The fire snapped. Above us, the ordinary night sky had done its ordinary thing, stars arranged in patterns that had nothing to do with any of this.
"Then Vael waits," Aldric said.
"And continues shaping. And finds other points of pressure."
"Like what?" I asked.
"Like the thing I'm most concerned about." He looked at me directly.
"Alaric said the transformation is not yet complete. Vael is still working toward the specific configuration he needs. But there may come a point where the transformation reaches a threshold at which Alaric's refusal becomes difficult to maintain."
"Difficult how?"
"The Gate responds to the right kind of presence. If Alaric becomes sufficiently aligned with the threshold, the pull of the Gate itself may become persuasive in a way that isn't about Vael's ar
