The air beneath the Hall of Unfinished Stories had a weight to it that Aether had never felt anywhere else in the academy. It was not the weight of stone, though the ceiling above them stretched so high it disappeared into shadow. It was not the weight of cold, though the chill here bit deeper than any winter wind on the surface. It was the weight of waiting. As if the darkness itself had been holding its breath for longer than any of them could imagine.
Before them stood the gate.
It rose out of the bedrock like something that had grown rather than been built, its surface carved with lines that shifted faintly when no one looked at them directly. Five handprints were pressed into its center, each one hollow, each one dark, each one shaped as though someone had reached into the stone itself and left an absence behind.
