"The ritual," Natalia said. "Begin."
But I knew, with the certainty that came from five years of bleeding for this thing, that the old ritual wouldn't work. The Gate had changed. The rules had changed.
I approached slowly, each step deliberate. The golden pools pulled at my feet, warm and almost alive. When I reached the Gate's base, I could feel them, the four princes, their awareness focused on me like sun through a magnifying glass.
The ritual to enter the Threshold was simple in theory. Place hands on the Gate. Speak the words of entry. Let consciousness flow from body into the metaphysical space. I'd done it dozens of times for routine inspections, minor repairs.
This was different.
The moment my palms touched the Gate's surface, reality shattered.
No gradual transition. No gentle shift. One heartbeat I stood in the Sanctorum, the next I existed in a place that defied physics, defied reason, defied everything except raw, primal truth.
The Threshold.
It wasn't the orderly mindscape I'd visited before, that grey nothing where I could examine the Gate's mechanisms from within. This was chaos given form. Shadows and light twisted together in impossible spirals, creating colors that shouldn't exist. The "ground" beneath my feet might have been stone or cloud or nothing at all. Above, if above had meaning here, storms of golden fire raged against walls of liquid night.
And from that chaos, four figures materialized.
A large man, on that I instinctively knew was the dragon prince, approached first.
He didn't walk, he simply existed closer with each heartbeat, space bending around him like it recognized his authority. Tall enough that I had to tilt my head back to meet his eyes. Devastating in the way natural disasters are devastating, beautiful and terrible and absolutely inevitable. His hair fell dark as midnight over shoulders that could have been carved from marble if marble could contain barely leashed violence.Those molten gold eyes from the crack in the Gate now burned from a face that belonged in legends, sharp angles and cruel beauty arranged in patterns that made my chest tight.
Power radiated from him in waves I could feel against my skin, dragon fire contained in almost-human form. He wore chains, massive black links that wrapped his wrists, his ankles, his throat, but they seemed less like restraints and more like decorations he'd chosen to endure.
"You came back." His voice in the Threshold wasn't filtered through the Gate. It resonated in my bones, low and amused and dangerous. "How obedient."
The wolf prince circled from my left, and where the dragon prince dominated space, the wolf prince consumed it. He moved like liquid violence, all barely contained energy and predatory grace. Leaner than the dragon prince but no less dangerous, his body coiled with the kind of strength that came from centuries of testing every boundary, fighting every restraint. His hair fell wild and brown around a face that was all sharp edges and feral beauty. Those amber eyes tracked my every movement, every breath, like a wolf deciding whether to play with its prey or devour it immediately.
He didn't speak. Just breathed, and I could have sworn I felt that breath against my neck despite the distance between us.
The bear prince stood to my right, massive and still as a mountain. Where his brothers radiated threat, he emanated sorrow so profound it made my chest ache. Broader than both the dragon prince and wolf prince combined, built like he could hold up the world or crush it with equal ease. His brown hair fell gentle around a face that might have been kind if not for the weight in those brown eyes, guilt carved so deep it had become part of his architecture.
He watched me with something that might have been concern. Or pity. Or recognition of a kindred spirit carrying weights they'd never asked for.
The last prince remained distant, a figure of copper and flame at the edge of perception. Unlike his brothers, he seemed less solid, more idea than form. His hair shifted between copper and gold and red, phoenix feathers suggested in every strand. His turquoise eyes held too much, past, present, future, all tangled together in patterns only he could read. When he moved, he left afterimages, ghosts of possibility trailing behind him.
"You're not supposed to be awake," I managed, the words emerging small and foolish in this space where they were everything and I was nothing.
The dragon prince laughed, bitter and sharp as broken glass. The sound reverberated through the Threshold, making reality ripple.
"And you're not supposed to be here." He stepped closer, and the chains around him sang with tension. "Yet here we are, playing with fate."
"The High Keeper ordered me to assess?—"
"The damage?" the wolf prince's voice cut through mine, rough as gravel, amused as a blade. "Look around you, little Keeper. This is damage. We are damage. You are damage."
The Threshold responded to his words, showing me flashes of what lay beneath its chaotic surface. The Gate's mechanisms, those careful constructs of magic and will that had held for a thousand years, were coming apart. Not breaking—unraveling. Like a tapestry being pulled thread by thread.
"The seal," I whispered. "It's not just cracked."
"It's dying," the phoenix prince sang from his distance, his voice carrying prophecy in every note. "As all prisons must. As all chains will. The only question is whether it dies in fire or in freedom."
"You did this." The accusation fell from my lips before I could stop it. "When you woke, when you spoke to me?—"
"We did nothing," the bear prince rumbled, his voice deep enough to feel in my bones. "The Gate did this to itself. Fed too long on blood that was never meant to be prison food. Built on lies that couldn't hold forever."
"What lies?" The question escaped despite every warning, every lesson about not engaging with the imprisoned.
