He went back to the field the next morning, alone.
They'd argued about that too. Angel wanted to come. Diana wanted Storm on standby above the clearing. Kelvin wanted to rig some kind of tether to the light and talked for ten straight minutes about signal propagation through dimensional boundaries before Brooks gently took the marker out of his hand. In the end, Noah won, mostly because there was nothing any of them could actually do on the other side. The castle wouldn't let them in. He was sure of that.
The clearing looked the same as yesterday. Huge pale-veined leaves drooping in the damp. A spider the size of a dinner plate sitting in the middle of a web strung between two stalks, its legs striped yellow and black, not interested in him at all. And the light, hanging at eye level, flickering.
He stood in front of it and took a breath.
The system opened before he even reached for it.
[Harvest Gate: Unresolved]
[Re-entry Available]
[Would you like to enter the Harvest Gate?]
