Lena stood beside the table, the map spread open between her and the prince. The colored lines that marked the lower halls glowed faintly where the ink had worn thin. She could see tunnels curling beneath the throne room, corridors that ended where the Gate should be.

Prince Alden traced one of the lines with his finger. “The first builders called this place the Deep Foundation,” he said. “They wrote that it was meant to protect the throne from collapse. They never said what it really held. Now you tell me light moves there like a living thing.”

“It did,” Lena said. “It felt aware. It knew me.”

He looked at her sharply. “It knew you.”

“Yes.”

The prince straightened. “Describe it again.”

Lena closed her eyes for a moment. “It was warm, like standing near fire but without heat. The air around it hummed. When I stepped closer it brightened, like it could see me. Then it showed me pieces of my world – the city, the lights, the road. I heard a voice. It said the way is not closed.”

Alden’s hand clenched around the edge of the table. “Then the legends are true. The Gate can think.”

He turned away, pacing once, then twice. “My father died trying to seal that place. He believed it was only magic. He was wrong.”

Lena hesitated. “You think it killed him.”

“I think it called to him,” he said. “The same way it calls to you.”

Silence settled between them. Outside, thunder rolled again, though the sky was clear. Lena felt a pulse through the floor, faint but steady. She wondered if he could feel it too.

He stopped pacing and faced her. “If what you say is real, someone will try to control it. Power like that draws blood. I cannot allow it to happen again.”

Lena met his eyes. “Then why keep it under the palace.”

“Because moving it would destroy the capital,” he said. “The Gate is woven into the city’s foundation. Every wall, every tower depends on its seal. That is why we guard it, even when we do not understand it.”

He reached for a scroll on the desk, unrolled it, and pushed it toward her. “Look here. These symbols. Do they match what you saw on the floor down there.”

Lena studied them. The markings curved like rivers splitting into branches. “Yes,” she said. “But there were more lines. They were glowing blue.”

“That means it is active,” Alden said. “And if it is active, someone has been tampering with the lower seals. Do you know who else has been there.”

Lena hesitated. Serah’s face flashed in her mind – the calm eyes, the violet gown, the warning. If she told him, Serah might vanish for good. But if she stayed silent and something worse happened, that would be on her.

“I went there with Lady Serah,” she said finally.

The prince did not react right away. Then he said, “Of course.”

“You know her.”

“I know she serves two masters,” Alden said. “She was once my father’s advisor. After he died, she swore loyalty to the Queen Mother but never stopped keeping her own counsel. If she took you down there, she has a reason.”

He turned toward the window, the light cutting across his face. “Tell me this, Lena Carter – did she ask you for anything.”

“No,” Lena said. “She warned me.”

“What kind of warning.”

“That the Gate is opening again. That someone wants it fully awake.”

The prince went still. “And she is right. Messages from the outer provinces speak of tremors and strange lights in the sky. It spreads outward from here like a pulse.”

He faced her again, his voice lower. “If the Gate opens without control, both worlds will bleed into each other. Yours and mine. We could lose everything.”

Lena felt a chill run down her arms. “Can it be stopped.”

“Not stopped,” he said. “But guided – if we find the one the Gate responds to.”

“You think that’s me.”

“I think you are the only chance I have left.”

The words hung in the air like smoke.

Lena wanted to speak, but her mouth was dry. Part of her wanted to run, to deny all of it. Another part – the part that had felt the hum beneath her feet – knew running would change nothing.

She said quietly, “If I help you, what happens when the Gate opens again.”

He looked at her a long moment before answering. “Then we both find out whether fate is mercy or punishment.”

He dismissed her with a nod. Elara waited outside to lead her back. As they walked through the inner corridor, Lena could feel the faint rhythm in the stones again – a pulse, slow and steady, like a heartbeat deep beneath the palace.

That night she could not eat. She sat by the window watching the moonlight crawl across the floor. She wondered what the prince meant by guidance. She wondered what the Gate wanted from her.

When she finally drifted into sleep, she dreamed of two cities – one of glass and steel, one of marble and fire – folding into each other until they became the same sky. And in the center of that sky a door of light waited, breathing like a living thing.