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CHAPTER 16

SOPHIA

T he heartbeat of the gate is louder now. Not just heard, but feels like standing too close to a subwoofer set to some ancient, deadly frequency. The mountain compound pulses with it, steady as a drumbeat marking the slow march to something catastrophic.

Lucas and I stand just inside the dais chamber. The others scan every corner, every glyph, and every passage branching out from this monstrous heart. But I can’t move. Not yet. My gaze is fixed on the glyph pattern carved into the stone surrounding the dais.

“It’s not containment,” I murmur, crouching and running my fingers just above the etched lines. The glyphs twist in on themselves, the curves jagged, the energy wrong in a way that makes my skin crawl and my bones ache.

Lucas’s shadow falls over me as he steps close. “You recognize it?”

“Parts of it. It’s... it was a banishment seal. Ancient. Windwoven.” I swallow hard, my voice thick. “But they altered it. Not sloppily. Deliberately. The inversion isn’t accidental. It’s designed to anchor.”

“Anchor?” he echoes, eyes narrowing.

“To this plane,” I say. “They’re not just trying to open the gate. They want to make it permanent. Fixed. Not a door, but a doorframe.”

Lucas crouches beside me, jaw clenched as he studies the pattern. “Shit. So the gate can’t just be closed. It has to be broken.”

I nod. “And if it’s anchored… that’s going to take more than glyphs and blood.”

He doesn’t flinch. One of the things I love—did I just say love?—about this wolf is, he never does. “Then we bring the storm.”

We move on; the others falling into formation again. Max and Kylie peel off at the first branch to sweep for movement, Kylie muttering something about playing exterminator. Oscar has rejoined us, but hangs back near the entrance to cover our retreat. If it comes to that. I’m not sure anyone believes we’ll be leaving the way we came in. I know I sure as hell don’t.

The corridor narrows, walls pressing in. The air here is colder, sharp with iron and something else—something that smells like wet stone and burnt ozone. My skin prickles. Lucas’s hand stays close to the small of my back. Not pushing. Not leading. Just... there.

“I don’t like this,” I whisper.

He doesn’t speak, but his hand brushes lower, fingers grazing the hilt of the dagger I carry at my thigh. Just checking. Just grounding me—reminding me, I am not alone nor am I unarmed.

We round a bend and enter another chamber—smaller with a lower ceiling; its walls covered in the same spiraling glyphs but with one major difference. There’s something on the floor.

Lucas steps forward first, blade drawn. I trail behind him and then stop cold.

It’s a body—or it was. The thing lying in the center of the room used to be wolf, maybe, or perhaps one of the Crimson Claw. But now it’s twisted, elongated in places it shouldn’t be. The rib cage is too wide, the limbs too long. Dark fluid has matted its fur, and its claws are blackened and fused. Its eyes are open, glazed—but still moving. Twitching. There’s no breath. No pulse. But the muscles beneath the skin spasm, like something else is trying to make it move.

“Oh hell no,” I mutter.

Lucas crouches beside it, inspecting the chest. “No visible incision.”

“That’s because it wasn’t created. Someone changed it. This isn’t biological reanimation. This is ritual magic. Anchored in tissue.”

He doesn’t look up. “Are you sure about that?”

I point to the glyph burned into the creature’s sternum. “That’s a living rune. It only activates in proximity to power. Like mine. Or yours.”

The creature’s paw twitches again. This time, the claw jerks upright, then collapses.

Lucas rises. “We burn it. Now.”

I don’t argue.

He pulls a flash rod—a kind of powerful electronic flame starter with accelerant—from his belt, cracks it, and tosses it onto the creature. Light floods the space, a violet-white burst that sears the air. The body jerks once, violently, and then goes still. The smell is worse than anything I’ve ever known—singed hair and burnt corruption.

We leave it behind.

Back in the corridor, Lucas radios Kylie. “You find anything?”

“Two more chambers, empty. But it smells like something passed through not long ago. Max is marking the glyph trails.”

“Anything moving?”

“Not yet. But the air’s getting mean.”

Lucas clicks off and glances at me. “It’s not just the air.”

We follow the corridor deeper, and it leads us to something I didn’t expect. The room is different from the others. Smaller, circular, carved entirely from black stone. The ceiling is domed; the floor raised in a perfect circle, and at its center lies a broken blade… and not just any blade.

I rush forward and drop to my knees before it. The Windwoven sigils on the hilt are unmistakable. A crack runs down the middle of the metal; something more than mere use has dulled its edges. Elemental scorch marks trace up the blade’s length. I reach out with trembling fingers and run a hand along the flat.

“My father’s,” I whisper. “This was his.”

Lucas crouches beside me. “How do you know?”

I don’t answer. I can’t. My vision starts to haze, like fog curling along the edges of my sight. The glyphs on the wall shimmer. The air crackles, and the blade burns hot under my palm.

Then I’m gone.

The vision strikes with the intensity of a lightning bolt—swift and all-consuming, leaving no room for anything else. I see her vividly.

Lina stands before the imposing gate, its grandeur and intimidation far more formidable than I ever imagined. Intricate, deep carvings desecrate her alabaster-pale skin, disrupting its once pristine smoothness like ancient runes etched into sacred stone. She's methodically etching glyphs into her arms, her chest, and her neck with the precision of an artist creating a masterpiece, each stroke deliberate and exact. However, she employs no ordinary tools; instead, her fingers work the magic, their nails extended unnaturally and tipped with sharp black stone resembling obsidian talons. Each incision brings the glyphs to life, fiercely glowing with an ethereal luminescence that slowly fades, as if the blood drawn nourishes these mystical symbols.

Behind her, Cain's voice rises, chanting with a resonance that seems to originate from a realm far beyond human comprehension, guttural and raw like the growl of an ancient beast. The words he speaks are foreign to me, perhaps an ancient language lost to time, but the gate comprehends them perfectly. It pulses and thrums, a living entity in sync with his rhythmic incantation, responding to the call. As Lina lifts her hands, commanding the very air with an unseen force, a column of translucent windglass emerges from the floor. It rises with an elegant grace, aligning itself with the gate's center with a decisive, resonating click, as if a lock has finally found its destined key.

I scream, and the vision shatters into fragments.

My back hits the stone floor of the altar room, my lungs dragging in air like I’ve been drowning.

Lucas is already beside me, arms around my shoulders, voice low and urgent in my ear. “Sophia. Talk to me.”

I blink. The ceiling spins. “It was her. She’s carving the glyphs into her own skin. Cain was behind her—he’s... he’s changed.”

“Changed how?”

“Not mortal anymore.” I clutch at his shirt. “And the gate… they’re not trying to open it from here. They’re anchoring it from the other side.”

Lucas goes still. “Say that again.”

I swallow hard. “They’re not trying to open the gate from our side.”

Before he can answer, the chamber shudders. The glyphs on the walls flare to life, igniting in sequence like someone lit a fuse beneath the stone.

The heartbeat returns—louder.

Faster.

The gate has found us again. And this time, it’s not content with whispering… it’s coming.

The scent of copper and ozone clings to my skin like oil as I rise slowly to my knees. I still hold the broken blade—my father’s—and it pulses faintly, as if the vision I just survived hasn’t finished with me yet. My breath drags in sharp and fast. My heart feels like it’s trying to tear itself out of my chest.

Lucas kneels beside me, both hands firm on my shoulders. “Sophia.”

I blink hard. The flickering afterimage of Lina’s face—calm, cruel, exultant—won’t leave me. The glyphs carved into her arms, her neck, even her face. Blood soaking into skin like ink on parchment. Cain’s chanting, that voice not his anymore, in a tongue I don’t understand but still somehow recognize. And the gate pulsing in time with it.

“I saw it,” I whisper.

Lucas’s jaw tightens. “Tell me.”

“They’re not trying to open the gate from our side,” I repeat, as if I can’t quite believe it. My voice cracks, and I grip his forearm for balance. “They’ve already opened it from the other.”

He doesn’t speak. Doesn’t move. But I feel it—the way his body goes impossibly still. His silence is sharper than shouting. His hands tighten on me, anchoring me.

“We’re too late,” I say. “The anchor’s already been dropped. That gate is tethered to her blood, Lucas. Lina’s made herself part of it. The glyphs—she’s carving them into herself. That’s the final seal.”

Lucas’s breath leaves him in a quick burst, and then he’s moving. He takes the broken blade from my hands, studies it once, and tucks it carefully into the strap of his belt.

“Then we destroy the anchor,” he says.

My vision is still fuzzy around the edges, but his voice cuts through the fog. Steady. Relentless. His fury isn’t loud—it never is—but it’s a force all its own. The kind of fury that makes things obey.

“The glyphs on her body are the ritual,” I tell him. “They’ve tied her into the gate. She’s not opening it. She’s becoming it.”

Lucas hauls me to my feet, one arm braced around my waist. “Then we cut her out.”

The chamber around us answers before I can speak. The walls quake. Glyphs ignite in order—one by one, a clockwise burn lighting up the room in a golden-red spiral. It’s not a trap. It’s an alarm. The gate has recognized us.

Lucas grabs his comm. “Oscar, report.”

The line crackles. Then Oscar’s voice, distorted by static: “Something’s happening. Glyphs on the outer hall just flared. We’re locked in.”

Lucas swears under his breath and clicks over to the next frequency. “Kylie. Max. Report.”

Kylie’s voice comes fast and clipped. “We’re backtracking to your last known position. The glyphs in the tunnel just activated. Some kind of containment net. Max thinks it’s ritual-primed, not electronic.”

Max’s voice cuts in behind hers. “They’re trying to isolate the gate chamber. Keep everything else outside.”

I grab the comm from Lucas. “Then don’t come here. Find the outer runes and disrupt the pattern. We’ll meet you at the central junction once the perimeter glyphs fall.”

A momentary pause, and then Kylie says, “You better still be breathing when we do.”

Lucas is already moving, dragging me with him. The floor underfoot rumbles again, then steadies. But I can feel it—something massive just woke up beneath us. Not a metaphor. Not paranoia. A real, live being and it’s hungry.

As we cross back through the corridor, Lucas’s hand doesn’t leave me. Even when he stops to scan the walls or check the glyphs, his grip stays locked on my wrist, like he’s afraid I’ll vanish if he lets go.

I squeeze his hand once, trying to steady myself.

He glances at me sideways. “You good?”

“No,” I admit, “but I’m not broken. Let’s move.”

We cross the threshold of the altar chamber just as another glyph bursts into flame along the far wall. It’s red-hot, casting long shadows that seem to stretch too far for how narrow the room is.

Lucas stops short. “This isn’t just warding. It’s calling.”

“To her,” I say. “To the gate.”

“No,” he growls. “To us.”

Lucas steps past me with determined intent, plunging into the heart of the altar space. The blood on the floor has turned into a dark, sticky layer, silently recounting the story of a recent, brutal sacrifice. The air is thick with an oppressive fog of raw elemental power, heavy and cloying, much like the acrid smoke that trails in the wake of a devastating lightning strike. Such intense reverberations of power should not linger unless someone has intentionally infused the space with their own essence.

In the center of the shadowy room, beneath the wavering luminescence of ancient glyphs etched into the walls, Lucas points to a jagged line of scorched stone. The charred path snakes across the floor like an ominous, deep wound carved into the earth. I approach it cautiously, lowering myself beside it, my fingers hesitantly skimming its edge. The energy retaliates, a sharp, biting force that slices through me with a chilling familiarity that sends shivers down my spine.

“It’s her work,” I murmur.

Lucas crouches behind me. “You’re sure?”

“Absolutely.”

He leans in, voice low against my ear. “Then this is the last place she stood.”

I nod.

He brushes his fingers down my spine, slow, firm, calming. “Then we find the next place she’ll stand. And we end this. We end her… them… whatever it is she’s awakened.”

I rise to my feet, feeling a tremor of determination coursing through me, and turn to face him. The gate's heartbeat pulses within my chest now, synchronized with my own in an unsettling harmony, like a mockery of my resolve. Lucas sees it all—the tremble in my hands, the shaky rhythm of my breathing that betrays my fear.

His gaze locks onto mine, intense and unwavering. "Tell me what you need," he says, his voice a steady anchor amidst the chaos.

I pause, uncertainty gripping me for a moment, before stepping into him, pressing my trembling hands firmly against his chest. "I need to believe we can stop this," I confess, my voice barely above a whisper.

"Do you believe in me?" he asks, his words a lifeline.

"Always," I reply without hesitation.

His hand gently finds its way to my jaw, tilting my face upward so our eyes meet. "Then we stop it," he assures me, conviction resonating in his voice.

The room shifts around us once more, another quake rolling through the ground beneath our feet, deeper and more menacing this time. Dust cascades from the ceiling like a fine rain, and the glyphs etched into the walls blaze to life, their light so intense it stings the eyes.

We’ve been detected. Not by guards or by Lina, but by the gate itself—an ancient and watchful presence. Lucas draws his blade with a determined flourish. "We need to go," he urges.

I nod, my fingers clenching tightly around the edge of my coat, steeling myself for what lies ahead. "We find the anchor. And then we break it," I declare, determination hardening my voice.

But as we step back into the dimly lit corridor, the heartbeat falters briefly, then quickens its pace with renewed vigor. For the first time, I hear something within it—a sound that resembles a voice, yet not quite. It's not a word, but a breath, a knowing presence that chills me to the core. It knows I’m here, and it’s waiting.