Chapter 66: The Gate That Refused Them

Chapter 66: The Gate That Refused Them

It sounded like heavy cloth ripping. Silas felt it before he fully heard it, a lurch in his stomach worse than any gate crossing, and the paving in the middle of the approach folded upward.

It didn’t break. It folded, like a sheet of paper being bent along a crease that hadn’t existed a moment before. The stones rose and bent back on themselves, and along the crease a line of deep red light opened, taller than a person and spreading.

A cart that had been standing on the crease went with it. It tipped up, slid, and vanished into the red. The man beside it was thrown sideways across the stones. His head struck the edge of another cart, and he lay where he fell.

A woman near the edge was dragged a pace forward by nothing Silas could see. Someone caught her arm. Closer to the crease, a stall keeper tried to jump clear. The folded paving caught him before he landed, and the stones closed over his legs.

Silas saw him reach once for the cart rail. Then the red opening took the rest of him.

The crowd’s movement reversed all at once.

A moment ago, everyone had been drifting forward, toward the stalls and the city. Now they surged backward toward the academy gate, and the noise changed from chatter into something high and frightened and very loud.

Silas was pushed back three steps before he could plant his feet.

The academy’s response came faster than he would have believed.

An amplified voice rolled across the approach.

"All events are halted. Move toward the academy gate along the east wall. Staff will direct you."

Figures in gray were already on the approach, some of them arriving so fast they must have been using movement Talents. A pale screen of mana snapped up in a wide ring around the red crease, pushing the nearest bystanders gently but firmly back. Medics ran toward the man on the stones. One knelt beside his head, put two fingers to his throat, and held them there. Silas watched her look up at her partner.

"He’s gone," she said.

They moved on to the woman whose arm had been caught. The man stayed on the paving.

Silas saw Ferrow among them, and then Vice Principal Voss, walking rather than running, her hand raised to direct the staff around her.

A woman in a Frontier Association jacket crouched just outside the screen with an instrument held up toward the gate. She read it twice. Then she said something to Voss, and Voss said it louder, for the staff to hear.

"Rank One. Red."

Silas’s chest went cold.

An instructor Silas didn’t know stepped through the screen toward the red light. The staff cleared space for him without being asked. Silas didn’t know his rank, but he was plainly one of the academy’s senior instructors. He walked to within a pace of the crease.

Then he stopped.

He hadn’t chosen to. Silas saw him lean forward, as if into wind, and saw nothing move. The man put out a hand. It stopped flat in the air a hand’s width from the red, pressing against something no one could see.

"It refuses me," the instructor called back.

"Rank Two check," Voss said.

A second staff member approached at her signal. She stopped at exactly the same distance.

The Association examiner checked her instrument again. "The entry limit is Rank One. Anyone above it is refused."

Voss watched them both. Then she raised her voice again.

"Nobody approaches that gate. Nobody."

Silas stood among the surging crowd and remembered.

The camera, close enough to show people falling over each other. The red seam. The flat line of text telling the player that the gate refused anyone above Rank One. He had watched it on a screen with a drink in his hand, impatient to get to the part where he could play.

It had not smelled of smoke and fried dough. Nobody lying on the stones in the game had ever had a face.

At the end of that dungeon waited the S-Rank Super Regeneration Trait. Alden had claimed it in the game. Silas remembered the entry on his character page after the clear. Then he thought of Lydia, and of lying on his studio floor trying to keep his blood inside him.

That could have kept me alive.

His dart was still on the shelf at home. If he went in, he’d need to fetch it while the staff held the cordon. He would need his bracers, his recovered mana, and a plan that accounted for more than the reward.

Because every route had ended with a list of the dead.

Maelin.

He turned toward the flatbread sign, now behind him in the direction of the academy.

The east wall route that staff were directing people along ran right past the stalls. Silas moved with the crowd instead of against it, keeping close to the wall, the way the gray-coated staff were pointing. It was slower than pushing. It was also the only way that didn’t knock someone down.

He passed the cordon’s edge.

Isolde Arvane stood near the cordon, watching the opening. When a fresh ripple ran across the red surface, she leaned forward rather than stepping back.

"I’d like to see what’s on the other side," she said.

Silas glanced at her. Most people around them were trying to get farther away.

Then a staff member touched her shoulder, and she turned and let herself be moved along.

Silas kept going.

He found Maelin beside the flatbread stall.

She wasn’t waiting. She was on her knees on the paving beside an older man who had fallen when the crowd reversed, pressing a folded cloth against a gash on his shin. The stall’s owner was crouched on the man’s other side, holding his hand. Maelin’s own bag lay forgotten a pace away.

"Maelin," Silas called.

She looked up. Her mouth opened when she saw him, and she took a quick breath. Then she looked back at the man.

"He can’t stand," she said. "I’ve told a medic. They’re coming."

"Are you hurt?" Silas asked.

"No." She pressed harder on the cloth. "Hold his other side. If the crowd pushes again, he’ll get stepped on."

Silas dropped his bag and knelt. The man’s hand was shaking. Silas braced his shoulder against the man’s back so the next surge would hit him instead.

Behind them, the red seam hung in the middle of the approach, and the academy’s staff held the ground around it.

The older man tried to turn toward the opening. Maelin caught his shoulder.

"Don’t look at it," she told him. "Look at me. The medic’s coming."

Maelin’s shoulders trembled now, but the cloth stayed pressed firmly against the wound. Silas moved closer to shield them from the next group passing the stall.

She was here, breathing beside him. He kept his shoulder against the man’s back and watched for the medic.