Chapter 6 — "Gates of the Iron Star"
The charred bones of the Devouring Maw lay strewn across the blackened soil, flickering with fading traces of Aether. Erik stood motionless for a long while, watching as the last embers winked out. Every breath he took felt like inhaling dust and fire, but he was alive.
Barely.
He glanced at his hands—trembling, blistered, still pulsing faintly with the aftershock of the Aetheric surge. It had been too much, too fast. The Glyph of Initiation on his palm had dimmed significantly, its luminous threads now quiet and dormant. Whatever burst of power he'd channeled had drained it nearly dry.
He stumbled forward.
The horizon cracked open into something new.
A shimmer of brass and steel rose from the ash plains—the Academy. Not a tower or citadel as he had imagined, but a colossal walled fortress-city, perched atop jagged cliffs that shimmered with molten rivers of raw, liquid Aether. The outer walls were alive with movement: great gears turned within their frames, powered by unknown engines; veins of glowing runes etched across every inch of its surface. It was architecture not just of stone or science—but of doctrine and dimension.
At its center loomed the Iron Star Gate, a towering gateway carved from meteorite steel and locked behind a lattice of rotating symbols that shifted in patterns too complex for a normal mind to follow.
Erik's jaw tightened. He had made it.
But as he drew near, a figure stepped out of the swirling Aether-mist surrounding the gate.
She wore a cloak of silver-threaded black, embroidered with shifting glyphs that hovered just above the fabric. Her eyes—one gold, one grey—studied Erik with the disinterest of someone inspecting a puzzle rather than a person. Her skin bore dozens of etched runic inlays, flickering with faint energies. A badge glinted on her shoulder: Velhraz Grand Academy of Supernatural Integration — Initiate Examiner, First Rank.
She tapped a floating quill against a hovering parchment that hovered at her side like a loyal pet.
"Name?"
Erik swallowed. "Erik… Erik Stahl."
"Transmigrant, dimensional classification: Origin-Twenty-One-Terra. Hmm. Orphan. No House. No Guildmark. No bloodline imprint. One active Glyph, wild-bound." She didn't look impressed. "Power unstable. Soul-stitched. Low-Aether compatibility."
She squinted at him, as if trying to determine if he would combust spontaneously.
"You're bleeding on the welcome stones. Kindly stop that."
Erik glanced down—sure enough, his left leg was leaking blood again. The Aether bindings had begun to fray.
"You'll survive. Maybe." She turned, and the Iron Star Gate began to rotate with a thunderous clunk-clunk-clunk, glowing sigils forming a spiral above the archway. "Welcome to the Velhraz Grand Academy. Enter with purpose—or perish without."
The gate opened with a blinding flash of light.
As Erik stepped through, he felt a shift in the air—a pressure on his mind, like invisible eyes peering into his soul. The world inside was not the same as the one he left behind.
The city-academy beyond was alive.
Towering spires of obsidian glass curved in impossible geometries, housing disciplines like Thaumatodynamics, Quantum Synthesis, and Aethercraft. Flying transports buzzed overhead, powered by alchemical reactors and soulbound engines. Students in robes of every hue walked along floating bridges, arguing over Philosophical Chemistry theories or channeling Arcano-energetic arrays mid-step.
The city had no sky—only a swirling dome of shifting constellations, powered by the Celestial Loom, the Academy's arcane weather system. Somewhere far above, he could see the shattered outline of a moon, its pieces orbiting unnaturally around a single, burning shard.
Erik was ushered into a courtyard lined with metallic statues—former Initiates, their names etched in flame-gold. A glowing screen projected the Year's Cohort Ranking, already filling with names and colored sigils.
His name wasn't there yet.
But it would be.
Because Erik had not just come to survive. He had come to master this world. To reshape it.
And in the heart of the Academy—among spells, science, and secret wars—he would find the power to do so… or be broken trying.
End of Chapter 6