He stood near the far end of the platform where the crowd thinned and the noise softened into something distant and impersonal. The train was late. Five minutes, maybe ten but he didn't check. The same song pulsed through his headphones for the fourth or fifth time, tinny and familiar, its chorus rising and falling with mechanical repetition. He watched his reflection in the darkened advertisement panel across the tracks, the glass turned into a wavering mirror by the dim underground lights. His face hovered there, pale and slightly distorted, superimposed over a smiling couple selling holidays he would never book. He blinked, and the reflection blinked back a half-second later, as though reluctant to keep up with him.
His cerulean eyes glared back at him, hollow. The shimmer of his dark navy locks glinting in them like tiny incandescent stars. He wore an embroidered black hanfu robe, with purple lining and a few navy lotus flowers fashioned into the upper and lower half. His shoes were a traditional blend of bronze and white geta. His attire spoke a hundred words of his person and career, but none would openly say so.
There was nothing dramatic about his stillness; that was the point. His shoulders sloped in a posture learned from years of apology. Apology for taking up space, for wanting more, for not wanting enough. The music restarted again without his noticing. He didn't look at himself with vanity or disgust, only with a vague, clinical curiosity, as though confirming he was still present. The glass flattened him into a silhouette edged in fluorescent light, a young man already rehearsing the art of being unordinary. When the train finally thundered into the station, wind tugging at his hanfu robes, he didn't move until others did, carried forward less by intention than by the gentle pressure of the crowd.
His rhythm of following alone with the crowd did not stop there though, as the screech of the train neared ever closer, Abel saw something impossible forming in the open space the train would soon take up. His eyes widened. The impossible light flickered violently, before an outline began to form. Abel knew what it was before it had even finished its formation. A Gate.
The outline finished forming just as the train's headlights spilled into the station. The light from the tunnel struck it and recoiled, bending subtly around its edges as though unwilling to touch it directly.
Then the structure settled into itself.
It was tall. Taller than any door had reason to be. A narrow arch rising to a subtle, predatory curve at the top, neither gothic nor wholly natural, but something disturbingly in between. It stood without hinges, without frame, without any visible support. Simply upright. Simply present.
The surface carried the matte depth of blackened metal long submerged beneath the salt of an ocean and its depth, its texture faintly pitted as though time itself had tried and failed to erode it. Across that dark body ran engravings that were thin, spiraling etchings that twisted upward in patterns that felt as though they conveyed a story beneath the waves. When the train lights passed over them, they caught for the briefest second, shimmering with a muted metallic violet sheen, like oil refracting light across deep water. Coral sprawled over its finer detail, each growth was jagged but eerily elegant, curving in arcs that suggested ribs, antlers, or the remnants of something that had once been alive. The coral was nearly black at its edges, but toward the hollowed centers of each piece, a dim purple glow pulsed faintly not bright enough to illuminate, only enough to suggest depth within.
The air around the Gate felt heavy. Humid, almost. Abel became aware of the faintest scent of salt and something metallic beneath it, sharp like blood diluted in seawater.
And then there was the center.
It was not empty.
At first glance it appeared to be nothing more than darkness filling the archway. But when he stared at it long enough, the darkness shifted. Slow vertical currents sliding past one another in layered sheets, like the deepest parts of the ocean suspended upright. Shapes seemed to drift far below the surface, indistinct and impossibly distant, as though the depth extended far beyond the physical boundaries of the frame.
For a moment, he thought he saw his reflection.
But it blinked a fraction too late.
The train thundered past.
Commuters moved forward.
They passed through the space where the Gate stood without slowing, without flinching, their bodies phasing through the abyssal surface as though nothing occupied it at all.
And Abel understood, with a clarity that tightened a sickness in his chest.
It was not there for them.
It was there for him.
***
The building was smaller than he expected.
Abel had imagined something imposing. Steel barricades. Armed personnel. Something dramatic enough to justify the fear and panic that had taken root in his stomach during the train ride across the city. Mostly due to the Gate, but also because of the policies surrounding them.
Instead, the Crucible Response Office looked like a municipal records building. Mundane and although he couldn't believe he was thinking this. Boring.
After all the past thirty minutes had been the most eventful and significant of his life. A gate was almost always a bad thing for one to see. Because it would mean that more than likely, the one who had witnessed it would die soon.
A rectangular slab of pale concrete. Frosted glass doors. Fluorescent lights humming faintly above a reception desk. The woman behind the counter barely looked up when he approached.
"Gate sighting?" she asked. Her blonde hair covered the glasses she wore. He thought for a second about how she even managed to fill out anything with long hair like that, he usually tied his behind his head in a ponytail, it did the job enough for him.
Abel hesitated a moment before answering.
"Yes."
She nodded once and slid a clipboard toward him without ceremony.
"Fill out the first page. Name, age, first manifestation time if known. The rest isn't urgent."
Her tone suggested she had asked the same question a thousand times and to be honest Abel wagered that she probably had.
He took the clipboard.
The form was more bland than he had anticipated, well, considering he was filling out a form that related to his possible death or…something else entirely.
Name
Age
Time of Gate Manifestation
Location of First Appearance
Did the Gate display movement before stabilization?
Did the Gate emit light, sound, temperature change, or atmospheric distortion?
Abel paused halfway through filling it out.
The questions felt strangely specific.
Like someone had spent years learning exactly what details mattered.
When he returned the clipboard, the receptionist skimmed it briefly before pressing a button beneath the desk.
"Room five, take the first right down that corridor." she said. "They'll take it from here." She said with a monotonous tone in her voice as she gestured towards the corridor.
***
Room three was colder.
Not physically. The temperature was the same.
But the atmosphere had weight to it.
Two people waited inside.
A man in his late forties sat behind a mahogany desk, sleeves rolled neatly to the elbows. A tablet rested in front of him. He was also resting his elbows on the desk with his hands clasped together in a tight clasp. Beside him stood a younger woman with a stack of thin folders held against her chest.
Abel's eyes flickered over them both before resting on the middle aged man.
The man gestured toward the chair across from him.
"Abel Garden, correct?"
Abel nodded and sat.
The man studied him quietly for a few seconds.
Not suspicious.
Not hostile.
Just… evaluating.
Abel shifted uncomfortably, he didn't much like being stared at or, more specifically, being judged by others. Though he supposed he would just have to grin and bear it.
Finally he spoke.
"How long have you been seeing this Gate?"
"About thirty five minutes," Abel said. "It formed on the tracks before my train home arrived."
The woman began writing something down. Abel spared a glance at her, she was rather beautiful, brunette hair, hazel eyes and a rather professional attire, though he could tell that professionalism didn't easily cover her bosom.
Abel's heart thumped slightly.
The man tapped the tablet once.
"Location?"
"U-h the underground, on platform eleven. Westbound station."
"Did anyone else react to it?"
"No."
"Did anyone pass through it?"
Abel hesitated.
"…Yes."
The man didn't seem surprised.
"Did they notice?"
"No."
The man nodded again.
"Good."
He leaned back slightly.
"Alright. Let's talk about appearance. What did the Gate look like? Any information you can give us concerning this might help us to narrow down the possibilities of potential locations it could send you, and also help to accurately theorize what aspect it might give you once you escape it."
Abel hesitantly nodded and tried to think back to what it had looked like. The arch. The coral. The violet glow buried inside the growths. The surface like something pulled from the ocean floor. The darkness within it that seemed to move like deep water.
As he spoke, the woman's pen slowed.
She glanced briefly at the man.
He seemed to noticed.
His fingers tapped once again against the mahogany desk.
"Interesting," he muttered.
He turned the tablet so the woman could see.
"Coral formations. Abyssal distortion. Violet refractive pattern."
She nodded faintly.
"Water-aligned aspect," she said.
"Most likely," he agreed.
He looked back to Abel.
"This is good news."
Abel frowned slightly.
"Good?"
"Yes."
He folded his hands.
"Water-type Aspects tend to produce stable environments during the First Embrace."
He spoke calmly, like someone explaining a workplace policy.
"Coastal regions. Flooded ruins. Archipelagos. Occasionally open ocean, though the chances of that are incredibly low."
He tapped the tablet again.
"Marine Daemons. Aquatic predators. Some environmental hazards, honestly, you could have done much worse. So long as you stick to locations that are elevated and keep out of deep water, you will likely survive."
Abel felt some of the tension in his chest loosen.
The man noticed.
Then he added,
"Of course, there are exceptions to these environments."
The woman finally spoke again.
"Extremely rare environmental mismatches."
The man nodded once.
"Deserts. Active Volcanic regions. Frozen waste lands."
Abel blinked.
"Deserts?"
The man shrugged slightly.
"We don't see them often with water-aligned Gates."
He paused.
"But when we do…"
The tablet screen dimmed as he locked it.
"…survival rates drop significantly."
Silence lingered for a moment.
Then the man straightened.
"But let's assume the more probable outcome."
He slid a thin booklet across the desk.
"Your priority when entering the Gate is simple."
He raised a finger.
"Water."
Another.
"Shelter. Preferably elevated to avoid predators on land and in the water."
And third.
"Finally, observation."
He held Abel's gaze.
"Do not run blindly to areas you perceive as safe. Do not fight unless forced to. And most importantly.."
His voice sharpened slightly.
"..assume everything inside wants you dead."
He leaned back again.
"Any questions?"