Chapter 9
The Melody of the Fourth Gate
The Fourth Gate is protected by a guardian whose power is tied to music. Purlis must harmonize with its melody to pass.
The air thrummed with a strange, unheard music, a vibration that settled deep in Purlis’s bones. He stood before a portal that pulsed with a soft, cerulean light, a sapphire heart beating in the chest of reality. Unlike the starkness of the first Gate, or the shifting sands of the eighth, this one hummed with a vibrant, flowing energy. It was the Fourth Gate, and its guardian, as Elara had whispered before they’d parted ways, was bound to the very essence of sound.
A figure coalesced from the light, not with the solid form of the owl or the shifting sands, but as a symphony made visible. It was a being of pure, resonant sound, its form fluid and ever-changing, like a melody given shape. It had no face, yet Purlis felt observed, understood. A gentle, harmonic chord rippled through the air, a greeting, a question.
“The Fourth Gate,” Purlis murmured, his voice small