The walls of Calthira Dawnweaver’s study trembled.

  It was subtle at first—a faint vibration running through the obsidian floor tiles and into the soles of her boots. The candle flames flickered. Dust spilled from the corners of the carved ceiling. But it was enough.

  Calthira set down the crystal quill she’d been using mid-sentence and rose from her desk in a single fluid motion. Across the chamber, Serellia appeared in the doorway, her face pale, her hands clenched tightly around a scrying stone that pulsed with frantic energy.

  “You felt it too,” Calthira said.

  Serellia gave a tight nod. “It wasn’t the leyline—at least not directly. It came from beneath it.”

  Calthira moved to the center of the chamber, activating the ley-threaded scrying mirror with a flick of her wrist. The glass shimmered, warping until it displayed a web of magical currents below Silvermoon.

  At first, it looked like chaos. Currents frayed and broken, roots snapped and twisted. But then the pulse came again—sharp and deliberate—this time sending out a concentric wave from a single point deep beneath the Veiled Gardens.

  The epicenter was unmistakable.

  “They reached it,” Calthira murmured.

  Serellia’s voice was quiet. “The gate.”

  For a moment, neither of them moved. The air was thick with tension—not the kind bred from politics or protocol, but from memory.

  The gate beneath Silvermoon was not supposed to exist. Its history was sealed in forgotten archives and buried beneath Guardian oaths older than even Calthira’s title. Only a handful of people alive knew of its existence, and fewer still knew what it had once held back.

  Serellia crossed the room and stood beside her. “We should have destroyed the records.”

  Calthira shook her head slowly. “Even if we had... the gate would have called to someone eventually. It’s part of the leyline now. Buried, but not silent.”

  The mirror shimmered again, showing flares of movement—small bursts of arcane distortion around the gate. Then, a shape formed in the arcane projection: two figures, dim but discernible, standing just outside the threshold.

  Narianna. And the outsider.

  Serellia inhaled sharply. “They’re there.”

  Calthira didn’t answer immediately. Her hands tightened behind her back. She had expected them to reach the nexus. Expected them to engage the Court. But she hadn’t expected the gate to respond.

  “They’ve gotten farther than I thought possible,” she murmured. “Especially him.”

  “You think the gate recognizes him?” Serellia asked.

  “I know it does,” Calthira replied. “The leyline stirred when he arrived in Silvermoon. We ignored it. We thought it was an echo.”

  Her voice hardened. “It wasn’t an echo. It was a warning.”

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  Behind them, another tremor rocked the floor—stronger than before. One of the glass vials on Calthira’s shelf tipped and shattered, spilling glowing dust across the stone.

  From the mirror, new energy signatures pulsed outward—ripples of instability that were beginning to affect the leyline grid across the Gilded Quarter. Calthira could see the threads unraveling, one by one, in real time.

  “If they open that door,” Serellia said softly, “there may be no going back.”

  “I know,” Calthira whispered.

  Another wave trembled through the room.

  Calthira turned from the mirror and moved quickly to the sealed cabinet near the back wall. With a few whispered words, she unlatched the arcane lock. Inside rested a set of armor—sleek, silver-blue with etched runes that shimmered softly in the candlelight—and beside it, an elegant but deadly glaive, the blade wrapped in protective cloth.

  Serellia’s voice sharpened. “You’re going?”

  “If that gate opens,” Calthira said, pulling the armor piece by piece from the cabinet, “no amount of debate in the council chamber will save this city.”

  Serellia moved to help her, hands practiced from years of battlefield memory. “You haven’t worn this in decades.”

  Calthira met her gaze. “Then it’s long overdue.”

  As she slid the chestplate into place and buckled the pauldrons, the weight settled across her shoulders—not just the steel, but the burden of memory, of responsibility.

  “We need to re-activate the Deepwatch wards,” she said. “And I’ll need a direct leyline conduit. No more containment. No more silence.”

  Serellia hesitated, then nodded. “I’ll coordinate from here.”

  Calthira paused, then reached out and took her wife’s hand. “If I fail—”

  “You won’t,” Serellia cut in. “Just be faster than you were in the war.”

  Calthira gave her the faintest smile before turning toward the teleportation alcove. The runes glowed beneath her boots, recognizing her signature instantly. She cast one last glance at the mirror.

  The image still showed Matrim and Narianna at the gate, the shadows behind them growing longer.

  “Hold the line,” Calthira murmured.

  And then she vanished in a shimmer of light.

  The chamber was quiet again once Calthira vanished, the teleportation runes dimming as the residual energy faded. Serellia stood motionless for several heartbeats, her fingers still hovering over the activation pedestal. The scent of dust and old magic lingered in the air, mingling with the faint floral trace of Calthira’s perfume.

  She let out a slow breath, her poised exterior briefly giving way to a deep well of anxiety.

  For decades, Serellia had stayed out of the halls of power. She had chosen the work of healing, of research—quiet roles in the wake of Calthira’s rise. But even now, in her soul, she was a veteran of the Severance War. And she knew what kind of power lay sealed beneath Silvermoon.

  Calthira was right—if the gate opened, there would be no holding the line.

  Serellia stepped back to the scrying mirror, watching the image of the leyline web again. The ripples had grown more erratic, less predictable. Smaller nexuses across the city were reacting—some with sudden surges, others dimming to near-dormancy. The city’s magical balance, carefully maintained for centuries, was unraveling thread by thread.

  Her hands moved quickly over the mirror’s frame, pulling up leyline channels and ward networks.

  But her eyes weren’t on the mirror.

  They were on the hidden sigil pulsing just beneath its surface—one only she could see.

  A sigil older than the Guardians. One tied not to the Sunwell, but to something older. Wilder.

  Forbidden.

  She tapped the mirrored surface once, and a second layer of the city’s map revealed itself—one even the council no longer remembered.

  The true Deepwatch.

  She had vowed never to touch it again. Not after what it had cost them the last time.

  But the pattern was clear now. Matrim’s awakening, the Court’s advance, the pulse of the gate. They weren’t separate events.

  They were steps in a sequence.

  A sequence that had started once before, long ago, and nearly destroyed the city.

  She hesitated—just for a heartbeat—then placed her hand over the hidden sigil.

  The magic fought her at first, rejecting the call. Then it recognized her.

  The rune flared gold.

  Beneath the streets of Silvermoon, long-dormant circuits of ancient power whispered to life. Runes carved into the city’s deepest foundation blinked awake after centuries of silence. Doors began to stir behind buried stone.

  Serellia’s voice was low, steady.

  “If the gate opens... let the old wards wake with it.”

  Behind her, the candles flared slightly.

  She didn’t look back.