"You do not kill a dragon. You silence a language older than your soul."
—Carved above the threshold of the First Gate, author unknown
They reached it by dusk.
The First Gate towered over the dead sands like a monolith fallen from heaven—massive, cracked, still smoldering with embers that hadn't cooled in a thousand years. It wasn't a doorway in the traditional sense. It had no hinges, no lock.
It was a wound in the world.
A circle of obsidian, ten meters wide, hovering just above the ground, spinning slowly in the air, vertical, vibrating with invisible power. Around it: burnt trees, shattered statues, broken blades impaled into the earth like forgotten prayers.
Amine stepped forward.
Thanor growled, then went silent.
The air had changed.
So had the wind.
"Do you feel it?" Kherys asked softly.
"I feel... something old," Amine said.
Mira nodded. "And angry."
"No," said Kherys. "Not angry. Afraid."
There was no ceremony. No spell.
Just a single step forward—and the Gate responded.
Amine's presence lit the circle with white fire, one ring at a time, until it roared like a sun swallowing itself.
A voice screamed from within.
Not human. Not dragon.
Something in between.
And then—they came.
A torrent of shadow-wrapped figures poured from the sand around them. Dozens—maybe more. Their armor bore the insignia of the Mage Council.
Each wore a blank mask.
Each moved without speaking.
Assassins.
"Kill the Summoner," said one in a voice colder than stone.
The fight began before anyone could speak.
Amine's eyes lit up, and his arms surged with summoning sigils.
"Kha-rha An-Sulth!"
From the earth erupted three beasts—monstrous, half-formed creatures of memory: a stone lion with burning wings, a faceless serpent of shadow, and a stag with antlers of living flame. They launched into the fray with terrifying speed.
Mira drew her dual blades, each curved like crescent moons. Her movements were a dance—precise, elegant, deadly. For each assassin that blinked forward, another fell back bleeding or burning.
Kherys, meanwhile, let out a roar that cracked the sky.
He didn't need weapons.
He was one.
With a sweep of his arm, a wall of fire incinerated a dozen enemies—yet none screamed. They simply collapsed, ash replacing their voices.
Amine fought with more than beasts.
He fought with memory.
Every spell he cast drew from places he couldn't remember knowing—rituals from ancient libraries, symbols he'd never studied but somehow understood.
He was becoming something else.
Something more.
Each word burned through him—but he welcomed the pain.
Because in that fire, he remembered.
The boy who had once wept alone in Tokyo.
The boy who had died quietly.
The boy who had been forgotten.
He wasn't fighting to survive.
He was fighting to be real.
And then—
A voidwalker stepped through the Gate.
Tall. Armored in living obsidian. Its face was nothing but a ring of shifting runes. Not human. Not mage.
It looked at Amine.
And bowed.
"Summoner of the Forgotten," it said. "You must die before the Second Gate opens."
Amine stepped forward.
"I remember you."
The voidwalker paused.
"You do?"
"You're the one who erased the dragons' names."
"That was mercy."
"No," Amine said, voice rising. "That was murder."
The duel began with no countdown.
The voidwalker moved like shattered time—phasing, blinking, slashing with a blade that hummed with every name it had ever killed.
Amine barely dodged.
Barely survived.
But he didn't run.
He summoned.
Not monsters.
Not beasts.
But a memory.
A girl with long hair and a red scarf.
She wasn't a warrior.
She wasn't a fighter.
She was his friend.
From Earth.
From Tokyo.
From the life he had left behind.
The voidwalker hesitated.
"What is this illusion?"
"It's not an illusion," Amine said, tears falling without shame. "It's what you took from me."
He struck.
His hands were fire.
His words were thunder.
And when the voidwalker fell—burning, screaming in a language only the dead remembered—it was not Amine who had won.
It was memory.
When the dust settled, Kherys knelt before the Gate, whispering in flame.
The circle now pulsed with color—not red, not white, but gold.
The First Gate had opened.
Not to a place.
But to truth.
Amine looked down at his hands, still glowing faintly.
Thanor stepped beside him.
"You did it," Mira said softly, blood on her cheek, her eyes exhausted.
"No," Amine said.
"I remembered it."
Far in the distance, thunder rolled.
But no clouds followed.
Just a new symbol in the sky:
An eye. Half-closed.
Waking.
Watching.
Waiting.