The Gate Opens Again

You came for a feast.

But I've set the table with chains.

Deep below the sea, where sunlight dies and predators thrive, a human swam with the ease of a creature born in the abyss. She wasn't fleeing. She wasn't lost.

She was fishing.

Her name was Koko Miray, the chosen of Twaile—the terrifying blind goddess who once dragged her from the deepest trench to a blood-stained coliseum.

Now Koko swam alone, harpoon in hand, her foot pressing against the ridge of an ancient, sunken temple. She had just caught a prize beast: a monstrous fish, scaled in obsidian, large as a house and older than most mountains. It still fought her as she dragged it upward.

"You'll feed well, Gran," she muttered, sea foam clinging to her braids.

But then—everything changed.

The currents reversed.

The salt turned bitter.

And in her soul, she felt the pull.

A command.

A summons.

Familiar, but not from Twaile.

Above the surface—far above the sea, above even the clouds—a gate opened. Not a normal gate. The Gate. The one at the capital of Zantrayel. The one Zafana guarded, always silent, always still.

And now, she had moved.

Reality cracked.

With the beast fish still squirming in her grip, Koko was pulled through space—not with violence, but with authority. The command of a gatekeeper who speaks only once every age.

She stood now above Zantrayel, hovering at the peak of the capital's sky gate, water dripping from her armor, eyes wide with the weight of déjà vu.

"No… not again…"

She saw the earth stretching far below, and the people screaming in terror.

The nightmare was repeating.

It was just like when Twaile, her patron, summoned her to fight the 99 chosen from across the galaxy. She remembered that coliseum of death, the impossible scale of it, the gods laughing, the crowd of millions…

And now it was Zafana.

The silent watcher who never moved, never spoke, had now opened the gate—and summoned her again.

Koko's grip tightened on the fish.

She looked down.

At the vast, pulsing shadow of Luruzt, the Beast God, who now stomped toward Zantrayel's exposed heart.

A god no one remembered.

A terror no one saw coming.

But Zafana did.

She stood at the center of the gate, eyes closed, lips moving in riddles, her fingers tracing an invisible circle in the air. She still did not speak loudly, yet her presence commanded all things:

"Koko Miray.

You were caught once.

Now, you catch."

Koko understood.

The gate wasn't calling warriors.

It was calling predators.

And she was ready.

The nightmare fish screeched behind her, hungering for battle.

Zafana's power was activating.

Not brute strength. Not fire. Not celestial weapons.

It was ancient positioning.

She sat at the one point that connected all gates—the silent throne between here and Ginen, between gods and ghosts.

And now, with Koko beside her and Luruzt below, the Gatekeeper finally spoke into the world:

"He will not eat our names."