The Third Gate
1091 Words
The rain had stopped by the time Mira and Thorne reached Paris.
But the air still smelled of endings.
The city pulsed with ancient magic—thinly veiled behind modern facades. Streets hummed beneath their feet like veins carrying ghostlight, and Mira could feel the third gate even before they reached it. It tugged at her soul with a cold urgency, like gravity made of sorrow.
They stood in front of the entrance to the Catacombs just past midnight. The tourist gates were locked, but Thorne didn’t need keys. A whisper in the old tongue, a brush of his hand, and the metal rusted open like butter under a flame.
“You’ve done this before,” Mira said softly.
He nodded. “Reapers walk the underworlds often. But this place is different. Paris sits on a leyline intersection—five spiritual rivers converge beneath the city. The Catacombs are more than burial chambers. They’re a gatehouse.”
“To what?”
Thorne looked at her, the mark on his neck glowing faintly in the moonlight.
“To the choice.”
---
The deeper they descended, the colder the air became.
Bones stacked in symmetrical patterns stared at them from the walls. Skulls engraved with sigils. Pathways marked with reaper runes. Mira felt her skin prickle as though the air itself was conscious, breathing around them.
“The third gate doesn’t test strength,” Thorne said. “It tests truth.”
“I’m not afraid of the truth,” Mira answered.
He gave her a look she couldn’t quite read.
“Then you’re not being honest.”
Before she could respond, the path split into two.
A single line of ancient script glowed across the wall in burning red:
What You Want, and What You Hide. Choose.
Mira stepped toward the right tunnel. The air shimmered. She felt her soul burn at the edges.
“I go alone?”
Thorne nodded. “We both do. The gate won’t open to pairs. It must judge us separately.”
He took her hand one last time. His grip was warm. Mortal.
“Mira…”
“I’ll find you,” she said.
Then they parted.
---
Mira’s tunnel narrowed.
Light dimmed until all that remained was her own glow—faint silver fire curling from her skin. The path ended in a stone chamber, bare except for a mirror on one side and a door with no handle on the other.
When she approached the mirror, it didn’t reflect her.
It showed her mother.
Alive. Smiling.
Mira staggered back.
“No. This is cruel—”
Her mother turned in the mirror, as if aware.
“You never came back,” the woman said softly. “You left me to fade alone.”
Mira’s hands trembled.
“I was afraid.”
“You were selfish.”
Mira pressed her palms to the glass.
“I was grieving. I didn’t know how to live when you were gone.”
The mirror cracked.
The reflection changed—her mother faded—and now it showed Mira herself. Younger. Pale. Sitting in a hospital bed with wires and tubes.
It was the day she’d been diagnosed.
“You pretended to be strong,” the image said. “But you begged fate to take you quietly.”
“I didn’t want to be a burden.”
“You wanted to disappear.”
Mira closed her eyes.
“I wanted to die… until I met him.”
The image faded.
The door clicked open.
---
On the other side was Thorne.
Kneeling. Hands bound.
A figure in a reaper’s mask stood above him, holding a blade.
“Only one soul passes the gate,” the figure said.
Mira’s heart slammed in her chest.
“I won’t choose.”
“You already did,” the masked figure said. “When you fell in love with death, you broke the rules. You awakened the third gate. But love always demands sacrifice.”
She ran to Thorne.
The reaper raised the blade.
Mira threw herself between them—
And the blade shattered.
The chamber rippled like disturbed water.
The masked reaper vanished.
And Thorne looked up, unbound.
“You passed,” he said quietly.
“You?”
“I was being tested too.”
“What was your truth?”
He stood.
“That I’d rather die with you than live without you.”
---
They emerged into a circular crypt lit by five floating orbs.
The third Eidolon Gate stood at the far end: a black door covered in bone-white inscriptions, pulsing like a heartbeat.
Mira stepped toward it.
But the moment she touched the handle—
Pain.
Her body collapsed inward, like her soul was being pulled apart atom by atom. Her mark seared like a brand. The gate rejected her.
Thorne caught her before she hit the ground.
“She’s not ready,” a voice whispered.
They turned.
The shadow that had followed them from Prague stood by the wall.
Now it wore a face.
A woman—half-beauty, half-decay. Her skin was white as parchment, her eyes solid black. She wore a crown of broken antlers.
“I am Aira, the Undone,” she said. “The failed soulbound. The one who chose love, and lost both.”
Thorne stepped between her and Mira.
“What do you want?”
“I want you to make the right choice,” she said. “Because I didn’t.”
She walked closer, the sound of bone on stone trailing her.
“I loved my reaper. I defied the Curator. I opened the final gate too early. And when he chose me over the fold…”
Her voice broke.
“…we died screaming.”
Mira stood, her legs weak.
“Why tell us this?”
“Because I don’t want to be the only ghost trapped between.”
She turned to Thorne.
“If you love her, walk away.”
“I can’t,” he said.
“Then bury her with a kiss,” she whispered. “Because the next gate leads into the Fold itself. And not all who enter return.”
---
The Eidolon Gate opened.
Not because of Mira.
But because Thorne opened it for her.
He whispered words older than language. Blood welled at the edges of his soulmark. His light dimmed.
And the door opened.
Beyond it—
The Fold.
A world of ash and nothingness.
Wind that spoke in screams.
The absence of stars.
And Mira stepped into it.
Because she had no other way forward.
- Writer
