The Dagger Throne

The light from the doorway shimmered like molten silver suspended in still water—neither warm nor cold, neither beckoning nor resisting. It wasn't light as they knew it, but something deeper, something elemental. It pulsed in the air like a second heartbeat, caught between one breath and the next, as though time itself had paused to witness what was about to unfold. Selena stood motionless before it, every fiber of her being alert. The hairs on her arms rose. Her skin tingled with a sensation too old to name. This wasn't merely a passage—it was a wound. A rift cut through the very skin of reality.

She took a breath. And stepped through.

The moment she crossed the threshold, the world changed.