I sit up too fast—breath ragged, pulse thundering in my ears. The dream lingers like oil on my skin. Riven's voice, the smell of fire, the weight of dying faces… it won't leave. I half-expect to look down and find that glowing crack still splitting my chest.

But it's just breath. Just blood. Just me.

The tent around me pulses faintly with emergency runelight, casting distorted shadows on the stitched alloy walls. The air is stale and cold, every breath laced with iron and dust. Outside, a low hum vibrates through the ground—like the Gate itself is breathing beneath us.

"He's awake," Vaelen says, voice sharp.

"No thanks to this place," Jin replies. He sounds tired. Frayed. "Did you see the way his vitals spiked just now? Whatever he's dreaming of... it's bleeding through."

"I told you we should've sedated him fully."

"He wouldn't have survived it. Not with the way the Gate's rewriting the rules in here."

I try to speak. My throat is dry, burned raw from disuse. All I manage is a weak rasp.

Jin moves fast, slipping beside me with a flask. "Slow. Just sips."

I take it. The water tastes wrong—filtered and bitter—but I drink anyway. It tastes like survival.

"Where are we?" My voice barely comes out.

"Still inside the Gate," Vaelen says. He doesn't turn to me, still watching the perimeter. "You've been out for two days. More, maybe. Time's strange in here."

Jin adjusts something on the rune-stabilizer beside me. "We've got a semi-stable shelter. Pulled from wrecked pods—looked like someone else tried to study this place before us. They didn't make it."

"How long until rescue?"

There's a pause.

Vaelen snorts. "Rescue isn't coming."

"Not yet," Jin adds. "Instructors locked down the perimeter, but no one's authorized to cross. The Gate rejected every extraction pulse."

I exhale, trying to process it, when Vaelen mutters, low and cold, "And now we're being followed."

Jin stiffens. "Still circling?"

"Hasn't stopped since last cycle. It knows where we are."

I blink. "What do you mean followed?"

Jin looks at me, then to Vaelen, then sighs. "We've been tracking movement in the mists. Never gets too close. Never far enough to lose."

"It's not Nullspawn," Vaelen adds. "Doesn't move like them. Doesn't… feel like them."

"Then what is it?"

"We were hoping you'd tell us," Jin mutters.

Vaelen rises from his crouch near the doorway, gripping his blade-hilt tight. "It watches. It waits. Every time the wards flicker, I feel its presence just outside. Like it's choosing when to strike."

Or speak, I think, remembering the words from my dream—words that split the sky and dragged memory to the surface.

And something out there, I realize, already knows my name.

---

The mist thickens again.

It curls unnaturally at the edges of the runes, pressing against the barrier Jin set like it's testing for weak points. Everything beyond ten meters fades to blurred shapes—smoke, bone, flickers of motion that vanish when you blink.

"We need to act before it does," Vaelen says. His voice is low, calm, too calm.

"We don't know what it is," Jin mutters, still checking his wrist-pulse screen. "We don't even know if it can bleed."

Vaelen's jaw tightens. "Doesn't matter. We're not waiting to find out what it wants from Cael."

"Or from us," Jin adds. "Fine."

They move quickly, with a fluid coordination that only comes from shared survival. Jin twists the base of a corrupted barrier shard, realigning its runes into a timed pulse trap. Meanwhile, Vaelen etches a new set of offensive rings into the ashen ground with the precision of a duelist—three concentric layers designed to compress kinetic impact into a high-voltage strike.

I sit up fully now, shakily. "What's the plan?"

"Lure it in," Vaelen answers, unsheathing his blade. "Overload it before it reacts."

"Then pray it stays dead," Jin finishes.

A silent signal between them. Then Vaelen steps into the mist.

---

He moves like a ghost, every footstep disturbing the ash in carefully measured waves. The fog parts briefly—and there it is.

The creature is closer now. Humanoid in outline, but too tall. Too fluid. Its arms dangle past its knees, fingers ending in runic shards that shimmer with faint light. Bones layered over muscle like armor—but not organic. Sculpted. Ancient. Its skin looks like withered parchment stretched across obsidian joints.

No face. Just a fractured mask of black crystal, broken at the center where something glows faintly within.

Vaelen doesn't hesitate.

He darts in, blade igniting with silvery-blue runelight as he lunges. The rune-traps flare to life, collapsing on the creature like a vise.

Boom.

The explosion knocks dust high into the air. The air warps around the kinetic backlash. A direct hit.

For a heartbeat, silence.

Then the fog shudders.

The creature steps through it, unscathed. Not entirely, though—the side of its shoulder hisses, cracked slightly. Glowing sap, or something like it, leaks from the wound.

But its posture has shifted.

Now it's watching Vaelen.

Then it moves.

Fast.

Too fast.

It glides over the ashen ground and slams into him with the force of a crashing tower. Vaelen crashes back, smashing into a shattered pillar. He rolls, groaning, blade crackling. He's not out—but he's hurt.

Jin reacts instantly, activating the array.

Lightning bursts upward from the trap, striking the creature's side. It stumbles, briefly. A pause. Long enough for Jin to hurl two more arc-charges. They strike, destabilizing its aura—but not enough.

It doesn't fall.

It doesn't attack again either.

Instead, it speaks.

> "Inruum thal Kai'el. Flameborn. Fractured."

The voice is layered—three tones, woven into one. Like it's speaking across dimensions, across time.

Jin freezes.

"Did it just—"

Vaelen rises slowly. "Say his name?"

The creature raises both arms—open. Not in aggression. In offering.

> "He who bears the scar of division… is returning."

A deep hum radiates through the soil beneath our feet. The runes in the trap fade. The barrier pulses once—then stabilizes.

"Hold," Jin says suddenly, stepping closer.

"Don't," Vaelen warns.

But Jin holds out his hand, palm open. The creature watches him.

Then—slowly—it kneels.

Not in fear. Not in surrender. But reverence.

And it speaks again.

> "He is not enemy. He is threshold."

The silence after that is total.

Even the Death Gate stops breathing.

---

The creature knelt, silent, runes still flickering across its parchment-thin skin.

Vaelen, still on edge, kept his weapon half-raised. "You speak of Cael like you know him."

> "I do not know," the creature said. "I remember."

Its fingers moved slowly, not threatening—carving ancient runes in the ash with movements so fluid they bordered on ritual.

> "We remember the Flameborn. Kin fractured. Gate-blooded."

Jin stared hard, then stepped forward, cautious. "Who are you?"

The creature turned its faceless gaze toward him. Then, in a tone softer than before—lower, closer to a whisper borne by the mist—it spoke:

> "We are the Elarin. Keepers of Forgotten Fire. Heirs of the First Shard."

Jin whispered it back. "Elarin…"

Vaelen narrowed his eyes. "You're not corrupted. Not like the Nullspawn."

> "No," the Elarin said. "We refused the rot. Chose exile. Became memory."

It lifted one hand, and from a fold within its skin—where there should be nothing—it drew a crystalline canister, sealed with runic locks. Inside, a soft amber glow pulsed.

"Food?" Jin asked, blinking.

The creature nodded.

> "Sustainment gel. Stable for Gateborn physiology. You will last seven cycles."

Seven days. A miracle.

Then it drew a second item—older, stranger. A small data-core, embedded with runes and carved bone. When it placed it in Jin's palm, he flinched as it pulsed.

> "Pathway memory. You are being watched. You cannot remain near the breach."

"Then where?" Vaelen asked. "We've seen nothing but dust and dead ground."

> "Follow the hollow roots. Beneath the Ashspine Ridge lies Rhael'an. One of our last sanctuaries. There you may find breath, and answer."

"Rhael'an?" Jin repeated, recording the name. "Is that a city?"

> "Not anymore," the Elarin answered. "But it remembers how to be one."

A wind passed through the mist then, unnatural, humming with something older than even rune-tech. The Elarin stood. Its joints moved like stone flexing, like memory itself rising from grave-sleep.

> "The Gate was never meant to hold what it birthed," it said. "But neither were you meant to survive it."

Vaelen stepped in. "Why help us? Why help him?"

The Elarin's broken mask tilted downward toward the shelter—toward Cael.

> "Because he bears the Pulse."

The Pulse.

Jin's heart skipped.

The Elarin turned, stepping back into the thickening mist, its voice echoing behind it:

> "Tell the Flameborn this: the wound remembers. And Rhael'an still listens."

The mist swallowed the Elarin as silently as it had arrived.

Only its words lingered, resonating beneath the skin like a second pulse.

 The wound remembers. Rhael'an still listens.

Jin stared at the crystalline ration container in his hands, uncertain whether he felt relief or dread.

 "This changes everything."

Vaelen didn't speak. He stood motionless at the edge of the shelter, gaze still locked on the place where the creature had disappeared. 

The word—Pulse—rattled around his skull like a prophecy denied too long.

Inside, Cael shifted.

Not a twitch this time, not the shallow movement of someone caught in a fever-dream.

This was different.

He gasped, sharp and sudden, and sat up halfway before falling back against the stitched cloth bedding. Sweat slicked his brow. His eyes were wide—but not unfocused. They blazed with meaning.

And then, before either of them could speak, Cael whispered:

"Rhael'an."

Jin's breath caught. Vaelen turned sharply, every muscle in his frame tensing.

Cael stared past them, past the shelter, into some unseen horizon beyond the haze.

He said nothing more.

But something had awakened in him.

And the Gate… listened.