⟡ Chapter 24: Alminice, Queen of the Doors
The door opened not with a creak, but with a breath — silent and slow, like it had been waiting for centuries to inhale again.
Vexi stepped back the moment it moved. "I didn't say anything," she muttered.
"But you read it," Havella said.
"I didn't mean to," she snapped. "It just... happened."
Beyond the door, there was no hallway. No room. No stone.
Only light — shifting, warm, humming with something so ancient that it made Jio's spine stiffen.
They exchanged glances.
No one said a word.
And then, as if their silence was agreement, they walked through.
In an instant, the cold tomb vanished.
They were standing on air.
Or what felt like air — a flat space with no walls, no floor, no sky, and yet somehow… everything. Below them shimmered a layer of glowing patterns, like veins of golden rivers running across an infinite dark sea.
Then the air trembled.
Something moved.
A sound came from the distance — heavy and slow, like the rustling of mountains.
It wasn't until the third shift that they saw her.
A shape slithered in the vastness. No, coiled. An endless line of movement that twisted without beginning or end, smooth and silver, with scales the size of cities and eyes like glowing stars.
Jio's jaw tensed. "That's not a beast," he whispered.
"No," Vexi breathed. "That's Alminice."
The colossal snake uncurled herself slowly, deliberately, until her face hovered above them — a mouth large enough to swallow worlds, eyes calm yet unreadable.
She did not speak with her mouth.
She spoke into them.
"Who dares to pass into my Dominion?"
The words weren't loud — they didn't need to be. They arrived directly into their thoughts, each one slow and full of judgment.
Jio stepped forward. "We're not here to take anything. We were trapped and—"
"You walked through the door," Alminice interrupted. "You read the words of my Master."
Her great form circled around them, the movement alone enough to shift the space around them, rippling like water.
Havella's hand hovered near her weapon, but she didn't draw it. Not here.
"The First Fairie?" Vexi asked, her voice trembling. "She… wrote those runes?"
"Only one being could write such language," the beast confirmed. "And only one tied to her thread could read them."
Vexi froze.
"You mean me?" she whispered.
Alminice's eye lowered, examining her.
"Perhaps. But you are incomplete. Fragile. A fracture of what once could have been."
"Then why did the door open?" Jio asked.
"Because I allowed it," Alminice replied, her tone neutral. "Curiosity lives longer than logic in this place."
"And this place is…?" Havella asked.
"A pocket between Realms," said Alminice. "I am its Queen. I decide what enters, and what stays."
"And if we want to leave?" Jio asked, his hand tightening around his sword.
Alminice paused — amused.
"Then you must prove why you should not be kept."
Vexi stepped forward without thinking. "Please, we're not here for trouble. We were only trying to cross the island."
"There is no island," the beast said. "You stand within the First Fairie's shadow. The world bends here to her will. You walk through her dreams, not her lands."
Jio clenched his fists.
"What is this First Fairie to you?"
"She was my Master," Alminice said softly. "And I her door. The twelfth and final Beast of the Threaded Origin. I exist to guard her memory, to test those who seek her light."
Vexi's breath caught. "She's alive?"
Alminice's eye blinked — once, slowly.
"In ways you cannot yet understand."
The space shifted again. The weight of the world returned.
The beast coiled higher.
"Leave if you can. But my Dominion is not kind to liars... or thieves."
As her body turned, a corridor of light formed before them — swirling, unstable.
Jio took one step forward, but Havella stopped him.
"Wait," she whispered.
They looked back at Alminice.
She was smiling.
Or maybe imagining the next test.
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End of Chapter 24
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