Chapter 134: A Gate
The throne room was gone.
What remained bore the scars of destruction, a sanctum undone by a force no longer willing to be hidden. Smoke twisted like mourning veils in the air, drifting through the shattered remains of two thrones that had once ruled over blood and silence. Where bone and onyx had once commanded fear, there was only ruin, and in its center, something far worse.
A Gate.
It wasn’t a door, not even a crack in the wall. It stood before them as a true Gate, alive, ancient and breathing with magic that did not belong to this world.
It loomed where the thrones had once sat, an obsidian arch etched with runes older than the spoken tongue. Pulses of cold light shimmered along its frame like veins, and beyond its black curve was… not shadow and not flame. Something deeper, that watched constantly without taking away its attention from them.
Isla stood before it, barefoot on the fractured stone dais, the air still vibrating with the echo of what she had unleashed. Her breath came ragged. Her skin shimmered faintly, threaded with silver veins that pulsed under her flesh, like something sacred or cursed, had been awakened inside her.
She hadn’t meant to do it. She hadn’t known she could and yet, there it was. Magic still coiled at her fingertips, reluctant to fade. The silence that followed was not peace. It was stunned.
Brienne was the first to move. She stepped around scorched marble and broken columns, her voice shaking. “Isla…”
Isla turned, slowly, as though waking from a trance. Her eyes met Brienne’s, her best friend, her sister in all but blood, and for the first time, she saw fear in her gaze. Not fear for her but fear of her. That cut deeper than the power ever had.
“I didn’t mean to,” Isla said quietly, her voice cracking. “I didn’t know the thrones were… binding it. I thought destroying them would free us.”
Rohen staggered forward, breathless. His eyes went wide the moment they landed on the Gate. “You… opened it.” He looked at Isla with something like awe and dread. “You actually opened it.”
She shook her head. “I didn’t try to. I just… I felt something… a hum and a rhythm. I followed it.”
“The thrones,” Vincent said hoarsely, “were never just symbols of rule. They were anchors. The only things keeping that shut.”
The Gate pulsed. A low vibration thrummed through the floor, resonating in their bones like a warning.
Brienne paled. “What is it?”
Vincent didn’t answer. It was Damian who stepped forward this time, his steps measured, the weight of what had just happened written across his face. The usual Alpha calm was gone. “What did you feel, Isla?”
She looked back at the Gate. “A voice. Not words, but something… familiar. Like it’s always been there, under everything. It called me.”
“By name?” Damian asked, his voice low.
Isla nodded slowly. “Not this name. But rather a name from long ago.”
Vincent muttered a curse. “She’s not just tied to it. She belongs to it.”
Isla turned sharply. “No. I don’t belong to anything.”
“You do now,” he snapped. “You’ve awakened a part of you that was buried for a reason. That Gate…” he gestured to it with trembling hands “…it doesn’t lead to another realm. It leads backward. Before the wolves. Before the elders. Before the balance.”
A gust of wind seemed to sigh from the Gate’s depths, though nothing stirred around them. The torches along the walls flickered out, one by one.
“You’re saying I opened time?” Isla whispered.
Marcus swallowed. “You opened what time tried to forget.”
She stepped down from the dais, magic still crackling faintly under her skin. Her gaze swept the room, her allies, her pack, her people and then returned to the darkness beyond the Gate.
“I had dreams,” she said softly. “Of chains. Of ice. Of a song that made the stars weep. I thought they were visions. Nightmares. But now…”
“They were memories,” Damian said. “Weren’t they?”
Her silence was answer enough.
Brienne moved to her side, though she hesitated before touching her. “What happens now?”
The Gate pulsed again. Louder this time. Not in sound, but in presence.
Leo stumbled backward. “We can’t leave it open…” Vincent sharply announced, “that’s not a door, it’s a summoning. Something will come through and that should not have a name.”
Damian stepped forward. “Then we close it.”
“You don’t just close it,” Vincent growled. “You rebuild the thrones. You bind the three bloodlines to them, willing or not. You feed the old chains. That’s the only way.”
“No,” Isla said, voice sharp now. “No more chains. No more prisons. That’s what the elders did, and look where it’s gotten us. Always pretending to protect us, when all they were doing was keeping the truth buried.”
She looked at the Gate and whispered, “I was never meant to be a queen. I was meant to be a key.”
Silence stretched.
Then Damian said, “You’re not going through alone.”
“Yes,” she replied. “I am.”
He crossed to her, fire in his eyes. “I watched you break a throne with your bare hands. I watched you wake something older than death itself. But if you think I’ll let you step into that alone…”
“You’ll have to stop me,” she said, her voice breaking. “And you won’t.”
Brienne’s hand found Isla’s. “Don’t do this.”
Isla turned to her, and her voice softened. “If I don’t… it won’t be me next. It’ll be all of us.”
Marcus groaned. “You don’t know what’s inside.”
“No,” she said. “But it knows me.”
Something shifted behind the Gate. Not form nor shadow. But the suggestion of presence. A low, shivering pressure pushed through the veil like breath on skin.
Isla stepped toward it.
Damian moved with her. “Then we end it together.”
Their fingers brushed. Magic sparked. She didn’t argue. She took one step and then another… The Gate did not resist her. It opened like a sigh and together, they crossed the threshold into the dark before time.