The Forgotten Gate
After a mysterious earthquake reveals an ancient gate, one man crosses into a reality that was never meant to be remembered — or escaped.
The earthquake unearthed something no one could explain—a jagged black stone arch rising out of the cracked valley floor. Within hours, the government sealed the site off and declared it unstable.
But I had already seen it. I was in the valley when the ground tore open, and I watched the arch shimmer faintly against the dying light. It wasn’t natural. It wasn’t even ancient in the way ruins usually are. It felt… awake.
They told the town to evacuate, citing aftershocks. Most people left. I stayed behind, unable to shake the feeling that something was calling from that silent structure.
That night, I slipped past the barriers. The valley was colder than it should have been, the wind carrying a low, pulsing hum. Standing before the gate, I noticed the carvings—spirals and symbols too precise, too sharp to have eroded over time.
As I approached, my vision blurred. Not from fear—something in the air twisted the world around me. Colors bent, sounds fractured into strange, disjointed echoes. I stumbled forward, unable to turn away.
At the threshold, I stopped.
Beyond the arch, there wasn’t darkness. There was another landscape entirely—a vast desert under a bleeding red sky, with impossible cities rising and falling like breathing things. Distant figures moved there, but not like any life I knew. Their shapes shifted, bending and folding unnaturally.
I should have run. But the pull was too strong.
When I blinked, I was standing back in town—or what looked like it. Everything was wrong. The streets curved at angles that hurt to look at. The stars above me pulsed slowly, synchronized with the hum still ringing in my skull.
And through every window, faces watched me—faces too ancient, too knowing, smiling like they had been waiting a very long time.
But I had already seen it. I was in the valley when the ground tore open, and I watched the arch shimmer faintly against the dying light. It wasn’t natural. It wasn’t even ancient in the way ruins usually are. It felt… awake.
They told the town to evacuate, citing aftershocks. Most people left. I stayed behind, unable to shake the feeling that something was calling from that silent structure.
That night, I slipped past the barriers. The valley was colder than it should have been, the wind carrying a low, pulsing hum. Standing before the gate, I noticed the carvings—spirals and symbols too precise, too sharp to have eroded over time.
As I approached, my vision blurred. Not from fear—something in the air twisted the world around me. Colors bent, sounds fractured into strange, disjointed echoes. I stumbled forward, unable to turn away.
At the threshold, I stopped.
Beyond the arch, there wasn’t darkness. There was another landscape entirely—a vast desert under a bleeding red sky, with impossible cities rising and falling like breathing things. Distant figures moved there, but not like any life I knew. Their shapes shifted, bending and folding unnaturally.
I should have run. But the pull was too strong.
When I blinked, I was standing back in town—or what looked like it. Everything was wrong. The streets curved at angles that hurt to look at. The stars above me pulsed slowly, synchronized with the hum still ringing in my skull.
And through every window, faces watched me—faces too ancient, too knowing, smiling like they had been waiting a very long time.
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