Chapter 156: Rose family arrival
The portal spat them out onto rain-soaked earth with violent force. Rose hit the ground first, her knees absorbing the impact as dimensional energy crackled around her in dying arcs. Sasha landed in a practiced roll, coming up with weapons already half-drawn, while Kira stumbled and nearly planted her face in the mud before catching herself with a string of curses.
The transition between realms always left Rose feeling hollow, drained of something essential. The air here tasted different—thinner, lacking the rich elemental saturation of their homeland. It was foreign and unsettling.
But they were not alone in this venture. Thirty-two of the Aetherian Kingdom’s finest warriors had passed through the portal before them, the cream of their military forces dispatched on what everyone understood might be a suicide mission. Rose could see their tracks in the churned earth, the disciplined formation they’d maintained even in this alien realm.
They stood in a field that stretched toward the horizon in rolling waves of green, broken only by scattered groves of trees that looked ancient and somehow watchful. The white stone building the Queen had described rose in the distance, its multiple wings sprawling across manicured grounds like the bones of some massive creature. Even from miles away, Rose could see the precision of its construction, the way it commanded the landscape around it.
"Cheerful place," Sasha muttered, adjusting the pack across her shoulders. The dimensional crossing had left her hair slightly singed at the edges, and she kept running her fingers through it with obvious irritation. "Reminds me of the Marble Fortress back home, if the Marble Fortress had been built by people with no imagination."
Kira was staring at the building with wide eyes, her excitement barely contained despite their grim mission. "I can’t believe we’re actually here. Another realm entirely. Do you think they know we exist? Do you think they have legends about us like we have about them?"
"They’re about to," Rose said grimly, checking the silver sparks that still danced between her fingers. The tracking sigil pulsed stronger now, no longer dormant but actively seeking its target. The sensation was like having a compass needle embedded in her bones, pulling her northeast with insistent urgency. "The sigil’s responding. He’s definitely here, and he’s that way."
She pointed toward the massive gates that were just visible beyond the white building, dark metal structures that rose like the entrance to some underworld fortress. Even at this distance, Rose could see they were closed tight, their surfaces gleaming with what might have been recent repairs.
They began walking, their boots squelching in the soft earth. The field had been churned recently—not by farming implements, but by something far more violent. Furrows scored the ground in chaotic patterns, and strange scorch marks dotted the landscape like the footprints of an invisible giant.
"Battle damage," Sasha observed, her soldier’s eye cataloging the destruction. "Recent, too. Whatever happened here, it wasn’t more than a few days ago."
As they crested a small hill, Rose’s tracking sense suddenly flared, accompanied by something else—a familiar resonance that made her elemental core sing with recognition. She held up a hand, bringing their small group to a halt.