By midnight, the town had run out of ways to pretend it wasn't dying.
Wind knifed through the broken streets, carrying ash and half-heard prayers. The artillery in the distance had gone from steady to sporadic, like whoever commanded the batteries was saving shells for something that mattered more than this stubborn little blot on the map.
The gate still mattered.
That was the problem.
Kaiden stood at the edge of the square, hood low, watching the circle breathe.
The broken human engine lay half-buried in rubble and soot, its stone frame cracked, glyphs flickering fitfully under a skin of dust. Mara's scavenged conduits climbed over it like veins, crude patches connecting shattered channels into something that shouldn't have worked and almost did.
Every time the outer runes pulsed, his Core hummed back.
They were starting to sync.
"Outer patrols rotating faster," Sylen murmured at his side. "Twenty-minute gap is now twelve. Someone got spooked."
"Someone should be," Rein said from behind them. "Half the city's drinking rumours about a metal demon in their wells."
Jex perched on a broken pillar, eyes scanning rooftops.
"Two more posters went up near the western well," he said. "They're offering food and clean water for sightings now. That'll buy loose tongues."
Mara knelt by the gate's outer ring, fingers stained with chalk and mana-burn.
"The inner lattice will hold," she said. "Once."
Kaiden looked down at her.
"Once," he repeated.
She nodded without looking up.
"After that, it's slag," she said. "The stone, the glyphs, the threads I laid. All of it. You get one jump, one direction, one very loud mistake."
"What do you mean, mistake?" Jex asked.
"Look around," Mara said. "You ever see a perfect outcome?"
He didn't answer.
A gust tore through the square, rattling empty shutters. Someone had scrawled more warning sigils on the nearby walls since yesterday—layer on layer of rough chalk, the universal script for "keep away, this thing eats people."
"How bad is the mana drift?" Sylen asked.
Mara frowned at the nearest rune.
"Bad," she said. "The artillery warped the leylines. The gate's anchor can't find the original target cleanly anymore. Best I can do is tell it 'somewhere in demon territory' and hope it doesn't decide inside a mountain is close enough."
Rein grunted.
"Still better than staying here."
"Is it?" Jex murmured.
Kaiden didn't speak.
He watched the flicker of the glyphs and listened to his Core answer in his chest, a low, discordant harmony.
THUM…hum…THUM…
Every day since they'd started this, the gap between beats had shortened.
Every day, the engine felt less like an external thing and more like a mirror.
"Say we light it," Sylen said. "What happens to the town?"
Mara hesitated.
"The part close to the circle?" she said. "It goes with us. Or ahead of us. Or around us. Reality isn't built to have chunks carved out and moved like furniture. People on the edges might get stretched. Or sliced."
"And people farther away?" Rein asked.
"Depends how merciful physics feels," Mara said.
"So not very," Kaiden muttered.
He turned away from the circle and looked at the square.
It was quieter than it had any right to be.
Most of the stalls were abandoned now, canvas hanging in tatters. A few stubborn merchants still clustered by the safer walls—selling stale bread, cracked charms, anything they could lift. The fountain at the far side had finally run dry, its basin clogged with rubble and one shattered statue.
People moved through the space in wary lines, heads down, eyes up.
Some glared at the gate.
Some crossed themselves and hurried past.
A handful glanced toward the shadows where Kaiden and his squad stood, then quickly looked away.
They'd heard stories.
Most of them weren't wrong.
"Look," Jex said softly.
Across the square, half hidden behind a toppled cart, Lorn stood on his toes, peeking at the circle.
Kaiden's jaw tightened.
The boy had cleaned his face since yesterday. The tracks of dirt were gone. New smudges replaced them. His shirt was still too big, sleeves rolled unevenly.
He wasn't close enough to be dragged into anything yet.
Yet.
"Kid's persistent," Rein said. "Should've locked him in a cellar."
"Didn't have one handy," Kaiden said.
He tore his gaze away.
"We need a decision," Mara said. "Soon. Before someone else makes it for us."
Sylen's hand flexed on the hilt of one knife.
"Options," she said.
"Option one," Mara counted off. "We walk. We leave the gate, the town, the rebels, the humans, all of it. We vanish into demon lines and pretend none of this happened."
"Not possible," Rein said. "They know we were here. Demon command will notice if we come back empty and breathing."
"Option two," Mara said. "We stay. Try to hold the town until someone wins over the rubble."
"Also not possible," Sylen said. "We're four and a half bodies and a broken engine. This place is a stopgap, not a fortress."
Mara smiled grimly.
"Option three," she said. "We light it."
"And hope it doesn't spit us into open sky," Jex muttered.
Kaiden's Core thudded.
The gate's runes flared in response.
They were listening.
"Is there an option four?" he asked.
"Talk to the mage who tore you off your path and ask for a favour?" Mara said.
He almost laughed.
Almost.
"Arvan isn't here," he said.
"His fingerprints are," she replied, nodding toward the wavering glyphs. "Whatever he did to the leylines when he first poked this place, it's still echoing."
"Feels like him," Jex muttered. "Every time the air goes wrong, I get that prickle."
Sylen's ears flicked.
"Voices," she said quietly.
They all went still.
Down one of the feeding streets, men shouted. Not panicked. Organized.
"Close the southern approach!"
"Block the alleys!"
"Keep the circle clear!"
Steel rang on stone.
Footsteps drummed.
A squad of human soldiers spilled into the square from the south, armour scuffed, expressions hard. Rebel fighters pushed in from the opposite side, weapons drawn. The two lines halted halfway, facing each other across the gate.
This was new.
"Wonderful," Rein muttered. "They finally noticed the real problem."
"Hands off the circle!" a human officer barked. "By order of the council, no one touches it without guild authorization."
"Council's dead," a rebel spat. "You want to wait for a signature while demons chew through the walls?"
"We wait for guild mages," the officer snapped. "They know what they're doing."
Kaiden almost stepped out just to laugh in his face.
Another voice cut through the argument.
"You're too late."
Mara stiffened.
A man walked between the lines with the kind of confidence that came from never getting shot at unexpectedly.
Guild robes. Trim stained with soot. Hair singed at the ends. His left hand was wrapped in bandages that glowed faintly, like he'd shoved it somewhere mana-heavy recently and regretted it.
Not the wounded mage Kaiden had spared.
Another one.
"Guild already looked," the robed man said. "And we said no. The engine is compromised. The leylines are unstable. One more surge and this square goes up like an overripe fruit."
"Then we'll bleed the pressure somewhere else," a rebel fighter said. "Tie it into the outer wards, break a hole in the demon line."
"And tear the leylines south," the mage said. "You think the Emperor will thank you for sending raw mana through three villages and a river?"
Silence.
"Doing nothing kills us slower," a soldier muttered. "That's still dead."
Kaiden's fingers itched.
He knew exactly how that calculation felt.
Mara's breath hitched.
"Kaiden," she whispered. "We're out of time. If the guild locks this place down or breaks the circle deliberately, that's it. No jump. No leverage. Just another crater."
His Core pulsed.
The runes answered.
He stepped forward before he'd fully decided to.
Sylen's hand caught his sleeve.
"Think," she hissed. "You're not stable. The last time you got near the core—"
"I know," he said.
"You collapse, we all go with you," she said. "Or worse, we don't, and we have to explain a spasming weapon to both sides."
He met her eyes.
"You want to leave this in their hands?" he asked, nodding toward the arguing humans and rebels. "You think guild mages are going to use a demon-powered engine for anything that doesn't end with this whole district as a warded grave?"
She didn't answer.
Behind them, a shouted order: "Push them back from the circle!"
The two groups clashed—shoving, not full steel yet, but tense enough that one thrown spell could light everything.
Mara's voice stayed low.
"If you're going to do it," she said, "you have to do it clean. No hesitation. No halfway pulse. You give it enough to lock onto something and then let the engine do what it was built to do."
"What was it built to do?" Jex muttered.
"Move an army," Mara said. "Or whatever's standing on its teeth when it wakes up."
Rein exhaled.
"We either die here," he said, "or we die there. At least if we go, we take something with us."
The words sat in Kaiden's chest like a stone.
He looked past his squad, past the circle, to the far side of the square.
Lorn stood there.
Too close now.
He'd edged forward with the stupid, terrible curiosity of someone who hadn't yet learned what not to look at. He clutched the strap of an empty satchel in one hand, eyes fixed on the gate.
He shouldn't have been able to get that close with two factions arguing over the circle.
He was small.
People didn't see small things until they screamed.
For a heartbeat, Kaiden was in his old hallway again. The neighbour kid glowering at him over a bag of garbage, daring him to complain about the noise. Kaiden choosing not to care. Choosing the elevator instead of the stairs. Choosing the train platform over a day off.
Wrong world.
Right choice.
He turned back to the circle.
"Fine," he said.
Sylen's grip tightened.
"Are you sure?" she asked.
"No," he said. "But I'm done letting other people decide how this ends."
He stepped into the open.
The argument around the gate stuttered.
Half a dozen heads turned his way.
Someone hissed, "Metal demon," under their breath.
Kaiden ignored them.
He walked straight toward the circle, cloak brushing stone, Core humming like it had finally been waiting for this.
"Stop!" the guild mage shouted. "Step away from the engine!"
Kaiden didn't slow.
Soldiers shifted, unsure whether to attack or brace.
Rebels hesitated.
No one wanted to be the one to hit the thing the posters warned about.
Only Sylen, Rein, Jex and Mara moved with him.
Mara dropped to one knee at the edge of the ring, hands flying over the makeshift conduits.
"You're going to have to override the guild lock," she said. "I don't have clearance on the original spellwork."
"Good thing I was never part of their safety briefings," Kaiden said.
He stepped up to the inner line.
Up close, the runes crawled under his skin.
Heat rolled off the stone in slow waves, not physical temperature but pressure—like the air was a lung and the circle was holding its breath.
His Core pounded.
THUM-THUM-THUM—
He placed his metal hand on the carved glyph at the center of one fractured panel.
It flared under his palm, protesting contact.
"Easy," he muttered. "You don't like me. I don't like you. We can still get something done."
Behind him, the square seethed.
"Get him off that circle!"
"Wait—if he can move it—"
"Kill it before it tries!"
Noise blurred.
His world narrowed to stone under hand, metal in chest, and the thin thread of control between them.
"Direction?" he asked.
Mara's voice shook.
"Any demon anchor in range," she said. "The closer to central supply lines, the better. If we land near a capital node, command can't pretend not to notice."
"Vague," he said.
"Welcome to unstable teleportation," she snapped.
He almost smiled.
Then he let go of the surface and dropped into the current.
The Core surged.
It rushed up his arm, hot and bright, crashing into the gate's half-dead channels. For a heartbeat, he was back on the slab in the forge, demons forcing power into his chest.
This time, they didn't need to.
He had his own.
The circle drank.
Runes flared white, then violet, then something that didn't have a name. The patched conduits lit like veins full of lightning. The air above the gate thickened, warping light, bending sound.
Someone screamed.
Someone tried to run.
A hand grabbed his shoulder—Sylen, bracing him.
"Kaiden—" she said.
He didn't hear the rest.
The engine's logic reached back along the flow, searching.
Not for coordinates.
For flavour.
Demon mana. Imperial signatures. The taste of home.
It found something.
A strong, steady pulse far away, like a heartbeat felt through stone walls: a demon city lit for celebration, wards humming, a central anchor singing through the leylines.
The gate lunged for it.
Kaiden tried to control the speed, to smooth the surge.
He failed.
His Core slipped.
For a split second, he wasn't sure if he was pouring power into the circle or if the circle was tearing it out of him.
Pain ripped through his chest.
His knees buckled.
Sylen's grip on his shoulder tightened, dragging him half upright.
"Let go!" Mara shouted. "Kaiden, cut the flow! It's taking too much!"
He tried.
His fingers wouldn't move.
The glyph under his palm had clamped down, stone gripping metal like a jaw.
The world tilted.
The sky above the square stretched, clouds drawing into a long, thin stripe. Buildings leaned without moving. People looked like they were sliding sideways even as they stood still.
Kaiden's human eye flooded with tears.
His lens filled with static.
For one shredded instant, he saw two skies at once:
The smoky, artillery-lit ceiling of the human town.
And above it, layered like a reflection, a different night—red banners, high towers, lanterns burning blue over a broad demon plaza, crowds gathered around a raised dais.
His Core recognized that second sky.
It wanted it.
He tried to say no.
What came out was a ragged, nothing sound.
The gate stopped caring about his opinion.
It bit.
Air imploded inward.
Stone screamed.
The inner circle lifted—not physically, but conceptually—tearing itself loose from the idea of "here."
The square came with it.
Kaiden felt his stomach drop as if falling, though his boots never left the stone.
The edges of the plaza warped, the world folding inward like paper at the corners. Buildings along the perimeter shuddered, then snapped, their front halves dragging toward the circle, their back halves trying to stay in place.
People at the edges stretched out of shape as reality lost track of how wide they were supposed to be.
Someone flew past him, arms pinwheeling, mouth open in a silent scream.
Lorn.
Kaiden saw him for a heartbeat, tumbling through the warped air, eyes wide.
Then the boy was gone—either closer, or farther, or somewhere else along the tear.
"Kaiden!" Sylen shouted into his ear. "Stop it!"
He couldn't.
White fire filled his vision.
His Core reached some limit he hadn't known existed and snapped.
The last thing he felt was the sensation he'd had once before: being yanked off his path by an uncaring hand and flung sideways through his own life.
Only this time, he was the one doing the pulling.
The town, the gate, the square, his squad, the hunters, the walls—everything caught in the circle's teeth—ripped loose from the world with him.
Then there was nothing at all.