They continued moving, step by step, drawn forward by an unspoken magnetism, urging them onward. The light again mingled with darkness, creating a strange play of shades that seemed to test their endurance. The space around them grew even more indeterminate, like a fog that had no beginning or end. Each movement felt both slowed and quickened, as though they stood at the very heart of time, yet outside of it.
“Do you feel this?” Eili asked, her voice muffled and scattered, as if the very space were swallowing the sound.
“Yes,” Lumis replied, his gaze fixed ahead, though he saw nothing concrete, only blurred forms. “It’s some kind of… misty light. We must be getting closer to something.”
They pressed on, and the closer they came to the light’s source, the stronger the sense that the space itself was shifting. The darkness and light alternated in intensity, then merged into one again. The structures that had once seemed shapeless now began to take form, though still strangely undefined. With every step, the burden grew heavier—not physically, but within their souls.
“We must be close,” Lumis whispered, pausing for a moment. “But something tells me that what awaits us here won’t be what we imagined.”
Eili didn’t answer immediately. She felt the cold, ominous premonition creeping into her heart. It seemed like they had passed through many trials, but now it was the hardest—standing on the edge of the unknown. Though they knew they had to keep moving forward, each step felt as if it were the last, a final step into something irreversible.
Suddenly, the light before them began to gather in one precise point. They moved toward it, and before them appeared a large portal, surrounded by thin arches that flickered like wax melting under a flame. It wasn’t just a wall or a gate—it was something more, an impression that the arches themselves could move, open, or close depending on who approached.
“What is this?” Eili asked, her eyes wide, as if this were the most crucial question she had asked throughout their journey.
“I don’t know,” Lumis replied, his voice calm but laced with a desperate determination. “But we have to pass through. This is what we’ve been walking toward.”
He stepped forward, but Eili caught his hand.
“Are you sure?” she asked, her voice quiet, yet resonating in the silence around them. “We don’t know what awaits on the other side.”
Lumis turned back to her, and in his eyes, there was a look of understanding, something deeper they were only just beginning to comprehend.
“We can’t turn back,” he said. “What we’re looking for is here. And if it changes us, so be it.”
Eili paused for a few seconds, then nodded. She knew this wasn’t just a decision—it was an inevitability. They had long stopped being who they once were. Their journey had brought them here, and this was their path.
Together, they stepped through the portal, and the world around them trembled.