Smoke coiled from the broken stones like dying breath. The seal was intact again, but the air around it pulsed with aftershock, alive and raw. And the silence was loud with everything unspoken.
Kael stood with his back to the gate, sword slack at his side, blood drying across one cheek. He was watching Seris.
She crouched near the ashes, one hand open as if expecting something to rise from them. Her eyes, still burning faint gold, were far away, the fire behind them barely contained.
"You with me?" Kael asked softly.
Seris didn't look at him. "They were trying to speak. Whatever was behind that gate… it wasn't just darkness. It remembered."
Aeren groaned from the edge of the stone circle. "We're all gonna remember this in our nightmares. Pretty sure I dislocated something." He winced as Lorent helped him sit up.
Lorent's eyes were on Seris, wary. "We saw you, change. Are you going to tell us what that was?"
Kael turned, tense. "She doesn't owe you that."
"I'm not asking out of curiosity," Lorent said, coolly. "I'm asking because whatever power she just pulled out nearly broke the world open."
Seris stood slowly. "It was already broken. I just pulled back the veil."
"And what's beneath it?" Lorent asked.
Seris met his gaze. "Me."
A beat passed. Then Aeren coughed, half a laugh, half nerves. "Well, that's wonderfully terrifying."
Kael stepped closer to Seris. "You didn't lose yourself. That matters."
"I don't know if I held on," she said. "It felt… ancient, like it was waiting for me."
"Is that why they hunted you?" Lorent asked, still watching her like she might explode again.
"No," Kael said before she could speak. "That was the empire."
The word hung heavy in the air, echoing in the hollow silence that followed. Even the wind seemed to hush.
Seris turned her head, slow and deliberate. "You think they'll come now."
"They've probably never stopped watching," Kael murmured. "This gate was one of theirs, remember? A control point, a weapon."
"And they know we lit it up like a damn beacon," Aeren muttered. "Fantastic."
"They'll want her," Lorent said. "Especially now, you saw what she can do."
"I'm not theirs," Seris snapped.
"They won't care."
"Then let them come," she said, voice low and vibrating. "Let them try."
Kael looked at her, gaze sharp. "We're not walking into a storm blind. If the empire's coming back , we need to move, fast."
"Back to the old capital?" Aeren asked. "It's suicide."
"It's where the answers are," Kael said. "And the records, if they've reopened the archives..."
"They won't let us just walk in," Lorent interrupted. "We'd need clearance, contacts, forged papers, at least one assassination..."
"I can get us in," Seris said.
Everyone stared at her.
She met Kael's eyes first. "You remember the man who trained me? The one they said was a traitor?"
"…General Rathen."
"He's alive."
Kael's jaw clenched. "That's impossible."
"I saw him, he's hiding under an alias in the merchant tiers, h.e's been watching the gates."
"And you didn't tell me?" Kael's voice sharpened.
"I wasn't sure it was him until now."
Aeren blinked. "Hold up, just me or did this plot just twist sideways into a political conspiracy?"
Kael exhaled through his nose, sharp. "It always was."
Seris stepped closer to him, her hand brushing his. "I didn't tell you because I knew how you'd react. But we need him, he knows how the empire moves and where their hands still are."
"And he knows you," Kael said.
"Yes," Seris replied. "That's why he might help."
There was a long, quiet beat between them, weighted and brittle.
Then Kael said, "We'll move at dusk, get what we need, then to the capital."
"Kael," Aeren said cautiously. "If this is the empire again..."
"It is," Kael said. "And this time, we don't run, we burn what they built."
Lorent snorted. "Well, you've got one hell of a firestarter."
Seris didn't smile. "Then you'd better keep up."
Somewhere in the Empire
The chamber was cold, not because of the stone, but because of who sat within it.
High Marshal Caldus stood before the long obsidian table, his cloak brushing the floor like a blade sheathed in silk. On either side of him, figures in deep crimson masks remained silent and unmoving sentinels of the Order, watching.
"The Gate at Irelith was breached," Caldus said calmly, as if he were reading from a weathered scroll. "Momentarily, the seal has re-formed."
"And the weapon?" asked a voice from the shadows, feminine, smooth, and cold as winter air, the Emissary.
"Awakened, just as you said."
A pause, breath of silence thick with meaning.
"Her bloodline wasn't supposed to manifest so soon," murmured another voice, older, wearier and with bitterness beneath each word. "She was meant to be controlled."
"She never was," Caldus said. "She slipped through our hands before, she won't again."
A low, mechanical hum filled the chamber, and the wall at the far end illuminated, runes flickering to life in red and gold. A distorted image of the sealed gate hovered midair, and within it, a single blurry frame: a woman, golden-eyed and burning.
"The Seer confirmed the convergence," the Emissary said. "Her awakening aligns with the storm coming from the north. If we do not move soon, the throne itself will splinter."
"And the boy?" someone asked. "The traitor's son, the Shadowblade."
Caldus's eyes flickered.
"Still with her, still in love."
A few quiet laughs broke the tension, sharp and dry like brittle paper.
"He'll be her undoing."
"No," said the Emissary, voice sharp now. "He will be ours if they stand together."
Another beat of silence.
Then Caldus bowed his head. "I'll dispatch the Hunters. And send word to the capital, activate the Watch and she walks toward us… we will be ready."
The Emissary's final words echoed as the image of Seris pulsed on the wall:
"Let her come home, let her remember what we made her."