*Jiselle*

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“You said I’d have a choice,” I whispered, eyes fixed on Eva. “But what if there isn’t one left to make?”

The room was still. Still enough to hear the pulse of the leyline humming beneath the stone, still enough to feel every breath that passed between the four of us—Nate standing just to my left, fists clenched; Ethan, silent, eyes shadowed; and Eva, pale as parchment, the scroll still open in her hands.

The child, my daughter, our daughter, sat in the crook of the armchair by the window, too quiet for someone who’d once burned through half a forest just by breathing. She didn’t cry. She didn’t smile either. Just watched. Always watched.

Eva exhaled, closing the scroll. “The Gate cannot be closed by force. It must be refused.”

I turned toward her fully, trying to keep my voice even. “What does that mean?”

“It means it must be denied what it wants,” she replied, and the way she said it made my skin crawl. “It wants an anchor. A tether. A sacrifice it can feed from forever. But if it’s refused–by the one it’s marked—then the connection copses. And it closes.”

“But a door can’t close unless someone holds it shut,” Ethan murmured, stepping forward. “Right?”

Eva hesitated, and that hesitation said everything.

I swallowed. “Someone has to stay behind.”

The silence answered for her.

I looked down at the baby in my arms. Her breathing was steady, and her eyes were heavy with sleep, but even now, I could feel the pull of something ancient in her veins. She had not asked to be born with this power, had not asked to be the battleground between dimensions–but she was. And I was her mother.

“Then it’s me,” I said quietly. “I’ll stay.”

“No.” Nate’s voice cut through the air like a de. “No, Jiselle.”

I didn’t look at him. I couldn’t. Because if I did, I might crumble,

“I carried heri,/i” I said. “I bore the me, I walked the Gate, I felt the Hollow try to hollow me out. If anyone should be the one to end it, it’s me.”

“You think she’ll survive losing you?” Nate stepped into my line of sight, eyes zing. “You think I will?”

“That’s not what this is about.”

“It should be,” he snapped. “Because it’s not just about closing a door anymore. It’s about what’s left when it is closed. And I’m not going to stand here and watch you martyr yourself.”

10:59 Wed, Sep b24 /b…

b93 /b

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“She’s right,” Eva said, though her voice cracked with the weight of it. “If someone doesn’t anchor the closure, the Gate will just rip itself open again. The bnce will keep shifting, worse every time.”

Ethan shook his head, pacing. “There has to be another way. She’s not the only one with the mark. The Gate touched all of us. It chose all of us.”

The baby stirred. Just a little.

Nate dropped to one knee beside me. “There’s nothing you can say right now that’s going to make me okay with this. Nothing. So if you’re going to do it, you’re going to have to knock me out and run for the Gate yourself.”

I knelt, setting the child gently onto the woven nket Eva had conjured earlier. Her tiny hand curled near her mouth. A sigh escaped her, small and knowing. Like she already understood what we didn’t.

“I won’t run,” I told him. “But I won’t lie either. You know she’s more than us, Nate. You’ve seen it. She doesn’t just have the me. She is the me.”

“So we protect her,” Ethan said. “All of us. We don’t sacrifice anyone. We protect her. That’s what we do.”

“We protect her,” Nate echoed, his voice quieter now, steadier, like it was finally anchoring him after all the storms we’d weathered. “By bing what she needs.”

And for the first time in days, I believed he meant it. There was no edge in his tone, no desperate attempt to convince either of us. Just truth. Simple. Bone–deep.

I met his gaze across the soft glow of the room. There was no fire left in it–not the kind that burned to wound. Only the kind that flickered in the wake of battle, after thest sword had been dropped. A quiet resignation threaded through the grief in his eyes, wrapping around everything we hadn’t said. He wasn’t giving up.

He was choosing.

And then-

The floor shuddered beneath us.

Not a tremor.

A warning.

Eva jerked upright, scroll dropping from herp as her gaze snapped to the wall. “Did you feel that?”

Ethan was already moving, one hand braced against the window frame as he peered through the ss. “The leyline,” he said, his voice tight. “It’s-”

Before he could finish, a thunderous crack split through the stronghold’s foundation. It didn’t sound like stone breaking. It sounded like the earth screaming.

We froze, all of us.

10:59 Wed, bSep /bb24 /b

And in the corner of the room, the child stirred.

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93

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Her eyelids fluttered open, and those strange, ancient eyes fixed on nothing–and everything–all at once.

And then… she sat up.

No cry. No panic.

Only stillness.

That terrifying, unshakable stillness that said she knew.

Outside, the air shifted.

And through the walls of the stronghold came a sound not meant for this world–a howl buried in the heartbeat of the leyline, rising up through the canyon with the weight of centuries behind it. It wasn’t beast or weather or war.

It was something older.

Something waking.

The ground split beneath the eastern wall with a sound like ribs cracking open. Dust rained from the ceiling. A gust of air whipped through the room, cold and dry and reeking of magic gone wrong.

Eva whispered, “It’s opening.”

I stood slowly, body trembling, me stirring faintly under my skin. The child looked at me. No fear. No confusion.

Only readiness.

The kind that shouldn’t exist in something so small.

I turned toward the window as the horizon warped–just slightly, just enough.

A new fracture had formed.

It was deep and jagged.

And leading straight to the Gate.

Not closed.

Not sealed.

But hungry.

And waking again.