Chapter 3 #2
Nathan's expression softened slightly. "Thank you for volunteering. The carriers are what make this possible. Don't forget that."
The clock changed. 11:54.
Six minutes.
My heart was beating faster. Not panic. Not quite.
Just awareness. This was real. This was happening.
In six minutes, I'd walk through that stone circle and emerge twenty five thousand years in the past. The magic in my chest felt heavier suddenly.
Denser. Like it was waking up, responding to the proximity of the gateway.
"Everyone in position," Nathan said.
We gathered near the circle. Not too close. Nathan had been explicit about that during the briefing. The gateway triggered at exact intervals and being too close when it activated could be... problematic. He hadn't specified how.
The monitors beeped softly. The cave was quiet otherwise. Just breathing and the distant trickle of water. The hum of electronics sounding very out of place in this ancient place.
11:58.
I looked at the paintings again. The human figure standing among the shifters. Something about it nagged at me. It seemed familiar, like I’d seen it before. Maybe there’d been pictures of the paintings in the briefing material and I’d just forgotten.
11:59.
"Here we go," Dev murmured.
The clock hit 12:00.
For a moment, nothing happened.
Then the air inside the circle changed.
It didn't shimmer or glow or do anything dramatic.
It just... shifted. Like reality had been one photograph and suddenly someone had laid another one on top of it, slightly misaligned.
I could see through it—see the cave wall on the other side—but I could also see something else.
Darker. Older. A different cave, in a different time.
The gateway.
"Readings confirmed," someone said. "Stable. Window is open."
Nathan turned to look at us. "Let's go," he said.
He took Megan's hand. They stepped forward together, past the monitors, past the computers, up to the edge of the circle. They stepped through and vanished. Just there one moment and gone the next, like they'd walked behind a curtain that didn't exist.
"Holy shit," Stephen breathed.
Dev went next. He glanced back once, gave me a shaky smile, then stepped through. Stephen followed without hesitation.
I stood alone at the edge of the circle, staring at the space where they'd vanished.
The painting caught my eye again. The human figure, standing in the centre, surrounded by shifters.
And I realized why it felt so strange. The figure was small.
Softly built. Standing among creatures that could have torn it apart, and yet the posture wasn't fearful.
It was steady. The bear loomed behind, massive and protective.
The wolf flanked one side, the lion the other.
And the mammoth stood behind them all, a mountain of ochre and shadow.
They weren't attacking. I could see that now, with sudden, inexplicable clarity. They were gathered around the figure. Guarding it. Guarding her.
Because it was a her. I didn't know how I knew that—the painting was crude, the lines simple—but I knew it in my bones the way I knew my own name.
Which was absurd. I'd never been here before.
I'd never seen these paintings until ten minutes ago.
There was no reason for the sudden prickling behind my eyes, no reason for the way my hand drifted up to press against my sternum—not over the bond scar, but lower, deeper, over the place where the borrowed magic sat quiet and heavy in my well.
I shook my head, forcing myself back to the present.
The gateway waited, and beyond it, the team and our mission.
I thought about Nathan. About Megan. About the life I was leaving behind—empty and numb and barely worth living.
I thought about whatever was waiting on the other side and then I stepped through.
The world folded.
That's the only way I can describe it. Not spinning, not falling, not darkness. Just... folding. Like I was a piece of paper, and someone had creased me in half, brought two edges together that weren't meant to meet.
It lasted forever.
It lasted no time at all.
Then I was stumbling forward onto rough stone, and the air was different—colder, damper, smelling of smoke and earth and something wild I didn't have words for.
I was on my hands and knees, breathing hard, my heart pounding, blood rushing in my ears.
"Ellie?" Dev's voice. "You okay?"
I looked up. Darkness. Complete, absolute darkness, except for the thin beams of headtorches cutting through the black like searchlights in fog.
The cave was the same. I could feel that instinctively—the same shape, the same domed ceiling arching overhead, the same rough stone beneath my palms. But everything else was different.
The electric lights were gone. The computers, the monitors, the cables snaking across the floor—all gone.
The metal stairs, the railings, the reinforced entrance—none of it existed yet. Wouldn't exist for thousands of years.
We were in the same place, but it was a different world.
"I'm fine," I managed, and Dev's hand found my arm, steadying me as I got to my feet.
My headtorch swung wildly as I straightened, the beam slashing across the cave floor.
I could see Nathan and Megan a few meters ahead, their torches already sweeping the space methodically.
Stephen was beside Dev, his breathing audible in the quiet.
"Jesus," Stephen whispered. "It actually worked."
No one answered. We stood there, five people in a pool of weak light, surrounded by twenty-five thousand years of nothing.
The stone circle was still there. I could feel it behind me—the standing stones, ancient and carved, exactly where they'd been in our time. But without the computers and monitors clustered around its base, it looked different. Wilder. The spirals carved into the stone seemed deeper somehow, newer.
"Everyone accounted for?" Nathan's voice echoed in the darkness. Professional. Controlled. As if stepping twenty-five thousand years into the past was just another item on his checklist.
"All here," Stephen said.
“Good, then let’s get back up to the surface. It should be noon here too, we’ll have time to get the lie of the land and set up camp before we lose the light.”
I followed the rest of the team through the cave, to where a faint glow of daylight revealed the entrance we’d come through so far ahead in time.
It was only as we started the arduous climb up the narrow tunnel, that I realised that the paintings were missing from the cave.
They hadn’t been painted yet. The thought sent a shiver down my spine, and I increased my pace, following closer behind the others until we reached the surface.