Page 57 of Fated Wolf's Redemption

We descend into a corridor carved from dark stone. Not a natural cave. Too smooth. Too deliberate. Every twenty feet, there’s another glyph. Some of them Windrider. Some I don’t recognize. Some I wish I didn’t. Scattered along the walls are flickering light panels—most broken.

The tunnel opens into a chamber, massive and echoing. It opens abruptly, a yawning cavern carved with inhuman precision, as if whatever made this place didn’t work with hands. The space is circular, massive, and dead silent. Our footsteps land hollow. Every sound bounces back like the mountain is mocking us. But it’s the center of the room that stops us cold.

A raised dais. Stone. Bone. Silver.

Five concentric circles surround the dais, each etched with glyphs. A crack mars the outermost circle. The second is pulsing faintly with light. The third—some symbols are bleeding. Not metaphorically. Bleeding. A thin trail of something dark seeps down the grooves.

At the center of it all is the gate.

It’s not just a door. It’salive.

Made from silver and ancient bone, twined with runes and old elemental sigils, it stands ten feet high and half as wide. Chunks of black stone, pulsing like veins, have fused with the tarnished and cracked metal. A low thud comes from within it. Not sound. A heartbeat. Slow. Measured—like something on the other side is asleep and starting to wake up.

I hear it again. But this time, it doesn’t pull. It warns.

Sophia edges forward with me, her voice barely above a whisper. “The heartbeat.”

She’s right. The gate pulses. Not like a machine. Like a living thing.

I scan the floor—no guards, no Crimson Claw in sight. Too quiet.

Kylie points to a panel half-buried beneath glyph dust. “Something has recently been activated.” That means someone’s still here.”

I nod once, every nerve on fire.

The gate pulses again. The heartbeat inside it is getting stronger. And I know, without question, that whatever is waiting behind that veil? It’s awake. And it knows we’ve arrived.

Sophia touches my arm. "The air’s different."

"How?"

"It’s humming. Like it’s listening."

Kylie lets out a low whistle. "That’s not a gate. That’s a promise."

Max doesn’t speak. He just stares, and I see something in his expression that chills me worse than the wind outside.

Recognition.

Sophia steps up beside me. Her voice is quiet. "It’s not fully open. But it’s close."

"How close?"

She swallows hard. "Close enough that it can feel us."

I turn back to the others. "We don’t split. Not for anything. If something moves, we kill it. If the gate so much as shudders, we get the hell out."

Kylie cocks her head. "And if itopens?"

I meet her gaze dead-on. "Then we make sure nothing walks through it alive."

The heartbeat from the gate slows. For now.

But I know better than to think we have time. We’re standing on the edge of something ancient. Something that doesn’t care who we are, only that we bleed. And whatever Cain and Lina have been building toward… this is just the beginning.

And beginnings? They always cost more than you think.

CHAPTER 16

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