Ascension Gates: Rise of the Beast Monarch

Fallen Succubus tilted her head. "So we push it. Force the evolution. Whatever is under the ground will not wait for us."

"And if it can’t control it? If it devours something it shouldn’t, or loses itself in the process?" Aether shook his head firmly. "We don’t know what that power is, where it comes from, or what it costs. We don’t even know if the pup chose to use it."

"We need to understand this before forcing your next evolution," he said quietly. "I won’t lose you to something I didn’t take the time to learn about. Understood?"

The pup licked his chin, once, in answer.

They moved on.

Hours later, the amber light beneath the ground had grown so bright that it lit the ash from below, turning the whole plain the color of embers. The air had thickened. It tasted of old iron and cold smoke. The land began to slope downward, gently at first, then more steeply, until they were walking along the rim of an enormous crater that appeared on no map Aether had ever seen.

And at the bottom of the crater, half buried in the earth, stood the gate.

Liora stopped walking. "By the heavens."

It was enormous, easily forty paces across and three times that high, cast from black stone veined with gold. It rose out of the earth like the upturned lid of a coffin, its surface scarred by a thousand centuries of wind and weather. Tall bands of ancient symbols ran across it, each carved so deeply that the grooves could hold a man’s hand.

Aether descended the slope slowly, his eyes fixed on the carvings. He did not know the language. But one of the symbols was familiar in a way that made his stomach drop. It was a curved line crossed by three shorter ones, with a broken arc beneath. He had seen that shape many times, on the dial of a strange old clock that had come into his possession months ago.

"I know this," he said.

Liora came up beside him. "What?"

"The mysterious clock. It had twelve broken lines arranged in a ring. I’ve spent weeks trying to understand what they meant." His voice dropped. "This symbol is one of them. Exactly the same."

He began to count. The symbols were arranged in a great circle across the face of the gate, twelve in all, each set into a deep recess in the stone.

Eleven of them glowed, a faint, steady golden light pulsing within each carved line, slow and patient, like a heartbeat.

The twelfth was dark.

It sat at the very top of the ring, a lifeless gap in the circle. Just cold black stone where something ought to have been.

"What does it mean?" Liora asked.

Aether shook his head slowly, a cold knot of dread forming in his chest.

"I don’t know yet," he said.

They found Kael standing at the foot of the gate.

For a long second, Aether thought he was imagining it. The figure at the base of the stone swayed slightly, one shoulder lower than the other, a long dark cloak hanging in tatters from his frame. His left arm was wrapped in blood-soaked cloth. A gash ran from his brow to his jaw. He was thinner than Aether remembered, and paler, and he leaned on a staff that looked more like a crutch.

But he was standing. And at his sides stood two beasts that Aether knew as well as his own. Abyss Raven, its feathers ragged and dull, one wing dragging against the earth. And Voidscale Serpent, coiled low, its scales dimmed to the color of old ash, its eyes still burning with cold green fire.

Kael’s head came up slowly. His bloodshot eyes found Aether’s face, and for a heartbeat they simply stared, as if each were afraid the other was a dream.

"You actually came," Kael said.

His voice was hoarse. It cracked in the middle of the sentence.

"You told me not to," he said.

Kael stared at him. Then, slowly, the corner of his mouth lifted into a tired, crooked smile that Aether had known since they were children.

"Exactly," Kael said.

"You look terrible."

"I’ve had a long week."

"What is this place? What are you doing here?"

Kael’s smile faded. He looked up at the immense black gate, and Aether saw an exhaustion so deep it went past fear.

"I thought it was a vault, at first. Everyone does. The ruins around here are full of treasure rumors. Hidden crypts, buried armories, a lost emperor’s hoard." He raised one trembling hand toward the stone. "It isn’t a vault, Aether. It’s a seal."

The word fell into the silence like a stone into deep water.

"There’s something on the other side. Something shut away a very long time ago." Kael swallowed. "I felt it the moment I touched the stone. It wasn’t a voice or a vision. It was just awareness. Like being looked at by something so large that it didn’t notice I was there."

Liora took a quiet step closer. "And you stayed."

"The seal was failing. Hairline cracks all through the stonework, old runes already gone. If some treasure hunter or ambitious fool had started chipping at it, it would have come apart in a day. So I reinforced what I could reach. I stood guard. I drove off everything that came near." He gave a short, bitter laugh. "I told no one, because I didn’t know who I could trust with something like this."

"You should have told me."

"I know." Kael met his eyes. "But if I’d told you, you’d have come. And if you came..."

He did not finish the sentence.

Before Aether could press him, a soft light bloomed at his hip.

He looked down. The silver feather tucked inside his coat had begun to glow. It pulsed gently, silver-white, like a candle flame seen through frosted glass. He had carried it for months, and in all that time it had never done anything but lie quiet.

A voice drifted out of the light, a woman’s voice, soft and unhurried, with a sadness in it that cut deeper than any blade.

"You weren’t supposed to reach this place yet."

Aether’s whole body went still. His hand closed around the feather. "Who are you?"

No answer.

It was Kael who spoke, his voice suddenly sharp. "You heard her too?"

Aether turned to him. "What do you mean, too?"

Kael drew himself upright, ignoring the pain that flashed across his face. "That voice. The woman. You can hear her."

"She’s spoken to me before. Through the feather."

"Then it’s true." Kael let out a long, unsteady breath. "She said you would."

"When did she first appear to you?"

"A few days after I entered the Wilderness. Right after I found the gate." Kael’s eyes drifted toward the dark carvings. "She didn’t attack me. She didn’t threaten me. She just stood at the edge of my sight and spoke. Calm. Patient. Almost kind."

"What did she say?"

Kael was quiet for a moment. When he spoke again, his voice was very low.

"She said, ’If Aether comes here, the seal will begin counting down.’"

The words hung in the air. Aether felt the blood drain from his face.

"Counting down," Liora whispered.

"That’s why I told you to stay away." Kael’s voice cracked. "She didn’t say what happens when the countdown ends. But I’ve felt what’s behind that gate, Aether. I would give anything to keep you far from this place. And you came anyway."

Aether opened his mouth to answer, but the ground gave a heavy shudder, and the words died in his throat.

The golden light inside the first symbol on the gate flickered.

Then it changed.

A pulse of brilliant white swept through the carving, and with a deep, metallic click that echoed across the crater, the symbol shifted and locked into a new position. It sounded exactly like the turning of a gear.

Tick.

Nobody breathed.

A heartbeat later, the second symbol flared. The same white light. The same grinding click.

Tick.

"No," Kael whispered. "No, no, no."

One by one, the eleven glowing symbols began to change. Each blazed white, shifted in its recess, and locked into place with a sound like the second hand of a colossal clock. The rhythm was slow, deliberate, unstoppable. Aether felt it in his chest, in the soles of his feet, a measured beat that pulsed through the earth like the heart of a sleeping god.

Tick.

Tick.

He stared at the gate with dawning horror. The symbols. The ring. The twelve broken lines. The clock he had carried for months, the one he had thought a curiosity or a puzzle, was not merely an object. It was a key, or a mirror, or a piece of something much larger. The gate and the clock were two halves of the same mechanism.

"It’s connected," he said hoarsely. "The gate is connected to the clock."

"What clock?" Kael demanded.

"I’ll explain later. If there is a later." Aether’s mind raced. "This isn’t just a seal. The Wilderness isn’t simply hiding an ancient beast." He stared at the vast mechanism rising out of the earth. "It’s connected to a temporal mechanism. A machine built to measure time."

Fallen Succubus had drifted up beside him without a sound. Her face was pale, her eyes fixed on the turning symbols, and when she spoke, her voice was strangely hushed.

"Someone isn’t trying to stop time."

Aether looked at her. "What?"

"Think about it. A seal that counts down. A gate that ticks. A mechanism that responds when you arrive." She shook her head slowly. "If someone wanted to hold back the thing behind that door, they would not build a clock. They would build a wall." Her eyes met his, and for the first time since he had known her, there was real fear in them.

"Then what are they doing?"

She turned back to the gate. The golden light of the carvings gleamed across her face, and her voice came as little more than a breath.

"They’re waiting for the correct time."

The last of the eleven symbols clicked into place.

Then the twelfth symbol flickered.

It was the dark one, at the top of the ring. A single dim spark of gold stirred within the carving, faint as a dying ember. It flickered once. Twice. And through the crack of light that spilled from the stone, Aether glimpsed something on the other side of the gate.

It was not a beast. It was not a person.

It was a silhouette, vast beyond reckoning, standing in a world where everything seemed frozen. The sky was still. The ground was still. Even the dust hung motionless in the air like insects trapped in amber. At the center of that endless stillness stood a shape so enormous that Aether’s eyes could not take it in all at once, a towering outline of darkness crowned by something that might have been horns, or might have been broken light.

Then, slowly, a single eye opened.

It was the color of molten gold. It was larger than a house. And it was looking directly at them.

The gate trembled. A deep, grinding groan rolled up out of the earth, and cracks spread across the black stone in jagged lines. Dust rained down from the lintel. Liora stumbled and caught herself on Aether’s arm.

"Kael!" Aether shouted.

"I know!" Kael had already thrown out his good arm. Abyss Raven spread its ragged wings with a hoarse cry, and Voidscale Serpent coiled up around his legs, hissing. Duskwalker Beast materialized out of the shadows at his back, claws extended, eyes burning. "Everyone in position! Now!"

And Aether stepped forward.

He did not know why. Something in his chest pulled him toward the gate, something he could neither explain nor resist. His hand drifted to the glowing silver feather, and he felt its warmth pulse against his palm like a second heartbeat.

"Aether," Kael said, low and urgent. "Don’t."

Aether took another step.

Everyone braced for the attack that was surely coming.

But before a single blade could be raised or a single spell loosed, the twelfth symbol on the gate gave a soft, clear chime.

Tick.

The dark carving blazed to life. A column of pure white light shot up from the stone and pierced the sky, and the entire crater was bathed in a brilliance that turned every shadow to silver. All twelve symbols were lit. The ring was complete.

The silver feather flared in answer, and the woman’s voice whispered through the light, so soft and so close that it felt like breath against his ear.

"The countdown has begun."

With a sound like the world exhaling, the gate opened.

It was only a single inch. A thin, razor-straight line of darkness split the black stone from top to bottom, and from within it poured a cold so deep it burned. Frost raced across the ground. The ash on the plain turned to glittering crystal. Every beast in the party flinched back as one.

And from the darkness beyond the gate, a voice spoke.

"Finally..."

Aether stopped breathing.

"The one who carries the unfinished path has returned."

And Aether understood, with a clarity that struck him like a physical blow, that the voice was not addressing Kael.

It was not speaking to Liora. It was not speaking to the beasts, or to the woman in the feather, or to any of the others who had walked into this crater believing they knew what they were facing.

It was speaking to him.

And the golden eye, vast and unblinking, was looking only at Aether.