Alpas woke to the sting of cold air in his lungs.
He coughed, blinked, and sat up slowly. The pain was gone, but his body felt… hollow. Light, like he wasn't all the way there. He looked around.
Barren land stretched in every direction—cracked earth, dry wind, and a wide silence that pressed on his ears. There were no camps. No Blood Pool. No Ironward. Just emptiness.
In front of him stood a gate.
It was massive—easily ten times taller than anything he had seen. Its metal was old, weathered, and strange symbols were carved deep into the surface. Most had been worn away by time or something older. Only a faint line remained clear near the center:
"The walls remember what cannot be named, and the silence holds what time has damned."
But he recognized it from the book.
The one he had carried for years. Tattered, half-burnt, missing pages—but its drawings of the walls, its whispered legends... they hadn't been just stories. According to the book no one knew where the First Gate was. Not unless you were a Wanderer, or one of the others who could walk the hidden paths—he remembered now, the book had mentioned them too, though it never gave a name. Just a phrase: "those who see."
And yet here he was. Standing right in front of it.
He didn't move at first. Just stared. Something about the silence here was different. He could feel it pressing on his skin. Watching. Listening.
He reached out.
His fingers brushed the cold surface—and the ground trembled.
Just once.
A deep, grinding sound echoed through the empty plain as dust spilled from the cracks. The metal groaned, and then, with a sound like the world exhaling—
The gates that should've never opened… opened.
For the first time.
Not in stories. Not in myths.
Now.
For him.
Dust spilled from its seams. Light didn't pour through—there was no blinding radiance, no grand reveal—only a cold draft and a shadow that felt too still. The silence bent around him like a held breath.
And then— A thought pierced the numbness in Alpas' chest
Just a few months ago, he had felt like a failure. The emissary hadn't chosen him. He remembered that hollow feeling in his chest as he was sure that there were others who were selected, and he was left behind like all the others in his town. Another child to be thrown at the wall's hunger and thirst for blood.
He had felt small then.
Unworthy.
And now—
Now, he stood before the First Gate.The one even Wanderers spoke of with caution.
The gate that shouldn't open, but opened with a touch of his hand.
Why?
Why him?
He wasn't chosen. He wasn't strong. He didn't even understand what had happened at the pool. He hadn't meant to do anything. He was just trying to escape. To survive.
So why?
The question echoed in his mind as the final slab of the gate began to pull inward. The wind grew colder, biting against his skin.
And then—
Something yanked him forward.
Not a hand. Not a voice. Just force—pure and sudden. As if the moment he doubted himself, the gate decided for him.
Alpas stumbled across the threshold—
And behind him, the stone slabs slammed shut behind him with a thunder that echoed through his bones.
The echo of it rolled across the vast emptiness like a war drum. The air grew heavier.
Alpas spun around, staring at the now-sealed gate. His chest rose and fell with panicked breaths, his thoughts a blur of fear, confusion, and something deeper—something clawing at the edges of his mind.
He was alone.
And then—
A chuckle.
Dry. Low. Amused.
It came from behind him, just loud enough to break the silence.
Not mocking. Not kind.
But interested.
Alpas froze.
His thoughts, his fear, his self-pity—they all went quiet.
Slowly, he turned.
"Well," it said, "you're earlier than expected."
It was the emissary.
Alpas stared at the figure before him.
The emissary stood as still as the stone behind them, robes draped like layers of dusk, face half-shrouded in a hood that seemed to ripple without wind. No warmth came from him. No threat, either. Just presence. Old and patient.
"…Earlier than expected?" Alpas asked, voice raw.
The emissary didn't answer. He just raised a hand and pointed — directly at Alpas.
It wasn't a threat. He didn't say anything else. Just pointed, as if that alone was enough. The gesture held no malice. No command.
Only direction.
Alpas felt it again. That pull. Not on his skin or bone, but something deeper. The gate hadn't been a doorway. It was an invitation. One meant for him, though he didn't understand why.
And then the emissary finally spoke.
A voice like grinding stone, yet too clear to echo. Each word settled into the ground, like it had always been there — waiting to be said.
"To you, who desires everything — power, truth, immortality, the whispers between stars — know this:
Beyond the wall, it can all be yours.
It beckons to the greedy, the broken, the bold.
But remember… what it gives, it never gives freely."
The wind shifted, colder now. The horizon cracked with faint flashes of light — not lightning, but something stranger, further.
"Journey well, for the path before you is carved in shadow and sealed with pain.
What awaits are not mere obstacles, but trials — cruel, unrelenting, meant to strip you of who you were and remake what remains.
Fail, and you will vanish like the many who came before — unheard, forgotten, unmarked."
The emissary took a step back, as if retreating from the moment. His form seemed to blend with the shifting air behind him, like smoke being drawn into the bones of the world.
"I await your path.
You, who have dared to shatter the boundary of the First Wall.
You've stepped into the threshold —
Now, the Beyond is watching.
And it does not blink."
Then—he was gone.
No burst. No shimmer. Just absence. Like a dream forgotten mid-breath.
Alpas stood alone again. The gate behind him sealed. The sky above strange. The land ahead waiting.
And for the first time… he realized there was no going back.