The crystal pillars tightened into a narrowing spiral, guiding Kael's cohort toward a lone black obelisk pulsing like a silent heartbeat. Every step felt heavier, as if the Veil were weighing their intentions.
[Veilcore Sync 13 % – Path Integrity Stable]
"Thinner here," Veyra murmured. Her gloved fingers brushed a pillar, leaving a ribbon of smoky shadow that clung for an instant before fading.Rei ghosted ahead, silver braid flicking behind her, daggers loose in either hand. Thorn guarded the rear, shield angled to intercept anything the Gate might throw at them. Elias walked beside Kael, his cracked-crystal gauntlet flickering with half-formed glyphs.
Wind howled overhead though none of them felt its touch; sound had divorced itself from sensation the moment they entered the Gate. Nothing here obeyed comfortable rules.
They were thirty paces from the obelisk when a smooth pillar rippled. A lean figure stepped free—same height as Kael, same fighter's build, a warped mask of his own face. A shadow-glaive spun into its grip.
[Veil Entity Detected – Echo-Kin, Threshold Guardian]
It lunged. Kael countered with his zero-cost Seed trick—Phantom Step blurring him a metre aside. Steel hissed through air; sparks cracked as real glaive met false. The Echo-Kin mirrored every pivot, turning Kael's strengths against him. The Gate wasn't guessing; it was reading.
Fine. Read this.
Kael feinted high, dipped low, angled his blade so the copy's parry dragged wide. At that same heartbeat Rei blinked two metres behind the guardian—her Blink Flicker cost a single sliver of Essentia—and plunged a dagger into glass-skin. The creature recoiled, learning faster, limbs sharpening into perfect counters.
"Vectors!" Elias shouted. A pulse of compressed force hammered from his gauntlet, but the Echo-Kin twisted past it, and new fractures zigzagged deeper through Elias's focus crystal.
Essentia flickered in Kael's core: a fifty-unit reservoir, most of it untapped. This mirror needed to break. He focused, felt the Veil answer, and let power surge.
Shardwalk—four-metre phase, twelve Essentia.
Cold light flooded his limbs. Reality softened; Kael stepped through the stone floor, resurfaced behind the guardian, and cut upward in a ruthless arc. Glass exploded into violet motes. The Echo-Kin's halves clawed toward each other, but the Veil drank the fragments before they could reform.
A silver line traced across Kael's vision:
[Sync 25 % – Sigil "Shardwalk" integrated]
The rules etched themselves into instinct. Base cost twelve Essentia for four metres; every extra metre bled six more. Push too far and space might snap back. Phantom Step remained for free—good for feints, but the moment he tried to phase even a fingertip through matter, the Veil would demand payment.
Essentia dipped to thirty-eight of fifty. Manageable. He reset his stance as Thorn nudged a shard of fallen crystal with his boot.
"It copied you."
"Won't copy me again."
A softer pulse washed over the group.
[Group Calibration Complete – Affinity Seeds Formalised]
Knowledge slotted into place without cards or diagrams. Rei felt how each Blink cost one unit; any farther and her calves cramped. Elias knew Vector Nudge drew a single unit; push harder and force multiplied until the crystal exploded. Veyra felt extra figments siphon Essentia and claw at her thoughts. Thorn sensed Emberguard's heat was free until he over-stoked it. Everyone carried a price.
"We all pay in different coin," Thorn said, adjusting the battered edge of his shield.
Rei wiped her blade on her sleeve. "Let's spend wisely."
They reached the monolith. Blue runes crawled over obsidian like frost. Kael pressed a palm to the stone—perfectly smooth, yet thrumming. A whisper flickered across his vision:
[Anchor Fragment Stabilised – Path Forward Unlocked][Next Coordinate: 2 km east – Mist Hollows]
He looked east. A valley lay smothered by silver fog. Lightning flared beneath the mist like sheet-fire underwater.
"Mist Hollows?" Rei wrinkled her nose. "Sounds friendly."
"Friendlier than waiting here," Elias said, sealing a crack in his gauntlet crystal with a strip of veil-tape.
Kael led the descent. The Shardwalk's after-ache tingled in his muscles, but the anchor's reward simmered new energy in his core. After ten paces he glanced back—just in time to see the pillar spiral dissolve into drifting sand. The Gate rewrote itself, erasing the trial they'd passed.
"No turning back," Veyra whispered.
"Forward's the only direction that matters," Kael replied.
They stepped into the silver fog, and the obelisk's heartbeat faded behind them while distant thunder rolled like promise.