The Broken Gate
589 Words
Chapter 6
They reached the gate at dusk or what passed for dusk in the dying skies of Veyndral.
It was ancient. A stone arch half-buried in rock and ruin, standing alone atop a rise of blackened earth. No walls, no keep, just the gate, cracked straight down the center like it had been split by lightning from the gods.
Seris circled it warily. This wasn’t here before, she muttered.
Kain stared at the structure. It pulled at his mark like a magnet, tugging at something deep inside his bones.
The carvings on the arch were identical to the ones on his arm.
What is this place? he asked. Seris shook her head. Some called it the Eye of the World. Others, the Door Between. The Spellcaster was said to have sealed it before the Unraveling.And now it’s opening again, Kain said.
As if in answer, a tremor rolled through the earth. Dust lifted from the cracked stones.
The gate groaned. Then a voice, old, ragged, and not quite human, whispered from the darkness beyond:
The heir has come… and with him, the wound reopens.
Seris stepped in front of Kain, sword drawn. “Show yourself. The voice chuckled. And then something stepped through the crack.
It wasn’t Null Order. It wasn’t machine.
It was worse.
A twisted mockery of a spellcaster, flesh held together by glyphs, limbs wrapped in rusted armor, eyes filled with blue fire and rot. Around its neck hung a broken chain with a glowing stone, a fragment of something old.
It bowed mockingly. I am Verrid. Once Warden of the Spire. Now… its prison.
Kain’s voice shook. What do you want?
To test you.
Before either of them could move, Verrid lunged. The duel was chaos.
Seris met his blade with sparks and curses, glyphs flaring across her arms, her blade humming with kinetic flame. Kain tried to help, but the mark on his arm burned with a force he couldn’t control.
It wasn’t just reacting to Verrid. It was recognizing him.
You were there, Kain gasped, when the Spellcaster fell.
Verrid grinned, teeth like broken glass. I helped end them.
A wave of blue fire erupted from his palm, hurling Seris across the field. She hit the ground and didn’t rise.
Seris!
Kain’s mark exploded with light. For a moment, just a moment, time slowed.
Kain saw everything, the symbols around the gate shifting like gears, the glyphs on Verrid’s skin trying to hold his decayed soul together, the fragment hanging from his neck. The mark pulled toward it.
And Kain understood. That fragment was part of the Spellcaster’s soul, split and scattered at death. Verrid had claimed one… but more were hidden.
If Kain was to become whole, he had to reclaim them all.
And now, one stood before him.
He raised his hand, and for the first time, willed the magic to answer.
It did. A pulse of light, pure and blinding, erupted from his mark. It struck Verrid in the chest and ripped the fragment from his neck. The creature screamed as the glyphs holding him unraveled, turning to ash in the wind.
Silence fell. Kain dropped to his knees.
The fragment hovered, then sank into his chest. A second heartbeat joined the first.
Seris groaned behind him, sitting up slowly.
What… what happened? Kain looked at the gate. The crack was wider now. Through it, he saw a tower rising from a dead ocean of glass.
The Spire, he whispered. But something else looked back.
An eye. Watching. Waiting.
- Writer
