They called it the Northveil—uncharted land where compasses spun in circles, where starlight whispered rather than shone. The wind here wasn't empty. It *carried things*: voices, songs, sometimes even laughter that didn't belong to any living mouth.
No map could hold this place.
Which was fitting.
Because the group no longer sought roads.
They followed instinct. Intuition. The faint pull of Elsewhere threading between heartbeats and dreams.
---
On the third night, the land opened into a field of stone mirrors. Dozens of tall, jagged slabs, each reflecting not their present forms—but *moments they had forgotten*.
Elara saw herself as a child, weeping over a broken compass.
Rin watched a version of himself offer his hand to someone who never took it.
Sira stared into the mirror and saw herself asleep, dagger beneath her pillow—alone, always alone.
None of them spoke.
They didn't need to.
Some threads were meant to fray.
Some were meant to be rewoven.
---
By the sixth day, the stars began to shift.
Literally.
Not fall—but move, slowly, as if adjusting themselves.
Kael was the first to notice.
"They're... forming symbols," he whispered. "Old Keeper sigils—ones we lost centuries ago."
"Are they guiding us?" Maris asked.
"Maybe," Kael said. "Or maybe they're *watching.*"
---
Thalen was the one who stopped them at the foot of the hill made of singing roots.
He pressed a palm to the ground and closed his eyes.
"There's something beneath," he said. "Not danger. Just... old."
"What kind of old?" Sira asked.
Thalen stood slowly. "The kind that remembers when the first door to Elsewhere opened."
They camped there that night.
And in the firelight, Elara read aloud from a new journal. Her words weren't grand or heroic.
They were *curious.*
"Maybe this is what the Ashbringer never understood," she said. "You don't conquer mystery. You *follow* it."
Rin smiled at that.
"Or walk beside it."
---
Later, as the others slept, a light appeared in the distance. Faint. Blue. Fluttering.
Elara rose and walked to the edge of the hill.
It wasn't a flame. Or a spell. Or a creature.
It was a doorway.
Not made of wood or stone—but of memory, rhythm, and possibility. It pulsed like a heartbeat. A portal woven from all the stories they'd lived and the ones they hadn't dared tell.
And it was *waiting.*
Elara didn't step through.
Not yet.
She turned back to her companions.
"Soon," she whispered. "But not alone."
---
Behind her, the doorway shimmered.
And beyond it, *Elsewhere smiled.*