Aeryn awoke in darkness.
Not the consuming void of the Gate's realm, but something quieter more final. The silence after a funeral. The hush of a world catching its breath.
He lay on a field of ash.
Above him, a sky neither day nor night stretched endlessly, painted in swirls of colorless flame. No stars. No moon. Just the echo of something broken.
His body ached.
He tried to move and felt the pull something tethered inside him. Not chains, but threads, wound tight through his bones, through his name, through every breath he'd ever taken.
"You severed the throne," said a voice behind him.
"But you didn't walk away free."
He turned.
Standing there was a boy. No older than ten. Pale hair. Eyes like mercury.
Aeryn knew that face. Knew it too well.
"…Me," he whispered.
The boy nodded.
"The part you buried. The piece you cast into fire when you left Aeryn Vale behind."
Aeryn swallowed. "Why are you here?"
"Because now there's room again. You broke the Gate's claim but what fills the void? That's up to us."
The Deep Stirs
Beneath the sea, the temple collapsed in on itself.
Mira, Evelyn, and Torren barely made it to the surface gasping, coughing, as the ocean shuddered beneath them. The water boiled in places. A deep tremor rolled through the waves.
They clung to shattered driftwood as the sky cracked overhead lightning flashing sideways in impossible angles.
Evelyn stared down at the water. "He did it. Aeryn… he severed the Gate."
Torren shook his head grimly. "No. He diverted it. The Gate's no longer anchored, but that doesn't mean it's gone."
Mira turned toward the horizon, where something massive began to rise too far to see clearly, yet near enough to make the tide retreat.
"Then we're out of time," she said.
"It's choosing a new vessel."
The Choice
Back in the ash-field of the in-between world, Aeryn stood across from his younger self.
"This place," the boy said, "is the last quiet before the scream. You can rest here forever. Or…"
"Or?" Aeryn asked.
"…You can take the burden willingly. Not to rule. Not to contain. But to become something new."
"What does that mean?"
The boy his younger self reached out, hand open.
"It means you don't run anymore. You don't hide behind names or memories. You become the gatekeeper, not the gate."
Aeryn looked down at his hand scarred, burned, still trembling from the void's fury.
He took the boy's hand.
And fire surged through him not destructive, but illuminating.
He remembered everything.
The death of his mother. The pact his father made. The voice in the mirror. The bargain struck in a language no man should speak.
And with it came clarity.
He was the key.
But he could be the lock, too.
---
The Gatekeeper Reborn
The ocean calmed, unnaturally so.
Waves stilled as if held by invisible hands. The clouds above parted in a perfect ring, revealing a column of light that plunged from the heavens into the sea's heart.
From that light he returned.
Aeryn rose from the depths, not swimming, not climbing. Lifted.
His eyes, once gray and storm-scarred, now burned with a molten gold. Not fire, not divine something older. His presence bent the air. Not with weight, but meaning. Like the silence before a sacred word.
Evelyn gasped as he stepped onto the broken remains of the temple's highest stone.
"Aeryn?"
He looked at her but didn't speak.
Mira flinched. "That's not just him anymore."
Torren drew a blade. "That's a throne in skin."
Aeryn raised a hand and the blade shattered.
Not violently. Gently. As if time refused to let it exist near him anymore.
"I'm still me," Aeryn said at last. His voice carried, not loud but deep as if the world paused to listen.
"But I remember everything. I remember what the Gate was built to hold. And it's not done."
The New Threat
Far below the ruined sea floor, deeper than maps dared mark, something stirred.
The void was not gone.
It had only been redirected.
The shadows Aeryn refused to consume had found another.
In the cradle of bones beneath the sunken continent, a child screamed. Not from fear but from birth.
It wasn't human.
It wasn't whole.
But it was alive.
A pulse echoed outward from the trench, setting off earthquakes miles away. Volcanoes rumbled awake. Birds fell dead mid-flight.
Aeryn clutched his chest, gasping. "It found a new vessel…"
Mira turned to him, pale. "Who?"
He met her gaze and for the first time, feared the answer.
"Someone born in the dark. Someone I tried to save… and failed."
Evelyn stepped closer. "Who, Aeryn?"
He whispered the name. A name soaked in sorrow.
"Elia."
The Gathering Storm
Elia had been a child when the cult took her.
A child when the Gate marked her as "unfit."
A child when Aeryn abandoned her, thinking her lost believing her soul devoured by the dark.
But she lived.
She grew.
And now, something older than language had curled around her spirit like a serpent. Twisting her sorrow into strength. Her silence into wrath.
She opened her eyes deep beneath the world.
They glowed with a terrible hunger.
"You would not let me in," the Gate whispered to her.
"But she will open willingly."
Elia smiled. Not hers, not quite.
The Gate had found not just a vessel but a willing one.
The Birth of Silence
The trench beneath the sea had no name. Not anymore.
Long ago, it had been called Vareth-Kai, the Hollow Vein where gods bled, and silence was worshipped.
Now, it pulsed like a womb.
At its center, Elia floated not breathing, not anchored by flesh or air. The Gate's remnants encircled her like veins of living obsidian, binding her, feeding her, becoming her.
She no longer remembered her age.
She no longer remembered kindness.
But she remembered him. The boy who had promised to save her. The boy who let her go.
"Aeryn Vale."
The name echoed in her mind like a dirge.
The Gate's voice curled into her skull.
"He would not open for Us. But you… child of pain… you are the door we have been waiting for."
She reached out.
And the world shivered.
Above, in the Temple's Remains
Aeryn's knees gave way.
He fell, hand clutching his ribs, golden veins flickering wildly across his arms like fire chasing lightning.
Torren caught him. "What the hell is happening?"
"She's awake," Aeryn hissed.
Evelyn stepped beside him, heart pounding. "Who is she, Aeryn?"
He didn't answer at first.
Then: "She was my first failure."
His voice cracked, memories returning like knives Elia's laughter in the temple garden, her small hand gripping his cloak the night he fled, the blood-soaked floor where he last saw her.
"She was just a child. I thought I could protect her by hiding her."
He looked up, voice hollow. "But the Gate fed on that silence."
Beneath the Waves – Elia Ascends
The water boiled.
A spiral of pitch-black energy pierced the ocean, rising like a tower made of screams. Whales fled. Tectonic plates cracked. Storms collapsed under the weight of her awakening.
Elia emerged.
But she was no longer the child they remembered.
Her eyes were voidglass reflecting nothing, absorbing everything. Her hair floated like it defied time. Around her, fragments of the Gate swirled like armor, whispering ancient truths in forgotten tongues.
On her forehead, etched in burning runes:
"Here lies the Door."
And when she spoke, it was not her voice.
"I am the silence you left behind, Aeryn Vale.
You sealed the Gate.
I became it."
The World Begins to Break
All across the continent, those attuned to the Weave felt it rupture.
Seers screamed. The skies fractured. Mirrors across cities showed her face, even when turned to the wall. Trees bent away from her presence. Wolves howled in surrender.
Elia raised a hand.
And a distant city—Yurellon, home to a million simply vanished.
No fire. No quake.
Just absence.
As if reality forgot it had ever existed.