22:14 UTC – Perimeter of the Black Gate Containment Zone
The world should have ended hours ago. Mira still wasn't sure it hadn't.
The containment field thrummed like a dying insect's wing behind her, layered with more wards than most capital cities. The Black Gate loomed beyond it—a pulsing wound in space, its edges jagged with flickering light. It seemed to inhale the surrounding twilight, exhaling tendrils of unstable void. Waiting.
Mira's fists were clenched, knuckles bone-white, nails digging bloody crescents into her palms as she stood, statue-still, just beyond the exclusion line. Hours. Had it only been hours? A faint tremor ran through her, the only sign the frozen grief was cracking.
"Still nothing," Seris said behind her, fingers tight on the monitor strap, her knuckles bloodless. Her voice aimed for clinical detachment but cracked on the edge.
"No movement. No life signs. The Gate's readings are… stable. But—"
"But it swallowed three of our people," Mira cut in, the words raw, scraping her throat.
A beat of silence, thick with the containment field's dissonant hum. "Yes."
Vaelen. Jin. Cael.
The names echoed in the hollow space behind her ribs. Less like curses. Less like prayers. Like accusations.
Mira swallowed hard. Jin wasn't the strongest—but he was precise. Tactical. Reliable. The anchor for Cael's wildfire instincts. If he was gone…
She couldn't think about that. Not yet.
Above them, airships hovered like carrion birds, bristling with weapons pointed at the impossible. Behind, high-ranking officials moved in tight, tense circles, voices kept low, sharp. Too many uniforms. Too many different, clashing insignias. The Interdimensional Alliance was here now—representatives from all five dimensions: Human, Veyari, Lucari, Lorn, Ferren. A gathering of vultures, not saviors.
New Elysium Academy had been a joint effort—a neutral crucible for forging elites. This incident shattered the illusion. A Veyari noble trapped. A prophecy-flagged student unraveling. And a tactical specialist carrying secrets in his very bones. The weight pressed down, crushing.
Snippets cut through the hum:
"…a Veyari provocation wrapped in Human incompetence!"
"…pull our delegates now! This zone is compromised!"
"…if the Sirel heir perishes, the Accords burn with him!"
Instructor Verren stood at the epicenter, speaking into a comm-unit with his unnerving calm, though a muscle ticked faintly in his jaw. Rhovan paced nearby, muttering rapid-fire to a Silarin envoy whose eyes darted nervously toward the Gate. Neither looked at Mira. No one did. The remaining students were ghosts here. Liabilities. Witnesses. Potential rescue risks—the worst kind of problem.
Thyrr watched the instructors argue like jackals over a half-dead beast. He spat onto the ash-streaked ground, scowling.
"You'd think someone would do something by now. Pull them out. Blast a hole through that damn thing."
"No one's going to risk it," Lira muttered, arms crossed tight against her chest, her voice colder than the void beyond the Gate. "The last time someone tried to cross a stabilizing Gate, they unraveled. Like yarn pulled apart, atom by atom. They screamed for seventeen seconds."
He shot her a glare. "We've all read the reports. Doesn't mean we sit on our asses while Vaelen's in there."
Lira's lip curled. "I didn't know you cared so much."
"I'm Veyari. He's Veyari. We don't leave our own behind," Thyrr snapped, the old war-cant rasping in his throat, too loud.
Seris gave him a sharp, silencing look but said nothing.
They weren't a team. Mira was grief held together by fury. Seris was ice over panic. Lira was pure, detached pragmatism. Cael had been the wild card, the broken prodigy who defied death once. And Jin… Thyrr barely knew the quiet strategist. Too smart. Didn't deserve this.
Thyrr's jaw clenched as he stared at the pulsing ring. "He'll survive," he growled under his breath. "Vaelen's too damned stubborn to die. And that Cael kid… he's not right. Not normal."
Something flickered in Seris's expression—fear, understanding?—but she remained silent.
Far above, the Alliance's central envoyship blotted out the bruised sky.
Mira turned, eyes narrowing against the sudden glare as it descended. It didn't land; it imposed itself. As if reality itself conceded space to its matte-black, rune-etched bulk. Sleek, silent, wrapped in a shimmering sigil-net that screamed untouchable authority. Its silent descent wasn't arrival; it was occupation.
This wasn't rescue. This was damage control on a cosmic scale. Cael... Vaelen... Jin... They were pawns in a game they never chose.
The envoyship settled. Five figures emerged, embodiments of their fractured dimensions:
Lucari Emissary: Cloaked in deep indigo, face etched with glowing psionic runes that pulsed faintly. Waves of restrained tension radiated from him, prickling the skin of those nearby.
Ferren Warmarshals (Two): Clanked down the ramp in obsidian armor humming with kinetic dampeners. Faceless helms swept the perimeter like targeting scanners, assessing threats.
Lorn Representative: A woman draped in silks that floated as if underwater. Her eyes were pools of fractured mirror—reflecting nothing, seeing everything. Rhovan's warning about not meeting her gaze suddenly felt visceral.
Human Senator: Descended flanked by vigilant guards whose eyes never stopped moving. His practiced smile was brittle under the Gate's sickly light, every gesture calculated.
Veyari Chancellor: Followed, gilded robes shifting like liquid metal, a crown of woven starlight on his brow. His gaze, sharp as obsidian shards, scanned the field and paused—a deliberate, weighted second—on Mira. It wasn't recognition; it was assessment. A calculation of collateral.
Instructor Verren's voice cut through the sudden silence, low and urgent. "Remember: these are diplomats hunting advantage, not allies offering aid. One misplaced word, one perceived slight, and the powder keg this Gate represents ignites a war across dimensions. Do not engage. Do not provoke the Lucari. And never look the Lorn in the eyes."
Mira tore her gaze from the Chancellor, back to the Gate. The Alliance's arrival didn't mean hope. It meant the walls were closing in.
Inside the Black Gate, smoke clung thick and greasy, tasting of burnt ozone and the metallic tang of fractured magic. Light bent in nauseating ways. Gravity stuttered like a failing heart. Time rippled like heat haze over shattered glass.
Vaelen stumbled forward, blood a dark slick down one side of his scorched uniform. Jin's armor was cracked, rune-tech sputtering erratic light, the faceplate of his helmet a spiderweb of fractures. Neither spoke. Their focus was absolute, fixed on the figure sprawled on the obsidian stone ahead.
Cael.
Pale as death, veins standing out like dark rivers under his skin, pulsing with an unnatural rhythm. Something inside him was tearing loose.
"Is he breathing?" Jin knelt, movements swift despite the damage. "Vital signs crashing. He's destabilizing fast."
Vaelen pressed trembling fingers to Cael's neck. "Alive. Barely." He glared into the roiling dark. "We need to move. Now."
Jin slapped an emergency stabilizer onto Cael's chest. It flared with harsh blue light. "Stay with us, Cael. Breathe. Just breathe." His voice, a steady anchor in the chaos.
Cael whimpered. Not here. Not now.
The world dissolved.
/He was falling. Not through space. Through memory. Dream. Something deeper. Something cold./
The night of his birth.
At 02:17 UTC, a portal tore open above the Dead Zone. It swallowed stars, time, silence.
Beneath it, in a lab buried deep—a child was born. One pulse. Two souls.
Behind thick glass, a man watched, eyes devoid of warmth.
"Activate Protocol TS."
A low, resonant hum filled the chamber, vibrating in infant bones.
Seven figures gathered. Two small forms. One alive. One… not.
When the humming ceased—both opened their eyes. Identical. Empty. Then, slowly, awareness flooded in. Separate. Afraid.
"I was never meant to be alone."
Jin's stabilizer flared again, a jolt of energy. Vaelen hauled Cael up, grunting with the effort. "He's not dying in this fucking place."
Jin looked back, not at the shadows, but at the wrongness solidifying behind them. "Then we run."
___________
Elsewhere…
Sector 12 rooftops. Neon bled into the perpetual rain, painting the grime in garish colors. Crime-slick streets steamed below.
A man slept fitfully under a leaking water tower.
His eyes snapped open. Slow. Steady. Unblinking. He exhaled like surfacing from drowning depths, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird. A phantom pain lanced through his chest—sharp, precise, right where a stabilizer flared on another body, in another impossible place.
He didn't know why. But he'd heard it. Felt it. A silent scream resonating in his marrow. He flexed scarred fingers, the echo vibrating in his nerves.
The insistent signal from his gang flared on his wrist-comp, its usual demanding pulse feeling trivial, distant against the void suddenly yawning within him.
But tonight… something fundamental had shifted. The hollow space where his other half should be… wasn't empty anymore.
"You're not alone anymore."
The words echoed, not in the rain-slick alley, but in the newly awakened connection. A truth. A threat.
[To be continued…]