Chapter 44: 44 The portal

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44: The portal 44: The portal The portal was beginning, gently but inexorably, to prepare him for the break.

It wasn’t breaking him yet.

That would only happen when Kairan passed through the portal.

But it was preparing him.

It was stretching him.

It was bringing him to the point where the final separation would be possible.

Kairan felt the barrier materialize.

And with it, she felt something begin to change in the bond with Misael.

That bond that had always been there.

Constant.

Reliable.

Part of him like a heartbeat.

Now he was starting to feel different.

More tense.

More fragile.

As if something were testing him.

Misael felt it too.

On the other side of the barrier.

He felt the bond tighten.

He felt the beginning of that separation he hadn’t asked for and didn’t want.

And his anger, paradoxically, subsided a little.

Replaced by something more akin to fear.

The fear of losing the only connection he had left.

The only bond that kept him anchored to something good.

To something other than anger and darkness.

The two brothers looked at each other through the barrier.

And for a moment, the anger and pain were forgotten.

Replaced by a simple, terrible understanding.

They were about to lose each other.

And there was nothing they could do to stop it.

Lilith’s hands had done many things in her millennia of existence.

They had wielded weapons.

They had woven spells.

They had signed decrees that decided the fate of entire peoples.

They had built and destroyed.

They had protected and condemned.

But there was one thing those hands had always loved to do more than anything else.

Touching her children.

When Kairan and Misael were small, Lilith held them in her arms.

She felt their weight.

Their warmth.

The beating of their little hearts.

And in those moments, the queen of demons, the being feared throughout the kingdom, was simply a mother.

Happy.

Complete.

Those hands that could destroy became soft when they touched her children.

Those fingers that could summon terrible powers became delicate when they caressed their faces.

It was the paradox of maternal love.

The ability to be, simultaneously, infinitely powerful and infinitely tender.

Before Kairan passed through the portal, before he disappeared forever, Lilith looked at him one last time.

And in that gaze she concentrated everything.

All the love.

All the pain.

All the history they had shared.

All the hopes for the future.

It was a gaze that had to last.

That had to contain everything that could not be expressed in words.

That had to support Kairan on the long journey that lay ahead.

And then Kairan turned back to the portal.

The portal was before him.

Only a step away.

The bluish light pulsed with a rhythm Kairan now recognized.

It was the rhythm of his heart.

Or perhaps his heart had learned to beat to the rhythm of the portal.

There was no difference now.

The two rhythms had merged into one.

As if Kairan and the portal had become part of the same thing.

As if crossing it was simply the completion of something that had already begun.

Kairan breathed the air of the Breath of the Abyss one last time.

That emptiness that had learned to sustain him along the entire journey.

And then he took the final step.

His foot lifted from the dark ground.

For an instant, he was suspended in the air.

Between the world he knew and the world that awaited him.

Between the being he had been and the being he would become.

And then his foot landed.

Beyond the threshold.

Into the light.

The bluish light enveloped him.

Not gradually.

All at once.

Like plunging into cold water.

Like being swallowed by something bigger than yourself.

The sensation was impossible to describe.

It wasn’t pain.

It wasn’t pleasure.

It was something entirely different from both.

It was the sensation of being undone and remade at the same time.

Of being broken down into its constituent parts and then reassembled in a slightly different order.

The light entered him.

Through his skin.

Through his eyes.

Through every pore of his body.

And as it entered, it took something away.

Not his memory.

Not his identity.

Something more subtle.

It took away the last resistance.

The last part of him that wanted to go back.

It took it away gently, without violence, like the tide washes sand away from the shore.

And what remained was lighter.

No happier.

No less hurt.

But freer.

Free from the burden of choice, because the choice had been made.

Free from the burden of doubt, because there was nothing left to doubt.

Free from the burden of the past, because the past was now on the other side of a threshold that could not be crossed twice.

Kairan let himself be swallowed up by the light.

He didn’t fight against it.

He didn’t try to hold on to what he was losing.

He surrendered.

The light swallowed him.