Meanwhile, the camp was transforming into a psychic fortress. Marcus had drawn protective glyphs on every palisade. The air itself seemed denser, charged with an electric anticipation. The soldiers whispered. The name "Source-Gate" circulated, distorted into "Death-Gate" or "Shadow-Gate."

Maggie, now sufficiently recovered, was looking for him. She found him near the stone circle, watching the horizon.

"Is it true?" she asked, without preamble. "That a thing from the shadows is seeking you?"

Dylan nodded. "Not from the shadows. From the Source. It's different."

"Is it dangerous?"

"Everything is dangerous, Maggie. Staying here is just as dangerous."

She looked at him, really looked, as if she were seeing for the first time the shadows dancing in his eyes. "You're not the same anymore."

"No."

"Do you want to be the same again?"

The question caught him off guard. Would he want the ignorance of the soldier, the simplicity of his life before? He felt the power flowing in his veins, a dark and terrible symphony that belonged only to him.

"No," he finally admitted. "I don't."

A sad smile stretched Maggie's lips. "Then see it through. And come back to me alive."

---

The night the Source-Gate arrived, there were no shouts or alarms. Only a silence that fell like a leaden lid. The torches flickered, their flames dipping as if in reverence. The cold wasn't that of winter, but that of the interstellar void.

Dylan stood at the center of the rune-inscribed stone circle. He wasn't alone. Julius and Elisa stood at the edge of the circle, weapons in hand, ready to intervene. Martissant, Valeria, and Marcus watched from a raised platform.

He saw it approaching across the moor. It wasn't walking. It was gliding. Its silhouette was human, but distorted, as seen through troubled water. Where a face should have been, there was only a vortex of swirling shadows, calm and deep.

It stopped at the camp's boundary, just before Marcus's glyphs. The runes glowed with a faint blue light, containing its presence without threatening it.

The Source-Gate raised a hand that wasn't quite a hand. It pointed a shadowy finger towards Dylan.

Little conduit. Why do you resist your own flow?

The voice wasn't a sound. It resonated in every corner of Dylan's mind, clear and neutral, like the cracking of eternal ice.

Dylan took a deep breath, feeling his own power bristle within him, both attracted and repelled.

"I am not a conduit," he replied, projecting his thought with a strength he didn't know he possessed. "I am a being. A whole."

Illusion, came the response, without malice. You are an opening. A window through which the Source looks. You can open and let it flow. Or you can struggle and break.

"There is a third option," said Dylan, taking a step forward. He felt the pressure increase, as if pushing against an invisible wall. "I can learn. Understand. And then decide."

For the first time, there was an emotion in the Source-Gate's presence. A slight curiosity, like a scientist observing an unexpected reaction.

You are not like the other. The woman. She opened too fast. She became a tool. You... you seek to be a partner.

Alka. He was talking about Alka.

"What does the Source want?" asked Dylan.

It is. It does not "want". It flows. Like a river. We, the Gates, channel its course. The other woman dug a new bed, violent and disordered. You... you could be a new tributary. More stable.

"At what price?"

The price is yourself. You must cease struggling. Let the river flow through you. You will keep your consciousness, but your essence will become one with the Source.

Dylan felt the temptation. A profound peace, an end to the struggle, unlimited power. He also felt the horror: the dissolution of everything he was, everything he had been.

"No," he said, and the word was a rock in the current. "I do not wish to become a part of something. I want to remain myself."

The Source-Gate tilted its featureless head slightly.

Then you will continue to struggle. And you will eventually break. Or the other woman will break you for you. It is inevitable.

With those words, the presence began to withdraw. The shadowy silhouette grew fuzzier, dissolving into the night.

We will meet again, little conduit. When you have understood the futility of your resistance.

When it was gone, the silence broke. The normal sounds of the camp returned, muffled. The pressure in the air vanished.

Dylan collapsed to one knee, panting. He was exhausted, but alive. And he had held his ground.

Elisa and Julius rushed to him. Martissant descended from the platform, his face impassive but his eyes already calculating the implications.

"Well?" asked the Count.

Dylan raised his head. In his eyes, there was neither triumph nor defeat. Only a newly forged certainty.

"He offered a deal," said Dylan. "Power for my soul."

"And you refused," said Martissant, an eyebrow raised.

"I refused." Dylan stood up, looking in the direction where the Source-Gate had disappeared. "But the war isn't over. It's only just beginning. And now I know I'm not just fighting against Alka. I'm fighting against the Source itself."

He clenched his left fist, feeling the shadow answer his call, not as a master, but as a recalcitrant partner. He had chosen the most difficult path. But it was his choice.

The cage was still there, but now, he held the keys.

For a moment, no one dared to breathe. The world seemed to hesitate, to tremble on its axis, as if the Source-Gate's visit had cracked something subtle but fundamental. A new tension vibrated in the air, like a silver thread ready to snap.

Marcus came down slowly from the platform, his expression drawn, his fingers still stained with the ritual pigments he had used. He never spoke quickly, but now… he seemed to be searching for his words like a man searching for his glasses in a room full of broken glass.

"An entity of that level… contained by my glyphs… even for a few seconds…" He shook his head, an incredulous laugh escaping him. "I should have charged more."

Valeria, meanwhile, kept her arms crossed and her spine stiff. A woman forged in fire and obsession. Her gaze cut like a scalpel.

"It won't happen twice," she said. "Next time it enters the camp, we may not be able to contain it."

"Next time," Julius retorted, shrugging a shoulder, "we won't let it take its nightly stroll right up to the circle." He put a hand on Dylan's shoulder, as if to verify he was truly alive. "Hey, little conduit… you almost blew up. You're going to make me regret saving you."

Dylan managed a half-smile, a shadow of humor in his still ragged breath. "I've had worse."

Elisa was looking at him differently. Something had shifted in her expression: less judgment, more understanding. Perhaps even a hint of awe. She, who had seen demigods collapse, understood all too well what it meant to refuse a fusion with a cosmic river.

"You could have accepted," she said simply. "And become… something else."

"Exactly." His eyes met hers, calm despite the storm. "I don't want to become a current in a river. I want to choose my own direction."

A murmur ran through the soldiers standing back. It wasn't loud, but it rose like a breath of fire.

— It's him.

— The Source-Gate wants him.

— He said no.

— He said no.

Martissant raised his hand, commanding silence.

"So, Corporal," he said in a hard but strangely respectful voice. "You have just declined a divine alliance. Or demonic. Or… whatever it is. That act makes you a symbol, whether you like it or not."

Dylan shook his head slowly. "I am not a symbol."

"Yes," said Valeria. "Now, you are. And symbols attract wars."

An icy frustration flashed through Dylan, but he didn't try to hide it. "Very well. Then let them come. But I will not bend."

Marcus, who was observing the still-smoking runes around the circle, added in a somber tone:

"The Source-Gate didn't come here to chat. It came to gauge. To measure the tension in your soul. And now, it knows your resistance."

"And Alka?" asked Julius. "What's she going to do, now that the big cosmic ghost has given its opinion?"

Valeria answered first. "She will accelerate. She doesn't have the patience of a river. She has become a torrent. She will seek to break you before he returns."

A tense silence fell. Dylan felt his breathing become regular again, as if his lungs were learning a new rhythm, a pulse born from this confrontation.

He looked out at the night where the shadow had vanished. The cold he had felt was gone, but a trace remained. A psychic imprint, a crystallized drop of night.

And beneath that trace, something stirred within him. Not a voice. Not a command. Rather… a reaction. Like an echo.

He had rejected the Source, but the Source had not rejected him.