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Kollaborator searched around for clues. “This must be some kind of…”

“Dimension,” Kade muttered, nodding at the corridor.

A sealed gate appeared between the two humanoid figures now. No hinges. No locks. No seams.

“So, I guess I’m supposed to try and open it,” Krave said, head angled at it.

“Is that what you’re getting?” Kollaborator asked.

Krave snapped his red eyes over to him. “No, but you said I’m up.” He gestured with a hand toward the strange vision, keeping his eyes on the Kollaborator. “The wind must open what was sealed without force,” he said, pointedly.

“Does that mean the door was sealed without force or that he must open it without force?” Jaxi’s asked, the question small but relevant.

“Err to the side of caution,” Kaos said.

“Which is?” Krave demanded, whipping his head to him.

“Don’t use force opening it,” Kaos spelled out.

Krave eyed the door before them. “And if I fuck up?” he wondered quietly. “Who’s going to bleed out this time?”

“We shouldn’t expect this to be the same,” Kollaborator said, his usual billowing calm moving in fractured slices. He suddenly glanced down at the cards in his hand. “Uh…” His alarm shot adrenaline through Kaos. “Whatever the facts may be this hand, we’ve got twenty-two minutes left on this countdown.”

“Twenty-two?” Krave balked as Kaos held Jaxi closer.

“Time is misstructured here,” Kross muttered, his tone loaded with warning as he looked all around.

“Fuck me,” Krave muttered, taking two steps toward the gate. “Open what was sealed without force.”

The air changed and Kaos caught his breath when Jaxi's hands latched to his arms, nails digging as the air thinned around them.

Kaos sent his Rage through her, coating her cells with power while trapping every scrap of oxygen between his wings and sealing it around her. He forced her breath into a loop, divine heat recirculating the air between their bodies while tracking the movements of Krave’s lungs.

A micro-flicker of red lit up his nailbeds followed by a slight shimmer rolling across his shoulders, like heat mirage.The Earthly Kissing King brought his body to near combustion, controlled, but just barely.

Kross adjusted his stance as the need for more air thickened around them.

Krave’s shoulders rose slightly, spine tight, control rigid as he harnessed the air.

Kaos’s eyes flicked to the gate. Its surface trembled, then bulged. Like it recognized Krave’s power and answered with a breath of its own. A sharp line etched across its middle andKrave’s body trembled, veins catching fire from the inside, heat pushing outward.

Kaos pushed his powers carefully into the gate, searching for answers to its purpose, watching ashimmer coil at Krave’s fingertips.

The gate pulsed again. Then moaned. A segment at its center peeled back

Krave drew in a breath, shallow and scorched, his body glowing like a forge on the edge of detonation. He suddenly dropped to his knees and released the oxygen, refilling every pair of lungs he’d sucked it from.

Jaxi gasped and coughed, sagging into Kaos as Kollaborator whispered, “What the hell was that?”

Krave’s lowered head barely shook. “I pulled the air from everything. Held it in my chest until it begged. Then shaped it into a key.”

“Maybe there’s more than one lock,” Kross mused at the shut door.

A flicker pulsed in Kollaborator’s hand right on cue. Another card. Another glow.

Reality began to bend again.

****