The sanctuary Kai brought them to offered stillness—but not peace. That night, Lina stood alone beneath the glowing trees, their crystalline leaves tinkling faintly in the breeze like a lullaby for broken warriors.
She couldn't sleep.
The image of the masked figure lingered, like a stain she couldn't wash from her thoughts. The Veiled Circle. Even the name felt wrong, like something whispered through bloodied teeth.
She clenched the crystal shard tighter in her hand, pressing its sharp edge into her palm until it drew a line of red. The sting helped her stay grounded. Real.
Behind her, footsteps approached—light, but familiar. Kai.
"You're still bleeding," he said quietly, standing a short distance away. "You do that more often now."
"It helps me focus," Lina replied, not looking at him. "Sometimes… I feel like if I don't feel something, I'll drift again."
Kai didn't press her further. He understood more than she realized.
"They're not just coming for power," she said after a pause. "They're coming for what the Architect left behind. Whatever was beneath that throne… we didn't see all of it."
Kai nodded. "We cracked the shell. But the Architect was a vessel. There's more buried below."
"And this Veiled Circle… they think they're ready to take it."
Kai stepped closer. "Then we train."
Lina turned to him, eyes fierce despite the exhaustion. "Train? You've seen what's inside me. I can't control it for more than minutes at a time. If I lose it again—"
"Then you lose it with me beside you," Kai interrupted gently. "Until you don't lose it anymore."
Her lips parted slightly. Then she nodded. Not in surrender—but in acceptance.
That night, the clearing became their battlefield.
Kai drew sigils in the air, old war glyphs from before the multiverse shattered. Lina closed her eyes, letting the crystal burn against her chest, the power inside her stirring like a restless storm.
They trained in silence.
Each movement precise. Each clash of energy rippling across the sanctuary's protective layer. Kai tested her—pushed her. Forced her to channel raw magic into form, not chaos.
At first, it fought her. The energy inside her screamed, wild and primal.
But Lina screamed louder.
She shaped it into a spear of lightning, then a shield of obsidian flame. She forced it into a mirror that reflected only her truest self—fractured, but unbroken.
Hours passed. Maybe days. The sanctuary didn't follow normal time.
Eventually, she collapsed to her knees, gasping, sweat clinging to her skin like second skin.
Kai knelt beside her, offering a hand.
"Still think you're not ready?" he asked.
"No," she whispered. "I think… I finally am."
But even as they rested beneath the glowing trees, a new whisper threaded through the multiverse. Not from the Veiled Circle—but from something deeper.
Something older.
In the distance, in a realm that had long been sealed, a pair of crimson eyes opened.
And smiled.
Chapter Title: The Blood-Sealed Gate
The wind changed.
Lina felt it first—like a breath across her skin, tinged with something cold and ancient. She stood, eyes narrowing, the glow from the sanctuary trees dimming as if the multiverse itself had begun to hold its breath.
Kai turned his gaze upward. "Do you feel that?"
"Something's opened," Lina murmured. "Something that shouldn't."
A low hum vibrated through the air, not sound, but pressure—pulling at the very threads of existence. The sanctuary trembled. A crack shimmered in the sky, glowing with a deep crimson light that pulsed in rhythm with Lina's heart.
Then came the whisper.
Not words, but feeling. Hunger. Power. Recognition.
Lina staggered back, clutching her chest. The crystal at her core flared violently, responding not in fear—but in longing.
"It's calling to you," Kai said, stepping forward, his hand brushing her arm, grounding her.
Lina's voice came in a rasp. "The Blood-Sealed Gate… it's been unsealed."
Kai stiffened. "That gate was buried in the First Collapse. No one even remembers its coordinates."
"I do now," she whispered. "And so does the Veiled Circle."
She could see it. Not with her eyes, but with the imprint left in her bloodline—like a scar passed down through lifetimes. A planet cloaked in shifting mist. Rings of bone orbiting it like silent guardians. And in its center, a gate made from obsidian and heartstone, chained in runes written in the tongue of vanished gods.
"That's where they're going," Lina said. "That's where it begins."
Kai's jaw tightened. "Then we get there first."
"But it won't be like anything we've faced before," she warned. "The Blood-Sealed Gate feeds on truths. To pass through, it will demand the one thing we fear to face most."
Kai met her gaze, unwavering. "Then we face it. Together."
Without another word, they activated the transit shard. Light exploded around them, folding reality like paper. The sanctuary vanished, replaced by a world without stars.
They emerged on the edge of the dead planet's orbit. It loomed below like a wound in space—scarlet clouds swirling over a blackened surface. The atmosphere pulsed with locked energy, bound like a beast long forgotten.
Lina gasped. She could feel it—feel her—beneath the surface.
A version of herself. One buried by time.
As they descended toward the gate, shadows began to rise to meet them.
The Circle was already here.
And the past—Lina's past—was about to come clawing back into the light.
The descent was not silent.
As Lina and Kai approached the ruined surface of the nameless planet, the atmosphere clawed at their ship like a living thing—wind that screamed, lightning that whispered names neither of them had ever spoken aloud. Names from forgotten timelines. Dead futures. And maybe… dead selves.
They landed on a plateau of ash and bone. The sky bled shades of maroon. At the center stood the Blood-Sealed Gate, vast and unmoving, its jagged frame etched in crimson veins that pulsed in sync with Lina's heartbeat.
But someone waited.
He stood with his back turned, cloaked in layers of midnight-blue silk and smoke, a curved blade strapped across his back. His aura bled shadow into the ground beneath him, devouring light like a black sun.
Lina recognized him instantly.
"…Rael."
Kai stepped forward, muscles tense. "You know him?"
Lina nodded slowly, her voice barely a whisper. "He used to be me."
The figure turned.
His face was almost identical to hers—eyes like fractured amethyst, sharp cheekbones, the same scar trailing beneath the left eye. But he wasn't her. He was darker. He smiled like someone who had made peace with destruction.
"I was what you became," Rael said. "In the timeline where you chose power above everything. Above Kai. Above love. Above life."
Lina took a step forward, the wind curling around her like a warning. "You're the gatekeeper."
"No," Rael replied. "I am the gate. To pass through me, you'll have to kill the part of yourself that wants control."
Kai moved between them, protective. But Lina gently touched his arm. "This is mine."
Rael drew his blade.
"So is this."
The duel began not with steel, but memory. Rael slashed, and suddenly Lina was drowning in echoes: the scream of a lover left behind on a collapsing moon, the shatter of trust as she turned on allies, the raw hunger for power that once tasted like freedom.
She staggered, nearly dropping her weapon.
Rael's voice followed like a serpent. "You wanted control so badly you burned everything that ever loved you."
"But I didn't!" she shouted, parrying. "I made a different choice!"
"And yet I exist," Rael snarled. "Which means that desire still lives in you. The gate doesn't care what path you took. It only cares what still lurks inside."
Blades clashed. Sparks lit the dust-strewn air. For every strike Lina delivered, Rael struck deeper—into her memories, her doubts, her guilt.
But then…
Kai's voice broke through the storm. "Lina. He's not your truth. You are."
She closed her eyes for a heartbeat.
And when she opened them, she no longer fought with rage—but with clarity.
She stepped forward, blade glowing with the light of every choice she had made to be better. Every moment she had chosen love over fear. Trust over dominance. Humanity over godhood.
With one final strike, she drove her blade into Rael's heart.
He didn't bleed. He smiled.
"You're ready."
And then he dissolved into light—folding into the gate behind him. The massive doors trembled, then slowly, achingly, began to open.
Lina turned to Kai, breathless. "I'm not done fighting my darkness."
"No," Kai said, pulling her close. "But you're not alone anymore."
They stepped through the gate—into the deepest part of Lina's soul.
Into the realm of forgotten selves.