Becoming the door wasn't like using magic or channeling power—it was becoming something else entirely, and the pain was beyond anything I'd experienced including temporary death and demon binding and all the times the Fae had killed me in training.
My body split. Not physically. Metaphysically. The wolf side pulling one direction, vampire side pulling another, and the hybrid contradiction between them stretching into a threshold that existed in all states simultaneously.
I was solid and liquid and gas and energy all at once. Was matter and antimatter occupying the same space. Was life and death and the moment between heartbeats expanded into infinity.
I was the door. The threshold. The bridge between realities.
And it was agony.
Every cell in my body screaming that this was wrong, I wasn't meant to exist like this, this violated fundamental laws of reality.
But the oath compelled and I held the threshold open because I had no choice.
The Root poured through.
