The gate hissed open with a sound like breath escaping a sealed tomb.
A shaft of pale blue light cut downward into the sea, illuminating the spiral descent beneath the temple. The water below didn't churn, there were no ripples or waves, it waited in stillness.
Elyra checked the bindings on her gear. "That shaft isn't just holding water back it's reshaping it."`
Kalavan leaned forward, squinting at the edges. "Qi compression, a defensive pressure seal."
"Will it hold?" Yan asked.
Ryu didn't answer.
He was already stepping into the light.
The descent was fast.
The path downward was slick with condensation and the air was thick with dormant Qi. Ryu took the lead, the mark on his hand glowing steadily, guiding him like a lantern in storm that turned dark.
The further down they went, the more distorted their surroundings became, there reflections moved before they did. The pressure hummed in their ears.
And then…
They landed.
A circular chamber lay at the base of the shaft, smooth obsidian walls covered in star-script. A single platform extended from the stairs out over an abyss of dark slow-moving water. At the centre the monolith stood in the water, half-submerged and wrapped in glowing chains.
And on top of it loomed a figure.
At first they thought it was a statue, then it turned its head.
The movement was inhuman, graceful but it sent a chill down the spine, like a puppet without strings. Its body was wrapped in rusted barnacle-pitted armour, seaweed draped over one shoulder. Glowing threads of Qi ran across its arms like veins made of kelp.
One observation was obvious and disturbing - it had no face.
Only a cracked mask shaped like a star.
"I don't like this," Kalavan muttered.
Ryu took a step forward. The mark on his hand flared.
The guardian rose.
Without speaking it leapt from the monolith and to the platform in a single and impossibly fast movement. Its feet touched stone and the entire chamber shuddered.
Two curved weapons extended from its wrists like bone-blades and its stance dropped low.
Elyra's eyes widened. "It's reading your Qi. It thinks you're an intruder."
Ryu nodded, drawing his blade.
"Then I'll answer it properly."
The guardian struck first vanishing in a blink, reappearing above Ryu in mid-air, blades descending like diving talons.
Ryu's sword met them in a burst of pressure, the sound of the clash echoing through the flooded chamber like thunder trapped underwater.
He slid back across the platform, boots grinding against wet stone.
The guardian didn't stop.
It came again, its blades leaving streaks of fractured Qi in its wake.
Ryu moved with growing confidence now, the mark on his hand feeding him, timing, angle and flow. He bent space around himself, redirecting strikes inches away from his heart.
But the guardian was faster.
Stronger.
And its movements were getting sharper with every passing moment.
"Go!" Ryu shouted. "You need to keep going!"
Yan hesitated briefly but then nodded, she and the others moved around the edge of the chamber, heading for the monolith's base while Ryu continued to fight on the platform alone.
The guardian turned, as if to intercept.
Ryu grabbed its wrist mid-strike and flared his Qi.
The star-mark ignited.
Gravity collapsed inward, dragging the guardian back into his range.
And then Ryu struck, blade slicing in a spiral motion that carved across the guardian's side, severing one of its arms.
It didn't scream.
It just stopped.
Reset.
Then attacked again.
Above them, the temple trembled.
Something was waking in the deep called by the disturbance but here, in the drowned vault, Ryu knew this was more than a test.
It was a threshold.
And only one of them was going to pass.
The guardian came again, faster this time.
It struck with one arm missing, but the remaining blade moved like liquid steel unburdened by pain, guided by some memory of battle from another age. Its mask cracked further with each motion, leaking flickers of deep-blue flame.
Ryu moved with it, matching speed for speed.
His blade clashed in tight arcs, but it wasn't enough, not yet. Every exchange pushed him back, closer to the platform's edge.
He felt the mark on his hand flare again, more intense this time offering him something.
Not just guidance.
Power.
He hesitated and the guardian struck, the blade sliced across his side shallow, but sharp. Blood hit the stone.
Ryu dropped to one knee.
The guardian raised its weapon for the killing blow.
And then Ryu reached inward.
Not to his Qi.
But to the space around it.
He called to the mark and it opened.
The star-flame bent everything.
The platform distorted light curling into spirals. Time slowed. Sound fell away.
Ryu stood again, slower than the moment allowed, his blade lifted.
The mark on his hand blazed to life, forming a radiant ring of orbiting sigils nine stars, rotating around his wrist.
He took a single step and reappeared behind the guardian.
His blade passed through the creature's chest with surgical precision, piercing the heart and into the core within.
For the first time, the guardian shuddered.
It turned toward him slowly mask half-split, one blade crumbling and then it collapsed into mist and light.
Gone.
Then came the backlash.
It hit like a collapsing wave, not from outside, but from within. Ryu gasped as his strength emptied through the star-flame, drained like breath from lungs too long underwater. The power he had drawn wasn't free. It never was.
Agony surged up his spine, folding through his nerves like molten wire. His heartbeat thundered, each pulse sharp and wrong, as if his chest would rupture. His blood burned. His skin prickled as if tearing from the inside.
He dropped to his knees, palms hitting the stone with a hollow echo. Sweat streamed down his face, dripping to the floor as his breath came shallow and ragged.
The mark still glowed faintly, but now it pulsed with warning.
This was the price, to reach beyond his realm, to wield what was not yet his. And this time, he had only brushed against its true force.
Across the chamber Yan reached the monolith's base.
There was no door only a panel of metal, humming with subtle resonance. She pressed her palm against it. Flame flickered under her skin.
The surface responded.
Lines spread outward, then inward, forming a seal shaped like a sun being devoured by stars.
The monolith opened with surprising ease.
Inside was not a chamber.
It was a void.
A shaft that descended straight into black water, deeper than the ocean floor, and at the bottom, a gate made of bone, vine, and something that shimmered like frozen vapours of air.
Elyra staggered backward.
"This isn't a gate to travel through," she said. "It's a gate to hold something in."
Kalavan's voice was quiet. "Then why is it cracked?"
Ryu joined them, blood dripping from his side, eyes glowing faintly with lingering power.
"I felt it when I touched the seal," he said. "This gate doesn't go to another world."
Yan looked at him. "Then where?"
He stared into the abyss.
"It goes inside, to a chamber."
Beneath them, the gate pulsed once sending ripples through the temple's foundation.
Something below shifted.
The gate pulsed again.
This time, the light didn't come from the glyphs or the water.
It came from below.
A slow, rhythmic throb, like the beat of a heart buried beneath stone and tide. The sound vibrated through the soles of their boots, through their bones, through their Qi.
Elyra stepped back from the monolith's edge. "It's alive."
Yan murmured. "And it's awake."
They stood at the rim of the spiralling descent water suspended in perfect stillness, held apart by some ancient forcefield.
And far beneath, the outline of a coiled form moved slowly in the dark. It wasn't a beast. It wasn't a person.
It was something in-between.
Something left behind.
Ryu stared downward, the mark on his hand still glowing, though now dimmer pulsing slowly in rhythm with the gate below.
Elyra turned to him. "This is why the temple floats. This is why no one charts this sea."
Yan spoke next, her voice firm. "We came here looking for knowledge for a gate. Not to unseal something that was locked away for a reason."
"We don't have to unseal it," Kalavan said. "But we need to know what it is. Because if it's been waiting… it might not wait much longer."
Then came the voice.
It bloomed inside each of their minds like heat rising from flame.
"You stand before the first oath. Step forward and know the truth of the gate-born flame. Or turn back, and let the veil fall again."
A flicker of flame rose from the centre of the abyss.
It took shape as it climbed upward, toward them forming not a monster, not a wraith, but a figure forged of golden fire and bone, walking upward on air itself.
It reached the platform silently.
It wore armour of cracked obsidian and heat, crowned by a helm shaped like the sun swallowing stars. Inside its chest burned a miniature gate spinning, closed, sealed in chains.
Kalavan tensed.
Yan drew her sword.
Ryu stepped forward. "Who are you?"
The flame-figure tilted its head.
"I am the Warden of the Gate Below, of the one who should not burn."
Elyra whispered, "They locked something inside the flame itself…"
Ryu narrowed his eyes. "What are you guarding?"
The Warden extended a hand, not threatening but offering.
"A choice."
The abyss behind him pulsed again.
"Descend and see what waits. Learn why the gates chose you,
or return and leave the seal unbroken… until the stars fall again."
Just that question.
Ryu looked at Yan. At Elyra. At Kalavan.
And then back at the Warden.
"I'll go."