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Kato had many reasons for joining the Gate Watchers. The main one—it put him where he needed to be. But second to that—he’dreallywanted to get his hands on one of the Gates. To take it apart, see what made it tick. The time mages had built them, and they guarded those secrets fiercely, eventually taking them to the grave. And while the old man had figured out a few of those mysteries, Kato knew there was so much more to uncover.

What they knew was this: shadow crystal provided aether, the raw energy needed to set the mechanisms in motion. Hyaline, with its unique ability to resonate with itself across any distance, served as a directional compass, aligning the portal with its destination. And time crystal? That forced the Weave to fold, connecting two distant points as though they were one. Time and space were intertwined—bend one, and the other followed.

The riftway, as it turned out, operated much the same. Like the Gates, it drew power from shadow crystals, which, after a quick clean and a little repair, were good as new. It didn’t need much aether, just enough to set the rings spinning.

Also like the Gates, it used hyaline to point the way.

There was no time crystal. Hours later, as much as he poked and prodded, Kato still had no idea what was forging the connection—how it was connecting two distant points and forcing space to bend. The resonance alone couldn’t do it. Yet somehow it worked.

They didn’t have a key, but, as it turned out, they didn’t need one. After re-routing the conduit array and giving the runic matrix a little jolt, the riftway sputtered to life. Lights flickered around the room and across machine panels. The faint hum of energy built slowly.

Kato stepped back. Grinning, he threw his arms wide. “It’s alive!”

Skye blinked at him, his brow furrowing. “What’s alive?”

Kato frowned. “If you read more human literature, you’d know that was hilarious.”

A low groan reverberated through the chamber as the rusted mechanisms creaked to life, scraping against centuries of neglect. Dust and flakes of metal drifted down from above, and the ground beneath their feet thrummed with raw energy as the rings attempted to spin.

Then a sharp screech echoed through the chamber, followed by a heavy clunk as the mechanism seized.

“Well, that’s not ideal,” Kato muttered.

To one side, a row of ancient machine panels jutted from the wall, their surfaces scratched and corroded. Skye stood behind them, flickering lights casting shadows across his face as he worked. He pried open a compartment, revealing tangled conduits and an array of crystals pulsing faintly.

“I think I found the problem. These energy lines are split,” Skye said. “The resonance is going to be uneven unless we stabilize them.”

“Already on it,” Kato said. He crouched over the base of the riftway. The hatch was thrown open, the innards spilling out.

Pick in hand, he carefully traced the lines of runes etched into the hyaline tuning mechanism, adjusting their angles by fractions of a degree. The glow illuminated his face. Each change sent ripples through the light.

“The imbalance is compensating,” Kato said.

“It’s still bleeding aether on the outer ring. Let me reroute it.” Skye moved to another panel, pulling out a flat-blade tool. With a precise flick of his wrist, he adjusted the alignment of the conduits, the glow of shadow magic surging momentarily as the flow stabilized.

A low thrum built in the chamber, steady and rhythmic, sending faint ripples of light across the rings.

“There we go,” Kato said, grinning. “Baby just needed a little encouragement. I’m going to look at the runic matrix. You keep an eye on the aether flow.”

“Will do.”

Kato crouched back over the hyaline core. For a moment, the only sound was the faint hum of the portal and the occasional scrape of his pick against the crystal.

Then Skye cleared his throat. “So, uh, I’m guessing you’ve probably pissed off a lot of women.”

Kato’s lips thinned. “Weird segway. Also, thanks for the vote of confidence.”

“I’m serious. How do you... handle it? Telling a woman something you know she’s not going to want to hear?”

“Depends,” Kato murmured, tapping lightly on the edge of the hyaline. “How mad are we talking? Broken furniture? Crying? Storming off and never speaking to you again?”

Skye didn’t answer right away, his eyes fixed on the monitor and the stream of aether through the system. “More... the last one,” he admitted finally.

Kato snorted. “Let me guess—this is about Taly?”

And then Skye launched into what could only be described as the most absurdly reckless story Kato had ever heard—and that was saying something, given present company.

“So, let me get this straight,” he said when the kid was through. “You got kidnapped by your future self, agreed to back-alley surgery—and you didn’t tell your girlfriend? Who, apparently, has future versions of herself that you have to keep happy? And not in the fun way. More like the,‘Let’s organize an interdimensional to-do list’kind of way.”