The Crystal Gates

The Book of Threads had no title on its leathered cover—just a symbol burned deep into the hide: a circle split by a jagged line. To most, it would have looked like an old relic from a forgotten age. To Arin Solas, it was a beacon—and a warning.

He found it in the ruins of Elenvar, beneath the shattered dome of the Grand Archive, where stone gargoyles lay broken and ash covered every surface. Magic had not been seen in this realm for over a hundred years, not since the Cataclysm tore the sky and silenced the last of the Mages. Yet the Book pulsed with warmth in his hands, as though its heart still beat.

He was only nineteen, a scavenger raised among the ghost towns along the Wastes. But the moment he touched the Book, he knew: this wasn’t salvage.

This was destiny.

He took it and fled before the dust wraiths returned.

“Are you mad?” Lira hissed that night, as Arin showed her the Book by firelight in the abandoned chapel they called home. “Magic’s forbidden. You open that thing, you bring down death on both of us.”

“Magic’s not evil,” Arin said, voice low. “It’s just... forgotten.”

“Forgotten because it burned the sky and poisoned the rivers.”

“Or because someone wanted it gone.”

Lira folded her arms. “And what if it wants to be found now? Books like that don’t survive for centuries without a reason.”

“That’s what I’m hoping for.”

Arin flipped open the cover. The pages turned themselves, one by one, fluttering like wings. Symbols danced, shifting languages and shapes until they stilled on a single page: a map. Not of land, but of threads—lines of power that connected worlds.

“This isn’t just magic,” he whispered. “It’s a bridge between realms.”

Over the following weeks, Arin studied the Book, drawing energy through the sigils, practicing quiet incantations that made sparks leap between his fingers. His eyes began to glow faintly in the dark. Birds followed him. Water bent toward his hands. Lira watched with growing fear—and fascination.

Then one night, the Book spoke.

Not with words, but with images—flashes of a dying world, skies torn open by flame, cities swallowed by shadow. And in the center of it all, a figure: cloaked, eyes alight with the same glow now burning in Arin’s.

Him.

The Book pulsed. A single phrase appeared on the open page:

"Unlock me, and choose."

The next day, they left the chapel. The Book had shown them a gate hidden in the cliffs beyond the Valley of Glass. According to legend, that place had once been a crossing point—a place where magic was born, and sometimes, unmade.

They traveled in silence.

On the final night, Lira said, “If this opens what I think it does… can you close it again?”

Arin stared into the fire. “If it saves a world, I’ll pay the price.”

She looked at him, eyes soft. “But whose world, Arin? Ours… or theirs?”

The gate was not a structure—it was a wound, carved into the cliff face by power beyond comprehension. The air shimmered around it, as if reality itself was uncertain here. Vines crawled away from its edge. The Book flared with light as they approached.

“It’s a lock,” Arin said. “And I’m the key.”

Lira grabbed his wrist. “Once you open it—there’s no undoing it.”

“I know.”

He stepped forward and pressed the Book against the gate.

Light exploded.

The world dissolved.

He stood between stars.

Before him, two visions collided.

One was verdant: green fields, rivers of light, cities that hovered in peace. A world healed by magic, connected through harmony.

The other was ash: burning forests, skies weeping fire, towers crumbling under storms of arcane fury.

“You hold the thread,” a voice whispered around him. “One reality must rise. The other must fall.”

“Why?” Arin asked. “Why not both?”

“Because balance is broken. One heart cannot beat two songs.”

He turned, and there were others—shades of past Mages, their eyes sorrowful.

“You will be the first Mage of the new age… or its destroyer,” they said. “Choose carefully.”

He saw Lira standing behind a veil, reaching for him.

He saw another version of himself in the broken world—powerful, corrupted, alone.

He clenched the Book.

And he chose.

When Arin awoke, the gate was gone.

The cliffs were whole again. The Book had turned to dust in his hands.

Lira was beside him, and when he looked into her eyes, he saw stars—but not the same stars.

“Which world?” she asked.

He didn’t answer right away. Instead, he looked at his hands—scarred by light, but steady.

“I saved one,” he said. “But not ours.”

Her breath caught. “You… destroyed our world?”

“No.” He turned to her. “I gave it away. To someone who could save it better than I could. A version of me who needed it more.”

“And what’s left here?”

He smiled sadly. “A world without magic. But with a future.”

She stared at him. “What are you now?”

He looked up at the sky. No glowing eyes. No fire in his veins. Just silence.

“Human,” he said. “And that might be enough.”

In a cottage far from the ruins of Elenvar, a boy once destined to burn the sky learned to plant seeds instead.

And somewhere, across a thread of light too thin to see, a new world bloomed.