Chapter 9 Into The Sanctum

We left the lake behind in silence. The air was colder now, brittle, like the valley was tightening its grip around us.

The trail east was barely visible-overgrown and littered with strange white stones shaped like bones. Samir led the way, the journal clutched tight, tracing our path with the red line inked by my grandfather nearly eighty years ago.

The forest changed fast.

Trees leaned inward unnaturally, their bark gnarled and black-veined. The silence was deeper here, heavier, not the absence of sound-but the presence of something vast and quiet, listening.

"We shouldn't be here," Will said under his breath.

"No," I agreed. "But we have to be."

An hour in, we reached the first marker-a stone spire, ten feet high, covered in the same crescent-eye symbols etched into the orb chamber. Samir ran his hand across the base.

"They're not just decorative," he murmured. "They're coordinates."

"Coordinates for what?" Derek asked.

Samir's face paled. "The rift."

I looked up.

The sky above the Sanctum pulsed with soft light, the tear in the clouds growing wider now, opening like a wound. Through it, faint stars bled into view, but not from our sky.

We pressed on.

Deeper into the forest, the trail dropped suddenly-down into a ravine covered in moss. At the far end, a monolithic archway rose from the earth. It looked like it had been waiting centuries for someone to return.

The second gate.

Unlike the first, this one pulsed with visible energy. The air around it shimmered, and etched across the black stone were lines of script now glowing gold. In the center, a hollow-again, compass-shaped.

I reached for the shattered remains of the compass in my pack.

But Samir stopped me. "Not that. You."

"What?"

He pointed at the journal, trembling. "He said the gate responds to blood. It's not a lock. It's a recognition system."

I stepped forward, heart pounding. At the base of the gate, beneath the hollow, was a small groove-almost ritualistic. I knew what it meant.

Without a word, I drew my pocketknife and cut a shallow line across my palm.

As my blood touched the stone, the gate reacted instantly.

A deep rumble echoed from the earth, and the symbols ignited one by one, circling the arch. The air split open like silk being torn, and behind it, darkness moved.

Not empty.

Full.

Something vast stirred behind the veil.

Then a voice-not mine-spoke from the gate itself:

"Will you finish what he began?"

I staggered back.

"Richard?" Derek asked, stepping in.

The gate pulsed again. Waiting.

I looked at my friends-Samir, eyes wide with wonder; Will, pale but steady; Derek, blade in hand, ready to fight anything.

Then I looked at the gate.

"I will," I said.

And the gate opened.