Heat hit me as soon as I crossed the threshold. Not uncomfortable, but noticeable. Like walking into a house after being outside in winter. The air was dry, still, faintly mineral-scented.
And there were stairs.
Proper stairs. Metal, with railings, descending in a gentle spiral into the earth. Electric lights lined the walls at regular intervals, casting everything in a warm, steady glow.
"They've been maintaining this site for centuries," Dev murmured behind me. "Protected it. Studied it. This isn't just some random cave—it's a threshold. A place between times."
Between times. The phrase made my skin prickle.
We descended in single file. The air grew warmer. I could hear water somewhere—a distant trickle, echoing. My footsteps rang on the metal stairs, echoing as we got deeper, and then the stairs ended and the main cave opened up before us.
It was massive. Circular, or near enough, the walls curving up to meet in a domed ceiling maybe fifteen meters overhead.The electric lights continued here, mounted on stands, flooding everything with clear, clinical brightness.
And the walls—
"Oh," I breathed.
Paintings. Cave paintings, like the ones I'd seen in textbooks from Lascaux, from Chauvet. But these were different.
Animals, yes. A massive bear, rendered in ochre and charcoal, mid-roar. A wolf, sleek and powerful, caught mid-leap. A lion with a mane that seemed to flow like flame. A mammoth, trunk raised, impossibly detailed.
But there were figures too. Human-shaped, but not quite. The bear stood on two legs in one panel, arms raised, caught between forms. The wolf's eyes held an intelligence that was too knowing, too aware. The lion's posture was wrong for an animal—purposeful, deliberate.
Shifters.
They'd painted shifters.
Nathan looked across at me. “They’re hunters. They think shifters would hunt prehistoric humans like prey back then, that they were closer to their animals, less civilised than we are today.” I looked back at him. Nathan was a strong alpha, was that what I’d been to him, I wondered. Just prey?
"These are the only cave paintings ever found that depict shifters," Dev said quietly, moving to stand beside me. "The proportions are wrong for normal animals. See?" He pointed. "The limbs are too long. The postures too human. And here—" He gestured to a series of smaller figures. "These are the transition stages. Half-human, half-animal. It's unmistakable once you know what you're looking at."
I stared at the paintings, trying to process it. Shifters had been here. Twenty five thousand years ago, they'd stood in this cave and painted their stories on these walls.
And we were about to meet them.
There was another figure too. Smaller, easier to miss among the larger animals. A human—fully human, no animal traits—standing in the centre of a group of shifters. The paint was faded, harder to make out. Were the animals attacking, or protecting, I couldn’t tell. Were they a human living with the shifter community, I wondered, or maybe one of those rare ones born to a shifter line but who never inherited the ability. I wondered if they were valued, or shunned. Whether they also lived on the edge of society, never quite part of it. I looked away.
In the centre of the cave stood an enormous stone circle, six meters across, maybe more, made of massive standing stones that looked like they'd been there since the earth cooled. It was older than Stonehenge, we’d been told, and yet whereas Stonehenge was plain, theses stones were carved—spirals and symbols I didn't recognize, worn smooth by time but still visible in the electric light.
Computers surrounded it. Monitors displaying graphs and readings I didn't understand. Cables snaking across the cave floor. A digital clock mounted on a tripod, its red numbers glowing: 11:47.
Thirteen minutes.
Nathan was checking something on one of the computers. Megan stood beside him, reading off a tablet. The rest of the team moved around them, efficient and practiced. This was their routine. They'd done this before.
Well. Not exactly this. But close enough.
"Final checks," Nathan called out. "Power levels?"
"Stable," someone answered. "All three carriers reading optimal."
I felt that presence in my chest again. The borrowed magic, dense and heavy. Still not buzzing or crackling. Still just... there.
"Gateway status?"
"Active. Readings match yesterday's test."
"Good." Nathan straightened. "The robot returned without issue. Same temporal coordinates we're targeting. The gateway is stable, the destination is confirmed safe, and we have a twelve-hour window before the next cycle."
