The Shardvale stretched before Duncan like the grave of a god.
It wasn't a valley in the traditional sense. It was a crater—vast, jagged, unnatural. A wound torn into the earth by something not of this world. Blackened spires jutted from its rim like broken teeth, and deep within its heart, pale green mist swirled in slow, lazy spirals.
The locals called it the Falling Maw. The Dominion had erased its name from official records nearly two decades ago.
Duncan knew why now.
This was where the Third Gate had fallen.
The disc pulsed in his hand, its spiral glowing faintly, reacting to something deep below. He adjusted the harness on his back, checking the Emberblade, then began the slow descent into the Shardvale's belly.
Each step felt like he was walking into the past.
Echoes Beneath the Stone
The deeper he traveled, the more the world twisted.
Rocks bled faint light. Strange symbols flickered on the cliffsides. And the silence… it wasn't silence at all. It hummed—soft, constant, like a thousand voices whispering beneath the skin of the world.
By the time Duncan reached the bottom, the mist had thickened, coiling around his legs like living smoke.
He stopped at a flat platform made of black stone—unnaturally smooth, shaped into perfect circles, each etched with runes similar to the ones the Watcher had shown him.
He placed the disc into the central groove.
It clicked.
The ground trembled.
And the Gate opened.
A Door to Yesterday
Stone slid away, revealing a staircase spiraling downward, carved from the same seamless black material. Faint golden lights flickered along the walls, responding to Duncan's presence.
He descended.
The air grew colder, but not naturally. It was the cold of memory, not wind.
At the bottom, he found a massive circular chamber.
Floating in its center was a hollow structure—half machine, half bone—glowing with soft blue energy. Sigils rotated slowly around it, each spinning in a different direction.
It wasn't a weapon.
It was a seal.
And it was failing.
Truth in Ruin
The chamber responded to Duncan's arrival.
Ghostly images flickered across the walls:
Soldiers in flame-etched armor battling beasts made of shadow and lightning.
Engineers carving symbols into obsidian gates with tools of light.
A council of masked figures arguing over a great map—five gates, five keys, five bearers.
Then: fire.
Endless, swallowing everything.
The voices rose in a single phrase:
"The fourth seal must not fall."
"If the last gate opens, memory becomes flesh."
Duncan stepped closer to the floating structure.
The Emberblade pulsed.
And the floor beneath him shifted.
The Guardian Wakes
From the far end of the chamber, a low, grinding sound echoed.
Something stirred beneath the platform.
A creature—massive, humanoid, clad in shattered armor fused with roots and bone—rose from a cocoon of crystal. Its face was half-mask, half-skull, and a single flame flickered where its heart should be.
It did not attack.
It knelt.
"Bearer," it said, voice deep and hollow, like earth speaking for the first time. "You come too late."
Duncan held his ground. "What are you?"
"I am the last Sentinel of Gate Three. Bound by oath. Broken by time."
"What broke the seal?" Duncan asked.
The Sentinel looked up.
"You did."
The Price of Fire
Images surged into Duncan's mind—his first contact with the Emberblade, the killing of the Bone Wraith, the retrieval of the spiral discs.
Every act of defiance… every awakening.
"I… triggered them?"
The Sentinel nodded.
"You are not the first bearer. But you may be the last. Each act of remembrance cracks the seal. And now… one remains."
Duncan's knuckles whitened.
"Where?"
The Sentinel extended an arm. In its palm, another spiral disc appeared—this one shaped like a triangle at the edge, incomplete.
"The last gate lies beneath the Sea of Glass, where stars sleep in daylight."
Then its eyes dimmed.
And it crumbled into ash.
The Path Forward
Duncan emerged from the Shardvale hours later, the final key tucked into his pouch, the weight of its meaning heavier than steel.
The sky above had changed again.
Clouds spun in unnatural spirals. Faint lines of aurora streaked from the horizon, converging to a single point above the eastern wastes.
He turned west.
He would ride to the coast. To the Sea of Glass.
But as he mounted his horse, a rumble split the sky.
Not thunder.
Not storm.
A crack.
A sound like reality itself… tearing.