The Five Realms

Chapter 31: Steven VI

Chapter 31: Hidden Treacheries

Steven had never liked walking at the front of a group. Now he hated being at the back even more.

The air still shimmered with a residual heat that clung to his skin like memory. The scent of scorched stone lingered—reminder of what had just happened at the Bridge of Flames. Of what Joey had done. Of what Steven hadn't said.

He walked a few paces behind Chyna, who hadn't spoken to him since. Not really. She hadn't looked at him either, not since Joey's body had been hauled up from the lava and stood there—barefoot, fireproof, and exposed.

Steven's fingers fidgeted with the hem of his jacket, mind turning over phrases he'd rehearsed since. I didn't know for sure. He made me swear. I thought I was protecting him. None of them would matter. Not to her.

Beanca kept to herself as well. Her silence wasn't cold like Chyna's—it was frozen, too still to read. She hadn't so much as glanced at Steven during the walk. Just walked beside Emeraldsa in wordless sync, the way she did when she was retreating into thought. Or pain.

Steven felt like an oil blot in a watercolor painting. Everyone had their hues, their grief, their storm of emotions—but he was something else. An intrusion. A contaminant.

They rounded a bend in the tunnel. The light ahead changed—grew whiter, steadier. Arya raised a hand.

"We're here."

Steven saw it now: a door taller than anything should be underground. Carved in a tree he didn't recognize on one side, scorched metal-wood on the other. Something sacred. Something old. Something he probably shouldn't touch.

But gods, did he want to.

And if this door judged them, like the bridge had judged Joey... he needed to prove something, fast.

The door loomed before them—impossible and undeniable.

Its left half shimmered faintly, carved from wood the color of milk and pearl. Sap bled from its edges—thin, red, almost arterial. Steven had never seen weirwood in person, but he recognized it from a diagram in one of Maria's books. The sap wasn't paint. It wept.

The right side was darker—Ironwood, Arya said. It pulsed faintly beneath the surface like coal banked in deep frost. One side bled. The other endured.

"It's not just a door," Arya murmured, brushing her fingers against the threshold. "It's a boundary marker. A convergence construct, tied to Nexus logic and Old Magic."

Chyna crossed her arms. "And let me guess—it opens with a riddle."

Arya's smile was faint. "Among other things."

Symbols adorned the twin panels—engraved creatures: a wolf crouching, a bear rising, a lion mid-roar, a stag with branching antlers.

"They're totems," Murtagh said, stepping beside Arya. "Power archetypes—each drawn from different Realmic myths. None are ornamental."

The carvings shimmered slightly. As the group approached, letters rose along the base of the weirwood side—an etched riddle unfurling line by line:

"Four paths aligned in feral grace,
One must lead, the last gives chase.
The order lies where truth begins,
But only balance lets you in."

Steven's eyes narrowed. His brain activated before his doubt could catch up.

The wood was bleeding. The door was humming. And something in the symbols was... off. He stepped forward without speaking.

It wasn't just a riddle. It was a test. One he intended to pass.

Steven crouched in front of the door, eyes skimming over the riddle again and again. He ignored the murmurs behind him, the sound of Beanca pacing, Joey's uncertain breath. He could hear Chyna grumbling something about fairytales and overused metaphors, but it was white noise to him now.