The Gate did not move.
It did not open, did not glow brighter, did not acknowledge their fear or confusion in any way that could be called a response. It simply *was*—a colossal fracture in the world ahead of them, half-sunken into the land as if reality itself had grown tired of resisting its weight.
And yet, with every passing moment, it felt closer.
Not in distance. In *gravity*.
Caelum felt it as a quiet pull behind his sternum, like a compass needle twitching whenever he looked away. Others felt it too, though they described it differently—pressure in the skull, a tug at the spine, an itch beneath the skin that no amount of pacing could ease.
By unspoken agreement, they began walking again.
---
The terrain between them and the Gate was deceptively gentle.
Rolling fields gave way to shallow valleys littered with the remains of something that might once have been a road. Stone slabs lay cracked and misaligned, some floating a handspan above the ground, others sunk so deep that grass had swallowed their edges. The air grew denser here, carrying a faint metallic tang that clung to the back of the throat.
Élise walked with her eyes fixed on the path ahead, fingers brushing the glass shard at her collarbone whenever the hum from the Gate intensified. She didn't draw from it. She didn't dare.
Not yet.
Aarav kept pace beside her, shoulders stiff, hands clenched to still the tremors that flared whenever the ground shifted unexpectedly. Every time a floating slab drifted closer, his muscles tensed as if preparing to *catch* it.
"Don't," Élise murmured once, noticing. "You don't have to."
Aarav forced a breath out through his nose. "I know. It just—feels like if I don't, something worse will happen."
She nodded. That made sense, in a way nothing else did.
---
Jonah Whitlock stopped them with a raised hand.
"Hold," he said.
The group slowed, then halted, forming a loose semicircle around him. Jonah crouched near a patch of ground where the grass grew darker, almost bruised in color.
"Anyone else feel that?" he asked.
Several people nodded.
"It's thicker here," Jonah continued. "Like the air's resisting movement."
Rakesh scoffed. "You saying the ground's trying to stop us now?"
"I'm saying the closer we get," Jonah replied evenly, "the more this place is going to test us."
As if summoned by his words, the ground shuddered faintly.
A low, distant sound rolled across the fields—not the deep resonance of the Gate, but something closer. Smaller. Curious.
Li Xueyan's hand drifted to the knife at her belt. "We're being watched."
From where Caelum stood, he could feel it too—not eyes, exactly, but *attention*. The sensation slid across his awareness like a shadow passing over water.
He scanned the ruins.
Movement.
At first, he thought it was just the floating debris shifting position. Then one of the shapes detached itself from the background and resolved into something deliberate.
A creature emerged from behind a fractured wall.
It stood taller than the others they'd encountered before, its body elongated, limbs jointed at wrong angles. Its skin was pale and translucent, faint veins visible beneath the surface, pulsing in time with the hum of the Gate. Where a face should have been, there was only a smooth curve broken by a vertical slit that opened and closed slowly.
More followed.
They did not rush. They did not snarl.
They *observed*.
---
"Back," Jonah said quietly. "Everyone take three steps back."
Most complied.
Rakesh did not.
"Why?" he demanded. "They haven't done anything."
One of the creatures tilted its head.
The slit in its face widened.
The air screamed.
It wasn't sound—not entirely. It was pressure, a sudden spike that slammed into the group like a physical force. Several people cried out, clutching their heads. The grass flattened in a wide radius, and cracks spiderwebbed through the stone beneath their feet.
Aarav reacted instinctively.
The invisible threads snapped taut around him, pulling force from the shockwave and redirecting it downward. The ground buckled, absorbing the impact—but the backlash tore through Aarav's arms like fire.
He screamed, collapsing to his knees.
"Enough!" Caelum shouted.
The word cut through the chaos with startling clarity.
The pressure eased.
The creatures recoiled, retreating a step as if startled—not by power, but by *interruption*.
Takahiro moved then.
He did not draw his blade.
He simply stepped forward, posture relaxed, breath steady.
The creatures hesitated.
Li Xueyan took the opening, hurling a stone with precise force. It struck one creature squarely, shattering its translucent skin into shards of light that dissolved before hitting the ground.
The others withdrew at once, melting back into the ruins as if they had never been there.
Silence returned, heavy and ringing.
---
Aarav lay gasping, arms curled protectively against his chest.
Élise knelt beside him, eyes wide. "Aarav—look at me. Look at me."
He did, barely.
"I can't—" he whispered. "It won't stop shaking."
Caelum crouched on Aarav's other side, placing a steady hand on his shoulder. "You redirected too much," he said calmly. "You didn't let it go."
Aarav laughed weakly. "You say that like I had a choice."
"Next time," Caelum replied, "don't try to carry it all."
Something in the way he said it—quiet, certain—made Aarav believe him, even if he didn't understand why.
The tremors eased, though they did not vanish.
Jonah surveyed the group, jaw tight. "That's what I meant," he said. "Testing."
Rakesh said nothing. He wouldn't meet anyone's eyes.
---
They altered their approach after that.
Spacing increased. Movements became more deliberate. No one rushed ahead anymore. The Gate loomed larger now, its fractured edges revealing intricate patterns etched deep into the stone—symbols that shifted when viewed from different angles.
Samuel Crowe slowed as they passed one such marking, tapping his cane against it thoughtfully.
"These aren't warnings," he murmured. "They're records."
"Records of what?" Élise asked.
Samuel smiled thinly. "Outcomes."
That did not help.
---
As they drew closer, the land itself seemed to bend.
Distances warped. A ridge that looked a hundred paces away took twice that to reach, while a shallow dip in the ground swallowed them for several minutes before releasing them back onto the path, disoriented but unharmed.
Caelum noticed something else.
When he walked slightly ahead, the distortions lessened.
When he lagged behind, they worsened.
He tested it subtly—slowing, then quickening his pace. The effect followed him, quiet but consistent.
He stopped experimenting.
This was not something he wanted to understand too quickly.
---
They reached a rise that offered an unobstructed view of the Gate.
Up close—*closer*—its scale was staggering. The archway towered far above the surrounding ruins, its surface cracked and scarred, edges jagged as though torn apart by immense force. Runes crawled across it like veins, glowing faintly before fading again.
A threshold.
A promise.
A threat.
"No doors," Jonah said quietly. "No hinges. No mechanism I can see."
"That's because it doesn't open," Samuel replied. "It *responds*."
"To what?" Rakesh asked.
Samuel's gaze swept over the group. "To you."
The hum deepened, resonating through bone and breath alike.
Élise hugged herself, fighting the urge to reach for her shard. Li Xueyan's eyes flicked from the Gate to the surrounding terrain, already calculating escape routes.
Takahiro knelt, bowing his head—not in reverence, but acknowledgment.
Aarav flexed his fingers, pain flaring and fading in rhythm with the Gate's pulse.
Caelum stood at the center of it all, heart steady, gaze fixed on the fractured arch.
For the first time since arriving in the Threshold Fields, he felt something close to certainty.
They would pass through.
Whether they were ready or not.
---
The Gate pulsed again.
This time, the sound carried a different quality—not just observation, but preparation. Lines of light traced themselves across the ground, radiating outward from the base of the arch, forming intricate patterns that spread toward the group.
The air thickened further.
Space tightened.
Samuel straightened abruptly. "It's beginning," he said.
"What is?" Jonah asked.
Samuel met Caelum's eyes, just for a heartbeat.
"The First Claim."
The patterns reached their feet.
The world lurched.
And somewhere deep within the Gate, something ancient and impersonal turned its attention fully toward them.
The distant Gate was distant no longer.
It had found them.
And it was ready to decide who would be allowed to move forward.