"
"Leo..." he swallowed. "They called me Leo. They said it was a name of power here."
"Who told you that, Leo?"
"The Announcer... inside the Threshold. He said I was the Chosen of... of Lyra, the Goddess of the Dawn. That my world had been a seed, a preparation. That here... here I would achieve glory." His voice broke. "But it's a lie. It's all a lie."
A spasm of pain wracked his body and he doubled over, coughing. On his palm, where energy had glowed before, there was now a black, twisted mark, like an internal burn.
"What happened to you?" Sara asked, her voice softer, moving closer.
"I failed..." whispered Leo, with tears of rage and pain. "The final trial. I couldn't channel the 'blessing' they gave me. It hurt... like my soul was being torn out. And when I failed, the Announcer... his voice changed. He said resources couldn't be wasted. That the 'substrate' had to be reabsorbed. That hand... it came to take me back inside. To... to recycle me."
The word fell into the silence like a slab. Recycling. Not death. Not execution. Recycling. Like a defective instrument melted down to reuse the metal.
Antoni made a guttural sound. 'A forced echo... that's what they do. They don't let the soul fragments leave. They trap them and... repurpose them.'
Azrael felt a cold that had nothing to do with the mountain. Dam had spoken to him of a war, of saving humans. Never of a soul factory.
"Leo," Azrael said, placing a firm hand on his shoulder. "What you experienced was real. The fear is real. But you're out. For now." He paused, choosing his words with the care he used to unsheathe his sword. "We're not hunters. We don't serve any god. We're like you. Summoned. Deceived. But we've found something they don't account for."
Leo looked at him, desperate for a thread of hope. 'What?'
"Ourselves," James replied from behind, with a tired but genuine smile. "And each other. We're not alone."
"The goddess who promised you glory, Lyra..." Sara interjected, thoughtful. "Her counterpart in the pantheon is Ordex, the God of Eternal Silence. According to myths, they are at war over dominion of the twilight. They didn't choose a Chosen One, Leo. They chose a soldier for a conflict that isn't even yours."
Leo looked at each of them in turn, the shock giving way to a slow, devastating understanding. The lie was crumbling, revealing the void of his mission.
"And now what?" he asked, his voice barely a thread.
Azrael looked towards the Threshold, which continued to pulse, indifferent to the piece that had escaped the machine.
"Now," he said, looking back at Leo, and then at his friends, "we confirm what we suspected. And we start planning how to return the favor to those inside. Not with an army. With the truth. One person at a time." His gaze settled on the black mark on Leo's hand. "And first, we'll see what this 'blessing' that poisons is. James, can you analyze it?"
James nodded, already pulling an empty vial and a prismatic crystal from his bag. "We're going to need more than fog and clean cuts," he said, his expression serious. "We're going to need a miracle."
"Miracles are for gods," Azrael replied, settling back into his observation post, his profile a resolute silhouette against the ghostly light of the Threshold. "We have time, patience, and a grudge. Sometimes, that's more powerful."
The vigil continued, but they were no longer four. They were five. And in the heart of the world's wound, a divine machine had just failed for the first time, unaware that the flaw it had expelled was, in fact, the first crack in its perfect design.