He looked around the cave, meeting each person's eyes in turn. When his gaze reached me, something flickered across his face. Too fast to name.
"This is it," he said. "We're making history today. Literally. Stay focused, stay together, and trust your training. Any last questions?"
Silence.
Stephen cleared his throat. "Just... thanks. For letting us be part of this."
Several people nodded. Dev squeezed my shoulder briefly.
Nathan's expression softened slightly. "Thank you for volunteering. The carriers are what make this possible. Don't forget that."
The clock changed. 11:54.
Six minutes.
My heart was beating faster. Not panic. Not quite. Just awareness. This was real. This was happening. In six minutes, I'd walk through that stone circle and emerge twenty five thousand years in the past. The magic in my chest felt heavier suddenly. Denser. Like it was waking up, responding to the proximity of the gateway.
"Everyone in position," Nathan said.
We gathered near the circle. Not too close. Nathan had been explicit about that during the briefing. The gateway triggered at exact intervals and being too close when it activated could be... problematic. He hadn't specified how.
The monitors beeped softly. The cave was quiet otherwise. Just breathing and the distant trickle of water. The hum of electronics sounding very out of place in this ancient place.
11:58.
I looked at the paintings again. The human figure standing among the shifters. Something about it nagged at me. It seemed familiar, like I’d seen it before. Maybe there’d been pictures of the paintings in the briefing material and I’d just forgotten.
11:59.
"Here we go," Dev murmured.
The clock hit 12:00.
For a moment, nothing happened.
Then the air inside the circle changed.
It didn't shimmer or glow or do anything dramatic. It just... shifted. Like reality had been one photograph and suddenly someone had laid another one on top of it, slightly misaligned. I could see through it—see the cave wall on the other side—but I could also see something else. Darker. Older. A different cave, in a different time.
The gateway.
"Readings confirmed," someone said. "Stable. Window is open."
Nathan turned to look at us. "Let's go," he said.
He took Megan's hand. They stepped forward together, past the monitors, past the computers, up to the edge of the circle. They stepped through and vanished. Just there one moment and gone the next, like they'd walked behind a curtain that didn't exist.
"Holy shit," Stephen breathed.
Dev went next. He glanced back once, gave me a shaky smile, then stepped through. Stephen followed without hesitation.
I stood alone at the edge of the circle, staring at the space where they'd vanished.
The painting caught my eye again. The human figure, standing in the centre, surrounded by shifters.
And I realized why it felt so strange. The figure was small. Softly built. Standing among creatures that could have torn it apart, and yet the posture wasn't fearful. It was steady. The bear loomed behind, massive and protective. The wolf flanked one side, the lion the other. And the mammoth stood behind them all, a mountain of ochre and shadow.
They weren't attacking. I could see that now, with sudden, inexplicable clarity. They were gathered around the figure. Guarding it. Guardingher.
