The Man Who Spoke to Gates

The voice echoed across the floating temple, low and smooth, touched with static.

“You shouldn’t have come here.”

Josh’s hackles rose.

He didn’t know how, but the voice carried scent—an impression of lightning on scorched paper, mixed with the brittle sweetness of rotting flowers. It wasn’t human. It wasn't a beast. It was changed.

The team took defensive positions. Amara at the front, weapon raised. Red behind a broken pillar, powering up his disruption beacon. Reiko stood still as stone, eyes wide and staring at the temple entrance.

From within, they heard footsteps.

Josh caught the scent before he saw the man. It was layered, complicated. There was the musk of an old human body—male, about sixty, once academic. But overlaid on that was something sharp and unnatural. Raw mana, crystallized and moving, as if it had blood and intention.

The man who emerged looked half-born of lightning.

He wore remnants of a field researcher’s uniform: Atlassian expedition gear, frayed and stitched with glowing thread. His left arm was no longer flesh but a lattice of energy and bone, crackling with light. His eyes glowed—too bright, too steady.

“Lysander Vale,” Reiko whispered. “Impossible.”

Vale smiled, his gaze fixed on her.

“Reiko,” he said. “You’ve grown into your fire. I always knew you would.”

Josh stepped between them. “Stay back.”

Vale didn’t flinch. “The dog speaks. How appropriate. You wear your transformation like a badge. But it’s only the beginning, you know.”

Josh bared his teeth—reflex more than threat.

“I remember you,” Vale continued. “From the Atlassian intake videos. The perfect score. One hundred out of a hundred. That nose of yours... magnificent. A gift from the gates, isn’t it?”

Amara stepped forward, gun aimed. “Surrender. Now.”

Vale turned slowly to her, as if noticing a bird fluttering in a distant tree. “Still playing soldier in a world that’s already moved past such games. The gates opened to offer salvation, and what did we do? Measured them. Taxed them. Regulated evolution.”

“Dr. Vale,” Reiko said, voice shaking. “You disappeared. We thought Gate 273 killed you.”

“It did,” he said simply. “The man I was died screaming on the other side. What returned... was what remains when you stop pretending you’re separate from mana.”

Red muttered, “This guy’s off his rocker.”

But Josh wasn’t laughing. He could smell Vale’s conviction. It was ironclad. This man wasn’t insane. He was certain.

“Where’s the missing team?” Josh demanded.

Vale looked at him. “Some left. Some stayed. Some... evolved.”

From the shadows behind him, figures emerged.

Four of them. Wearing Atlassian gear, twisted and fused with coral-like mana growths. One had vines growing from their spine. Another’s face shimmered between human and insectile. All of them were silent.

Reiko gasped. “That’s Mason. And Julia. Oh my god... what did you do to them?”

“I set them free,” Vale said. “They chose this. To become more. You’d do the same, if you could hear the gate singing like I do.”

The temple trembled faintly. Mana coiled in the air like mist.

Josh felt his instincts flare. Something in the air was wrong. Pressure was building, not in sound, but scent. Like sulfur before an eruption.

Amara spoke into her comm. “Red. Anchor recall—now.”

“On it,” Red said, slamming a device into the ground.

A faint blue pulse spread out.

Vale turned his glowing gaze toward the device. “How crude.”

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

He lifted his altered hand and flicked a finger.

The beacon sparked—and melted.

Red swore and scrambled back. “He just fried it!”

Amara fired.

The round passed through Vale’s body—and emerged smoking. He staggered back, but didn’t fall.

Instead, he laughed.

“You still think I’m bound by your physics,” he said, voice echoing strangely. “But I am gate-born. I exist where lines blur.”

He snapped his fingers. The four altered operatives surged forward.

Josh didn’t hesitate.

He met the first with a shoulder tackle, knocking the vine-spined figure to the ground. It hissed at him—its voice still human, yet wrong. “Why fight it? You’re already one of us.”

Josh snarled and slammed it into the ground with enhanced strength, using his full weight. Its body cracked like wood under pressure.

Behind him, Amara took on two, firing in controlled bursts, but the constructs moved erratically—guided by instinct and echo, not tactics.

Red hurled an EMP grenade. One of the constructs twitched violently and dropped.

Reiko stood frozen as Mason approached—his face stretched with mana veins, eyes glassy.

“Please,” she whispered. “Mason, come back.”

He paused.

For a moment, something flickered in his gaze.

Then Vale spoke. “He’s not yours anymore.”

Josh broke free of his opponent and howled—a deep, reverberating sound that made the air quiver.

The temple walls pulsed. Vale flinched, just slightly.

Josh turned to face him.

“You’re not a god,” he said. “You’re just a dude who got lost.”

Vale’s expression darkened. “Am I?”

He raised his hands. From behind the temple altar, a crystalline structure floated into view—a glowing prism of raw mana, rotating slowly in the air.

Reiko gasped. “That’s a core! A full gate core! You found one! How—?”

Vale stepped beside it, reverent.

“I didn’t find it. It found me. And through it, I see everything. I see timelines, futures, the shape of evolution.”

Josh growled. “Then you see this coming.”

He lunged.

Vale thrust out a hand—and Josh’s vision split.

For a heartbeat, he wasn’t in the temple.

He was in his old apartment. Human. On the couch. Drinking beer. Watching a rugby game.

Then everything melted.

He was in a field of ash, barking over the body of a woman whose name he couldn’t remember.

Then back in the temple.

He staggered, coughing, eyes wild.

“What the hell—” he muttered.

Vale’s voice was calm. “Just a glimpse of your possible selves. All roads converge eventually.”

Reiko screamed and fired her mana stabilizer—a prototype, designed to counter overcharged constructs. The beam struck the crystal, and it cracked.

Vale roared, stumbling back as feedback ripped through the temple.

Josh saw his opening.

He ran forward, every muscle howling, and slammed into Vale with a tackle that shook the ground. They tumbled across the floor, Vale’s arm sparking.

“You fight like a dog,” Vale hissed.

Josh bared his teeth. “Woof woof mother******.”

He slammed Vale’s head into the ground. Once. Twice.

Then Vale vanished—literally dissolved into light, and reformed ten feet away, coughing blood but laughing.

“Enough,” he said.

He reached to the sky and clenched his fist.

The world shuddered.

The sky above them rippled, and a crack began forming in the air itself.

Red screamed, “He’s destabilizing the gate!”

Vale stood beneath the widening fissure in the sky, arms raised.

“Let the flood begin. This world will drown in mana, and only the worthy will breathe.”

Amara fired again—this time hitting his shoulder and severing part of the energy arm.

Vale hissed, dropped to one knee.

The constructs collapsed.

Reiko ran to Josh. “We have to go. Now. Red’s beacon is online again. Temporary window.”

Josh stared at Vale—on his knees, bleeding, laughing through it.

“You’re not done,” he said.

“No,” Vale agreed. “This was only the opening verse.”

They ran.

Red triggered the beacon.

The portal ripped open behind them, raw and unstable.

As they dove through, Josh turned to look back.

Vale stood in the heart of the temple, the cracked core floating behind him, whispering in a voice only he could hear.

Then the gate slammed shut.

***

They landed hard on the concrete floor of the Brisbane Gate Bay.

Medical teams rushed in.

Josh sat up, panting.

Amara had burns. Red’s hands were shaking. Reiko was sobbing into her mask.

But they were alive.

Reiko knelt beside Josh.

“That was him,” she said, eyes hollow. “Lysander Vale. And if he’s really bonded to a gate core...”

Josh looked toward the gate.

Even shut, he could still smell the echo.

And behind it, a man who thought he was evolution incarnate.