The first thing Kael Fell Ashwin felt upon crossing the threshold was pressure.
Not gravity, not fear. Something older. Deeper. Watching.
The sky overhead twisted—slashed in violet and silver, clouds spiraling like bruises on the face of the world. Beneath him, the obsidian stone of the Gatewalk Arena pulsed with residual energy. Others had passed through. Not all had returned.
His cohort stood in a loose formation behind him—five total. Unchosen. Unaligned. Yet linked by fate and timing.
He exhaled slowly.
So this was the Gate.
And the Veil… was real.
A whisper bloomed in his mind, clear and cold:
[Initializing Veilcore Sync…]
[Identity: Confirmed – Kael Fell Ashwin]
[Core Potential: Stable]
[Progression Eligibility: Gateborn – Awaiting Calibration]
Kael's eyes narrowed. That voice—the System. The force they'd studied in theory and feared in rumor. It didn't sound divine. It sounded clinical. Like something ancient pretending to be a machine.
Rei stepped forward beside him, silver hair tied back, knives sheathed at her hips. "Well? You're first through. What does it feel like?"
Kael didn't answer immediately.
"...Heavy."
---
The terrain spread out like a shattered memory—canyons that bent at impossible angles, lakes floating upside-down above empty craters, and trees growing from the sky down into the soil. It looked unstable. It felt worse.
Veyra was next through. She barely glanced at the landscape before murmuring, "This region isn't mapped. The Veil's thin here."
Thorn stepped through last, his broad form casting a long shadow. "Then we watch each other's backs. No one gets caught alone."
Elias adjusted the crystal embedded in his gauntlet. "I'm already seeing distortions in timeflow. Some of these rocks are from different centuries."
"And the sky?" Rei asked.
Elias gave a dry smile. "Doesn't belong to any world I know."
Kael's gaze stayed on the horizon. He wasn't interested in scenery.
He was here for answers. And power.
---
[Veilcore Sync: 4%]
[Gatewalk Objective: Progress Deeper – Region Locked Until Anchor Stabilized]
"There," Kael said, pointing toward a towering obelisk. "That structure's real. Or at least more real than the rest."
They moved in formation, light on their feet.
It didn't take long before the world pushed back.
The first entity emerged from the stone—a writhing echo of bone and shadow, half-formed and flickering. Its face twisted through dozens of expressions every second, none of them human.
[Veil Entity Class: Echo-Wretch – Gateborn Aberration]
It screamed, and the world around it rippled like water.
Rei moved first—blinking forward with a flicker, her daggers flashing. Thorn followed, shield raised. Elias channeled raw pressure into a forceburst that knocked the thing sideways.
Kael didn't wait. His glaive spun into his hand, already humming with intent.
[Veilcore Resonance Detected – Sync Increased]
He struck low, cutting through the entity's leg as it tried to re-form.
The creature collapsed, screaming not in pain, but confusion—like it didn't know how to die.
Kael ended it with a downward strike.
---
[System Alert: Anchor Fragment Stabilized]
[Progression Unlocked – Veilcore Sync: 11%]
[First Threshold Achieved – Ability Slot Pending]
"What was that?" Thorn muttered.
Kael didn't answer. He was watching the System text fade, committing it to memory. The first step had begun.
But not everyone would make it.
Not everyone deserved to.
He looked past the creature's remains, toward the storm-riddled path ahead.
They hadn't even crossed the outer ring of the Gate yet.