Ascension Gates: Rise of the Beast Monarch

He decided, almost immediately, that this would be their first real expedition since his awakening.

Liora discovered his plans the following morning, catching him in the middle of packing supplies with an efficiency that made it immediately obvious he intended to leave soon.

"You’re going to the Ashen Star Wilderness," she said, not quite a question, standing in the doorway with her arms crossed and an expression that told him clearly she had already drawn her own conclusions about what she intended to do with that information.

"I am," he admitted, continuing to sort through the supplies laid out across his desk.

"I’m coming with you."

He looked up immediately. "Liora, I don’t know what’s waiting in there. The records are incomplete at best, and whatever dangers the Wilderness holds haven’t been properly documented in generations. I can’t ask you to walk into that kind of uncertainty."

"You’re not asking," she said simply. "I’m telling you."

He opened his mouth to argue further, searching quickly for some argument sturdy enough to hold against the determination already settled firmly across her face, and found, before he could even begin, that she cut him off entirely.

"You disappeared into a dream for weeks," she said, her voice steady but carrying an edge he rarely heard from her, "woke up with secrets you refuse to fully explain, and now you’re planning to walk into an abandoned beast wilderness that’s swallowed trained hunters whole in the past, and you want to do it alone." She stepped fully into the room, her gaze fixed directly on his. "Do you really think I’m going to let you go by yourself?"

Aether had no answer for that. He stood there, the half-packed supplies forgotten on the desk beside him, searching for some argument that might change her mind and finding none that felt remotely honest.

"All right," he said finally, something in his chest loosening at the quiet relief of not having to face this alone. "All right. You’re coming."

It was later that same day, going through the last of his notes before their planned departure, that Aether found something that changed the shape of the expedition entirely.

He had returned, one final time, to the thin trail of information he had gathered regarding Kael’s disappearance, hoping to see it with fresh eyes before setting it aside for the duration of their journey. Cross-referencing the location of the abandoned teleportation platform against old travel records and academy correspondence, he found a detail he had somehow overlooked in his earlier searches. Kael’s last confirmed destination, before his trail went entirely cold, had been a waystation situated at the very edge of the Ashen Star Wilderness.

Aether sat back from his notes, feeling the shape of everything shift around that single discovery.

Kael’s disappearance might have nothing at all to do with the temporal being, not directly. He may simply have gone into the Wilderness chasing some lead of his own, following the same instinct that had always driven him to pursue mysteries wherever they led. Or, Aether thought, the possibility settling colder into his chest, someone may have deliberately sent him there, using the Wilderness itself as a kind of trap, or a test, or something worse that Aether did not yet have the words to properly name.

Whatever the truth proved to be, their expedition now carried two purposes rather than one. They would search for the resources his companions needed. And they would search for Kael.

They departed two days later, the morning sky still gray with the last traces of dawn, Liora’s family offering quiet, worried farewells at the gate as the small party set out along the eastern road. Flame Sovereign Pup trotted eagerly at Aether’s side, clearly sensing the change in routine and eager for whatever adventure it promised, while Spirit Fairy drifted above them in lazy, watchful circles and Fallen Succubus walked a half step behind, her eyes already scanning the horizon with the careful alertness of someone who had long since learned not to trust unfamiliar roads.

The journey itself passed without incident for the first several hours, the farmland around them gradually giving way to scattered woodland, the path beneath their feet narrowing from a proper road into something closer to a half-forgotten trail. By the time they reached the outer boundary of the Ashen Star Wilderness, the sun had climbed well past midday, and the landscape around them had shifted gradually from familiar farmland into something wilder and more untamed, trees growing thicker and stranger with every mile, their bark carrying unfamiliar patterns and their leaves tinted with colors that did not quite match anything Aether recognized from ordinary forests. The air itself carried a faint, charged quality that Aether’s senses flagged immediately as unnatural, a low thrum of latent power humming beneath the stillness, as though the very ground remembered battles fought upon it long before any of them had been born.

They had barely crossed into the outer region when the first mutated beasts appeared, three of them emerging from the dense undergrowth with a coordinated aggression that suggested they had encountered intruders before and knew exactly how to respond.

Aether felt the familiar pull toward simply ending the encounter quickly, drawing on enough of his own strength to crush the threat before it could properly develop. But he caught himself, remembering the resolve he had carried with him since his awakening, and chose instead to let the battle unfold as training rather than mere obstacle.

Flame Sovereign Pup surged forward eagerly, engaging all three beasts at once with a controlled aggression that tested every lesson of their recent training, its flames burning fierce but no longer unstable, Aether’s careful guidance keeping the fire’s power channeled rather than chaotic. Spirit Fairy hung back, weaving supportive magic through the clearing, mending small wounds before they could worsen and subtly disrupting the mutated beasts’ coordination with soft, disorienting pulses of her power. Fallen Succubus moved at the edges of the fight, weaving illusions that twisted the terrain beneath the enemies’ feet, forcing them into unfavorable positions that left them exposed to the pup’s fire again and again.

Aether fought alongside all three of them as a proper beast-taming team for the first time since his awakening, feeling the shape of their combined strength settle into something that felt, for the first time, genuinely earned. He thought, as the last of the mutated beasts finally fell, of everything the dream had shown him, the versions of himself and his companions standing stronger, faster, more capable against enemies far greater than this.

The dream had shown him what they could become. But this journey, he understood clearly now, watching Flame Sovereign Pup pant with exhausted satisfaction beside him, would determine what they actually became.

It was while clearing the battlefield afterward, checking the fallen beasts for anything worth recovering, that Liora called out to him from a shallow depression in the earth nearby, her voice carrying a note of confusion that drew him over immediately.

Buried beneath a thin layer of disturbed soil, clearly uncovered by the recent battle, lay a broken black crystal, its surface cracked but still faintly glowing with some internal light.

The moment Aether’s fingers closed around it, he felt something unmistakable resonate against his senses.

Kael’s aura.

His breath caught, and he held the crystal more carefully, turning it slowly in his hands before, without quite deciding to, he let his thumb press against its surface.

A faint image flickered into being above the crystal, translucent and unsteady, but unmistakably clear enough to recognize. Kael stood within it, somewhere deep inside the Ashen Star Wilderness by the look of the terrain around him, his face marked by a fresh, ugly injury along one cheekbone, his expression tight with an exhaustion that went beyond simple physical tiredness. Behind him loomed a massive ancient gate, its surface carved with symbols Aether did not recognize, vast and imposing against the surrounding wilderness.

Kael glanced toward something outside the frame of the image, his expression tightening further, before he turned back and spoke, his recorded voice carrying the same strained urgency Aether remembered from the shattered communication jade.

"Aether," he said, "if you found this..."

The recording distorted suddenly, the image flickering and warping, and a second voice bled through the static, cold and familiar in a way that sent a chill straight through Aether’s chest. The same voice he had heard in the fragmented communication jade. The same voice, he was now certain, that had whispered beside his ear in that frozen, impossible moment in his own quiet room.

"Don’t let him open the gate."

The crystal shattered in his hand, the image dissolving instantly, leaving nothing behind but fragments and silence.

Aether stood very still, staring at the ruined pieces scattered across his palm, his heart pounding, and slowly lifted his gaze toward the deeper reaches of the Wilderness stretching out before them, dense and shadowed and utterly unreadable.

Liora moved to stand beside him, her own expression troubled as she studied the fragments still glinting faintly in his palm. "That gate," she said quietly. "You think that’s what the records meant, when they mentioned the sealed ruin?"

"I think so," Aether said, his voice low. "And I think Kael found it before we did."

He closed his hand gently around the broken pieces, feeling the last faint traces of Kael’s aura fade from them even as he held them, and felt something settle into place within him, grim and resolute. Whatever waited at the heart of the Ashen Star Wilderness, whatever gate Kael had stood before with an injury on his face and fear in his voice, it was no longer merely a destination on their expedition. It had become the center of everything. He thought of the warning the mysterious voice had left behind, brief and urgent, carrying a weight that suggested she understood far more about that gate than anyone around him currently did. Don’t let him open it, she had said. He intended to find out exactly what she meant before anyone, Kael included, got the chance to try.

Far away, somewhere within those depths, something vast and ancient opened its eyes.

The sensation reached Aether not as sound or sight but as a kind of pressure, distant and immense, settling briefly against the edges of his awareness before withdrawing again, as though whatever had stirred had merely glanced in their direction before returning its attention elsewhere. He shivered despite the warmth of the afternoon sun, and found Spirit Fairy drifting closer to his shoulder, her wings held unusually still, her gaze fixed on the same distant horizon that had drawn his own.

And beside him, without any command given, Flame Sovereign Pup began to growl, low and fierce, its gaze fixed on the same distant horizon, every instinct in its small, powerful body bristling with a warning it had no words to give voice to. Aether rested a steadying hand against its back, feeling the tension coiled tight beneath its fur, and understood, with a certainty that settled deep into his chest, that whatever lay ahead of them would not be met gently.

"We’ll rest here tonight," he said finally, breaking the heavy silence that had fallen over the small group. "Tomorrow, we go deeper."

No one argued. Liora moved to begin setting up camp without another word, her hands steady despite the unease still lingering in her eyes, and Spirit Fairy settled quietly onto a low branch nearby, her gaze still turned toward the distant horizon even as the rest of her posture relaxed into something closer to watchful rest. Fallen Succubus took up a position at the edge of their small clearing, her silhouette dark against the fading light, standing guard without being asked, the way she so often did when the weight of the coming days pressed heaviest upon all of them.

Aether sat down beside the small fire Liora had begun to coax into life, the shattered fragments of the crystal still held loosely in his hand, and watched the first stars emerge overhead, cold and distant and indifferent to everything unfolding beneath them. Tomorrow, he knew, would bring them closer to whatever waited at the heart of the Wilderness. Tonight, he allowed himself only this quiet, uneasy stillness, gathering what strength he could before the deeper trial began.