The portal swallowed them like liquid glass. For a heartbeat Andrew felt nothing no weight, no air, no sound only the sensation of falling without moving. Then the world slammed back into place.
He staggered forward onto ground that didn't feel like ground. It flexed faintly under his boots, almost like walking across living cartilage. The sky above was the color of iron bruised with violet veins. In the distance stood jagged pillars shaped like twisted spines, stretching into clouds that churned with dim sparks of light.
Jason came through next, landing in a crouch and scanning their surroundings with a soldier's reflex. Lisa emerged beside him, her hand still gripping the fractured mirror frame. Ryo's expression didn't change, but his eyes narrowed as he tasted the air. Lilienne followed, pulling her cloak tight against a wind that smelled faintly of burned metal. Seraphina came last, stumbling on the strange ground but catching herself before Andrew could reach out.
Nobody spoke at first. The new world pressed on their senses like a heavy hand, draining color from their faces. Somewhere far off, a rhythmic pulse throbbed under the earth.
Andrew forced himself to breathe slowly. He couldn't afford to show the storm inside him. Not here.
"Form up," he said at last, his voice low but firm. "Eyes open. No assumptions."
Jason straightened, rolling his shoulders. "Where the hell are we? This isn't some hidden mountain on Earth."
"It's not," Andrew replied. He held up the scroll Valtan had handed him earlier. The symbols flickered faintly, no longer golden but a deep blood-red. "The runes shifted the moment we crossed. We're exactly where it wanted us."
Lisa exhaled through her nose. "The mirror barely held. We'll need another anchor point to get home. That means I have to map this place fast."
Lilienne glanced at Andrew. "And if we can't get back?"
"We will," Andrew said flatly. "We don't have a choice."
The group began to move across the undulating plain, their footsteps swallowed by a soft crunch like walking on salt mixed with ash. Every so often, Seraphina glanced at Andrew from behind, watching the set of his shoulders. She could feel it the restrained fury under his skin, the grief he refused to show the others. Her empathic sense pulsed whenever she drew near him, like standing beside a furnace sealed inside ice.
"You don't have to keep everything locked up," she said quietly when she caught up to him.
Andrew didn't look at her. "Now's not the time."
"It's never the time with you," she said, a touch of frustration creeping in. "Michael's death...."
He cut her off with a sharp glance. "you listen to me seraphina I'm not some kind of broken doll that needs fixing so you'd be better of focusing on survival than pissing me off with your ever increasing sympathy"
Her lips parted, but she closed them again. His eyes weren't just tired; they were warning her. She fell back a step, heart hammering.
Jason, walking on Andrew's other side, muttered to Lisa, "This feels like a trap."
"It is," Lisa murmured. "Everything about this place screams bait."
The pillars loomed closer. Up close they were not stone but some kind of ossified material like massive bones fused together and hollowed with spiraling carvings. The carvings pulsed faintly, reacting to their proximity. Ryo bent down to touch the ground, then quickly withdrew his hand as if burned.
"There's energy running through it," he said. "Not natural."
"No," Lilienne said grimly. "It's a lattice. This whole plain is a grid of power. We're walking inside a construct."
Andrew listened without comment, eyes scanning the horizon. He couldn't stop thinking of Emma and Kate, of the unanswered letters, of Michael's body vanishing into the water. He'd left everything behind, and for what? To be used as a weapon by Halberd's Dean?
He clenched his jaw. Whatever this place was, whatever lay ahead, it would at least give him something tangible to strike.
They reached the base of the largest pillar, its surface split with a long crack. A faint vibration passed through their boots. Lisa raised her mirror staff, the fractured edges glowing faintly.
"This is our first anchor point," she said. "If I mark it, I can open a portal back assuming nothing interferes."
"Do it," Andrew said. "Everyone else form a perimeter."
Jason and Ryo took opposite flanks while Lilienne studied the carvings. Seraphina stayed near Andrew, her eyes scanning the mist swirling between the pillars. She could feel something watching them. creatures watching them like lens focusing.
The ground shifted. At first it was subtle a tremor under their feet. Then it pulsed, and the mist condensed into thicker tendrils. Jason snapped up his weapon. Ryo hissed a warning in Japanese. Lilienne backed away from the pillar, hand hovering over her runeblade.
"Something's moving," Jason barked.
Lisa's voice was tight. "Almost done with the anchor just keep it off me."
Out of the mist, shapes emerged. Faceless. Tall. Cloaked in the same black as the men who had taken Michael. But these were thinner, stretched, their limbs slightly too long. No hats this time. Their heads were smooth domes without features.
Andrew stepped forward, pulling out gun from his jacket customized by Himself a kimber gold match II pistol engraved on it were the words whitmore "Everyone hold formation," he said. "We test them first."
One of the creatures tilted its head, a slow jerky movement, then let out a sound like metal scratching against metal. Another took a step forward, and the carvings on the pillars flared brighter.
Jason spat. "I'm guessing negotiations are out."
"No negotiations," Andrew said softly.
The first of the creatures lunged. Andrew met it head-on, Bang. First shot landing straight at it's head as the creature swung it's arms straight into Andrew who was thrown back from the force a sickening crack was heard. Black fluid hissed against the ground. Jason fired a burst of shimmering bolts from his weapon, cutting another in half. Ryo vanished from sight entirely, reappearing behind one to sever its spine with a silent strike.
Lisa gritted her teeth and summoned a crystal staff which she drove into the ground, whispering a string of coordinates under her breath. The mirror fragments lit up, casting a circle of pale blue light around the group.
Seraphina raised her hands and unleashed a psychic pulse that staggered the approaching creatures, but at the same time she felt Andrew's fury pouring through her empathic field. It almost dropped her to her knees.
"Andrew...stop!" she gasped.
He didn't hear her. Or maybe he did and didn't care. Completely unscarred from the former attack he started shooting at the creatures as on of them tanked the bullets coming into close proximity and ditched the gun as he threw himself towards the creature swinging his fist and with a sickening crunch broke the skull of the creature eyes glowing with golden light he stared at the others as they retreated a crazy grin on his face as he prepared to rush towards the creatures after picking his gun.
Finally Lisa shouted, "Anchor set!" and slammed her staff down. A shimmering gateway opened behind them, showing the Citadel's courtyard.
"Go!" Andrew barked.
They began to retreat, Jason covering Lisa, Ryo vanishing and reappearing like a shadow, Lilienne keeping a barrier up. Seraphina grabbed Andrew's arm, yanking him backward just as another clawed limb slashed at him from the mist.
They leapt through the portal one by one. Andrew was last, pausing only to look back at the alien plain. The pillars were collapsing inward, the mist boiling into a vortex. For a heartbeat he thought he saw Michael's face in the swirling darkness then it was gone.
They landed hard on the Citadel courtyard stones. The portal snapped shut behind them with a sound like glass breaking underwater. For a moment, nobody moved. Their clothes were spattered with black fluid that steamed and then evaporated.
Jason sat back, wiping sweat from his brow. "That was our first run?"
"Welcome to the job," Lilienne muttered.
Lisa leaned against her staff, breathing hard. "We can go back. The anchor held. But something in there knows we're coming now."
Seraphina stared at Andrew. He still hadn't put his blade away. His knuckles were white.
"You're shaking," she said softly.
He blinked, as if waking up, then finally slid the blade back into its sheath. "I'm fine."
"No," she said. "You're not."
But he was already walking away, heading for the Citadel's northern stairwell without another word.