The gate was still there—unchanged in structure, but not in presence.
It loomed higher than Kalem remembered, a sealed colossus embedded in the chasm wall like the ribcage of a dead god. Lines of mana pulsed from its base into the surrounding stone, deeper than veins—arteries of ancient power feeding the Abyss itself.
The sigils on its frame shimmered faintly, etched in languages even the ruins refused to speak. Its weight pressed against the world, unmoving, unyielding, vast enough to fracture perception.
Kalem stood on a ridge above it, his cloak half-torn and barely hanging. He could feel the heat rising from his own body—simmering, not with fever, but with raw intent.
"Huh huh… alright, I've had enough," Kalem growled, his voice rasping with the weight of countless sleepless nights and too many lives taken.
"What are you going to do?"
"What can you do?"
"Break?"
"Die again?"
"Leave it be."
"You don't understand what it keeps out…"
"Wait and see," Kalem muttered.
He descended from the ridge slowly, every step dragging dust and gravel behind him like a funeral dirge. The crate—his old weapons cache, dented but not destroyed—was still where he'd left it near the base of the gate.
Kalem knelt beside it and pried it open with the back of his spear. Inside were blades half-melted, enchanted metals cracked and unstable, relics forged for war and sacrifice alike. His hands moved quickly, selecting what he needed, discarding what he didn't.
Then he began to draw.
With his spear, he carved a precise array into the hardened stone of the plateau. Not a summoning circle, not a ritual binding, but something simpler. Older. A forge-sigil. Half-ruin, half-transmutation, designed to concentrate ambient mana and redirect heat into an internal crucible.
The wind slowed around him. The air thickened with tension. The Abyss watched.
A few hours passed. Kalem didn't stop.
When he finished, a rough but deliberate circle glowed beneath his boots, etched with spikes and spirals. It was imperfect. It was unstable. It was perfect for what he needed.
"The image of your demise has kept me awake all this time," Kalem said to the gate, voice hoarse. "Now it shall be painted."
He dragged Breakhowl—his great axe, chipped and bloodstained—into the center of the array and laid it flat. Then came the salvaged weapons from across the abyss: shattered swords, ancient spearheads, twisted alloyed blades from fallen knights or forgotten creatures. Each one added its own weight and memory to the mix.
Last came his fire sword, the original ember of his forge. He planted it at the outer ring of the circle and drove it into the stone, its edge still burning faintly despite the cracks across its hilt.
He held his maul tightly in both hands. "Now… or never."
Kalem stepped into the circle.
The moment he did, everything ignited.
Mana poured inward, siphoned from the sigils and the ruins, from the gate itself. The circle turned white-hot, pulsing with a rhythm like a dying heartbeat. Kalem's body trembled from the pressure, but he did not fall.
Instead, he began to hammer.
He struck down into the molten center where metal and mana were converging, over and over again. Sparks flew with each impact. The maul rang with heat and resonance, and the weapons began to fuse.
Steel screamed as it melted. Fire hissed as it was bound. Essence long dormant surged upward, reawakened through force and fury.
Kalem's armor smoked. His gloves blackened. His skin blistered, then healed. Again. And again.
The voices—once whispers—screamed now.
"NO—"
"STOP—"
"YOU DON'T KNOW—"
"WE BEG YOU—"
"IT'S NOT MEANT—"
"KILL HIM—"
"MAKE HIM DROP IT—"
"PLEASE."
But he kept hammering.
They offered him peace. Silence. Release.
Then they offered power.
Then they threatened to turn his blood to ash.
Still, he kept hammering.
The lance began to form, crude but beautiful—a long, vicious length of alloy and hate, shaped by fire and desperation. Its core was a blend of Breakhowl's resilient steel and the brittle, cursed edges of Abyss-forged metal. Etchings formed naturally along its side—runic scars pulled from the memories of the melted weapons.
It radiated pressure. Not just weight, but meaning.
Kalem struck it one last time—and the mana burst outward in a shockwave, knocking loose fragments of stone from the gate's surroundings. The array cracked under his feet.
He stepped back, shoulders heaving, hands blistered and raw.
In the center of the forge, cooling on a bed of faintly glowing sigils, was the Lance.
It was ugly.
It was wrong.
It was his.
Kalem knelt before it, breath ragged, and placed a hand on its shaft. His skin sizzled on contact—but didn't burn.
The voices quieted.
Not silent.
But… retreating.
"You felt that, didn't you?" Kalem murmured to the gate, eyes locking onto the vast sealed surface. "This is the key. Or the hammer. Either way—one of us breaks."
He hoisted the lance, and it howled.
A pulse echoed through the Abyss. Distant shadows shifted. Something below began to stir.
Kalem didn't care. Not anymore.
He looked up at the gate with pale, cracked eyes.
And he smiled.