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“What am I even looking for?”

“Taly said we’d know it when we saw it.”

“How?”

“Your guess is as good as mine.”

Held between Skye’s teeth, the lantern’s glow swayed faintly as they climbed, catching on jagged patches of metal and cracks in the stone. It gave Kato something to focus on. That, and not slipping. Or looking down. He glanced down anyway and immediately regretted it.

The shaft plunged into endless black. It was impossible to know how far. Just a few feet down, though, there was the faintest suggestion of something—light, movement, or maybe just his imagination.

“Seriously, this better be it,” Kato muttered as his boots scraped over another rung. “Because if we’re about to find another ladder, I’m—”

The rungs ended abruptly.

He froze, blinking at the sudden emptiness below his feet. The last rung hung twisted and useless over the void, the shaft continuing downward into what looked like endless darkness.

But he was close enough now to see an opening in the shaft wall and a section of floor just beyond.

“I’m guessing this is our stop,” Kato said, shifting his grip. Without waiting for Skye’s input, he grabbed a bent piece of piping sticking out of the wall and swung forward. His boots hit the broken edge with a solid thud, and he straightened easily, brushing red dust off his hands.

“See?” he called back. “Simple.”

Skye followed. He didn’t even bother with the pipe, just pushed off from the ladder and landed beside Kato like it was nothing.

“Show-off,” Kato muttered, but Skye ignored him, already moving into the corridor. The lantern’s light flickered over the walls, the cracked stone, and dangling wires.

The drip of water pulled them onward, out of what Kato could only assume had been some kind of utility station into the labyrinth of the underground city.

The sheer magnitude of it was the first thing to strike him. He hadn’t expected so much… space .

The walls of the cavern were perfectly smooth, carved out by earth magic.

Jagged towers of stone and rusted metal rose from the shadows below, their broken tips disappearing into the darkness above.

Faint beams of light filtered through cracks in the ceiling far overhead, catching on drifting motes of dust and glinting off shattered glass.

“Wow,” Kato said, his voice low as he took it all in. “It’s like a whole world under here. I mean, I knew the Underground was big, but… wow.”

“Come on,” Skye said, already moving toward the sound of water.

The faint drip echoed through the ruins, pulling them deeper into the maze of broken buildings and toppled monuments.

The Time crest appeared occasionally, carved into stone or stamped on rusted plaques, a reminder of the authority that had once ruled here.

They followed the drip into what might once have been a plaza.

At its center stood a hulking mass of stone and shadow, its facade weathered but intact.

Thick pillars lined the front, their surfaces marred by cracks but still standing, and above the entrance, the Time crest—a crescent moon inside an unbroken circle—loomed in faded relief.

“This is it,” Skye said, stepping toward the building. The massive doors had fallen long ago, their splintered remains scattered across the threshold. Whatever wards or locks had once kept this place sealed had crumbled, leaving it open and exposed.

They passed through the entrance, their footsteps echoing in the stillness.

The interior was cold and still, the air heavy with dust and the faint metallic tang of decay.

Broken furniture and shattered glass littered the floor, while rusted fixtures hung precariously from the walls.

The Time crest appeared again, etched into the stone floor beneath a layer of grime.

The sound of water grew louder, leading them through decayed corridors and into a grand chamber at the heart of the building. At the far end, water dripped steadily from a crack in the wall, pooling in a shallow basin that reflected the faint glow of their lantern.

Here, the walls arched high above them, the ceiling fractured but holding. Tall enough to house the massive structure at its center.

“Follow the sound of dripping water,” Skye murmured, angling his lantern to get a better view of the machinery.

Unlike the one in the forest, this riftway resembled a massive, lidless eye. The brass framework encasing it was tarnished and warped, with faint runes etched into its surface, barely visible under the layers of dirt and decay.

At the center of the eye was a large metal ring. Shadows pooled in its hollow.

Kato exhaled sharply, the sound loud in the stillness. “Well. That’s… creepy as hell.”

Skye stepped closer, the faint hum of his aether rising as he studied the portal. As if in answer, aether sparked in the hollow center of the ring—brief, flickering, but unmistakable. “It still works.”

Kato frowned, circling the riftway with slow, deliberate steps. Metal groaned faintly as he passed, making him glance up warily. “What did the old man want us to do exactly?”

“See if it was still intact.”

“Okay—check. Now what?”

“Now we figure out what makes it tick.”

Kato straightened, his attention sharpening. Suddenly, the creepy monolith wasn’t so creepy anymore. It was a puzzle. A challenge. Its massive eye-shaped design was mesmerizing, the concentric rings etched with runes just waiting for someone clever enough to crack them.

He dropped his pack and began digging. “Hell, why didn’t you lead with that?” He found his roll of tools.

For the first time in a long time, he felt…

excitement? It had been a while since he got to work on something that didn’t have a price tag attached.

His family only cared about results, profit, the payoff.

Sure, fixing up old Mechanica scratched the itch, but that had been patchwork, repairs—this was something else.

This was pure discovery, a puzzle begging to be solved.

The clinking of metal echoed faintly in the chamber as he unrolled his tools with a flourish, everything gleaming and in its proper place, waiting to be used.

“Hey, uh, Skye?”

“Yeah.”

Kato hesitated, thumb tracing the edge of a wrench. “You probably don’t know it, but… I needed this. The whole thing with Kalahad...” He exhaled. “It got to me more than I thought.”

“I know,” Skye said, sorting his own tools on a nearby counter. “And you’re welcome.”

Kato huffed a quiet laugh, shaking his head. “Am I that obvious?”

“No,” Skye said, smirking. “You’re a pillar of strength… unless you count the noise complaints from the barracks. And the bar tabs getting billed to Ivain. But other than that? Totally unreadable.”

Kato snorted, but the humor didn’t quite settle.

He wasn’t used to this—someone noticing, someone doing something about it.

No one ever cared. Not when he wrecked things, not when he drank himself stupid, not when he was practically screaming for someone to stop him.

It was just... expected. “Oh, there goes Kato, fucking up his life again.”

Skye was right—he was a walking cry for help. And now that someone had finally answered… He didn’t know what to do with that.

His jaw clenched. Something was clawing its way up his throat, too raw, too unfamiliar, too much . He swallowed it down, reaching for a screwdriver instead. The metal was cool in his grip, grounding.

“Well,” he muttered, rolling his shoulders like shaking off a weight, “guess we’d better get started.”

Skye didn’t press. Didn’t ask for more. He just handed Kato a gear and got to work.

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’d really wanted 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.