Chapter 28A — The Amber Gate of Lies
The courtyard felt different when it wasn't Aiden walking toward the Gate.
It shouldn't have. Same stone. Same towers. Same balconies full of whispering students. Same instructors lined like knives along the edges.
But with Aiden gone toward the Spire and the Thorn Gate quiet again, everything felt wrong-sized in Myra's chest.
He should be here. We should be complaining about this together.
Instead, the space where he'd stood might as well have been a crack in the ground.
The three remaining trial arches loomed ahead, each set into its own strip of wall like a carved wound.
To the left: a Gate framed in frost-cold iron and blue sigils. The Gate of Winter Veins.
To the right: a Gate grown from black basalt, obsidian spikes radiating outward like a shattered impact. The Gate of Broken Stone.
In the middle:
The Amber Gate.
It wasn't really amber. Not exactly.
The arch was made of smooth, honey-colored stone shot through with veins of gold and pale orange. Runes shimmered just beneath its surface, like trapped lightning bugs in resin. The air around it shimmered faintly, distorting faces and edges as if the space in front of it didn't entirely believe in reality.
Nellie hugged Myra's arm so tightly her fingers had gone white. "You don't have to go into that one," she whispered, voice high and small. "You can ask for a different—"
"They assign gates based on resonance," Runa cut in. The dwarf stood on Myra's other side like a compact wall of stubborn. "If they gave her Amber, it's because it fits."
"Fits what?" Nellie squeaked. "She doesn't lie—okay, she lies sometimes—but not bad lies, just… distraction lies, and joking lies, and—"
"Myra Lynell," a clerk's voice called, cutting clean through the courtyard noise. "Amber candidate. Step forward."
Myra's throat went dry.
"I hate that 'candidate' sounds like it comes with a death option," she muttered.
Runa made a soft grunt that might have been a laugh. "You'll be fine."
Nellie's grip tightened. "You don't know that."
"Yes, I do." Runa's dark eyes didn't leave Myra's face. "She's too stubborn to die in a mirror."
Myra swallowed.
That shouldn't have helped.
It did.
She took one careful breath, then another, and gently pried her arm free from Nellie's death-clutch.
"Hey," she said softly. "Look at me."
Nellie did. Her eyes were already glassy.
"If they tried to send you into something like this alone," Myra said, "I'd punch the Gate."
"That's not how Gates work," Nellie hiccuped.
"Then I'd punch the instructors."
"That's definitely how expulsion works," Runa murmured.
Myra ignored her. "Point is—I'd still do it. You know I would."
Nellie sniffed. "I know."
"So you have to let me go do this," Myra said. "Because if I don't, they'll yell, and we'll end up in trouble before we even get dorm assignments, and Aiden will come back to find out we got kicked out because I refused to walk into a fancy door."
Nellie laughed, a tiny, broken sound. "That sounds like us, actually."
"Exactly." Myra squeezed her hands. "You keep yourself in one piece. Runa will glower at anyone who looks at you wrong."
Runa nodded. "Already was."
Myra turned to the dwarf. "You watch her?"
"I already said I would." Runa's voice was gruff, but there was something softer under it. "Go survive your trial. She and I have people to threaten while you're gone."
"Myra Lynell." The clerk sounded more impatient now. "Amber candidate. Step. Forward."
Myra let out one last breath.
Then she stepped away from them.
Every stride toward the Amber Gate felt like walking onto a stage she hadn't agreed to perform on. Students' whispers thickened around her:
"That's the other marsh kid—" "She's the one who ran with the lightning cub—" "Looks cocky for someone about to get shredded—" "Amber trials are the worst, I heard—"
She didn't let herself flinch.
She knew how to walk like she wasn't afraid. Growing up in caravans taught you that early: you acted steady so the people smaller than you didn't panic.
Aiden's gone. Nellie's shaking. Runa's trying to be a mountain.
So I'll be the one who grins.
She rolled her shoulders and tilted her chin with a confidence she only halfway felt.
The Amber Gate shimmered as she neared. Up close, the veins in the stone weren't random—they formed looping circles and jagged lines that almost formed words, but twisted away when she tried to focus.
Heat radiated from the arch. Not painful. Just warm, like standing near sun-baked rock.
"Token," the clerk said.
Myra looked down at her hand.
A round, translucent token glowed faintly between her fingers—amber-colored, with a tiny spiral etched at its center. They'd given it to her during the briefing, calling it a "resonance key."
It looked more like a fancy piece of candy.
She resisted the urge to crack a joke about sucking on it.
Instead, she held it up.
The Amber Gate reacted.
Light rippled through the stone, following the veins like liquid fire. The air before the arch thickened. For a heartbeat, Myra's own reflection flashed there—tired, mud-streaked, hair fraying free from her braid, eyes a little too wide.
The reflection smiled first.
Not her.
Not remotely her.
It was wrong. Not in the face—the face was identical. It was the eyes. They were calm in a way she'd never been. Empty of doubt. Empty of exhaustion. Filled with the kind of certainty that always made her teeth itch.
The reflection mouthed something.
Myra couldn't hear it.
That almost made it worse.
She swallowed, pulse jumping.
"Enter when ready," the clerk said.
"You don't have, like, advice?" she asked.
"Yes." He didn't look up from his ledger. "Don't die."
Runa muttered something extremely rude.
Myra almost laughed.
Almost.
Instead, she clenched the token, stuffed the fear down where it belonged, and stepped through the shimmering arch.
The world flipped.
Not sideways, not upside down—inside out.
Heat vanished. Light collapsed. Sound inverted into a low, distant hum.
For a heartbeat, she felt weightless.
Then her boots hit solid ground.
She staggered, caught herself, and looked up.
---
She stood in a forest that wasn't a forest.
Trees rose on all sides, tall and slender, trunks smooth as glass. Their bark glowed faintly amber, light moving inside it like trapped summer afternoons. Leaves—if that's what they were—hung in flat, translucent sheets high overhead, filtering the light into honey and gold.
The ground wasn't dirt. It was hard, smooth, pale—like the surface of bone polished by years of touch.
Myra turned slowly, heart pounding.
The trees weren't just trees.
They were mirrors.
Not perfect ones. Their surfaces curved and warped, bending reflections into odd angles and stretched shapes. But she could see herself in every trunk. Dozens of Myras watched her from all directions—some taller, some shorter, some with different scars, different hair, different weight in their shoulders.
"Okay," she said under her breath, voice too loud in the strange quiet. "That's deeply unsettling."
None of the reflections spoke.
For a heartbeat.
Then one did.
"You're late," it said.
Myra jerked around.
The voice had come from behind her.
But there was no one there.
Only a tree-mirror, reflecting her from the front.
Her reflection smiled—not the wrong, empty smile from the Gate, but something sharper, almost amused.
"You always show up just late enough that someone else already took the worst hits," it said.
Myra's mouth went dry. "You're… not supposed to talk."
"Sure I am." The reflection tilted its head. "This is the Amber Hollow. We exist to tell you things you don't want to hear."
Words crawled across Myra's vision, unseen by anything but her:
[TRIAL: AMBER GATE — FIRST VEIL]
[OBJECTIVE: FACE THE LIES YOU LIVE WITH]
[FAILURE CONDITION: RUNNING FROM YOUR OWN VOICE]
"Cute," Myra muttered. "Cryptic and condescending."
The reflection laughed. "You're scared."
"Of you? Not really."
"Of not being needed," it said smoothly. "Yes."
Myra flinched.
Amber light shifted through the forest, brightening. Other reflections leaned closer in their glass-trunks, faces sharpening, eyes focusing.
"This is boring," Myra snapped. "If you're going to insult me, at least be creative."
"Insults are easy," the reflection said. "You grew up with caravanners. You know how to make a grown man cry using only half a sentence. This isn't about insults."
"Then what is it about?"
"Truth," it said.
A branch rustled overhead—except there was no wind. The sound came from inside the trees themselves, a shivering vibration.
"You tell lies like you breathe," the reflection continued. "Not big ones. Not cruel ones. Just the little ones that keep other people moving."
"That's not—"
"'We'll make it through this storm.' 'The Hollow is just a shortcut.' 'You're safe with me.'"
Myra's throat closed.
"You didn't know the Hollow would break," it said. "You didn't know the Aberration would come. You didn't know the fog-thing would choose Aiden instead of you."
Her hands curled into fists. "I never claimed to know."
"But you still promised," the reflection said softly. "You promised with your eyes, with your steps, with the way you walked just ahead and pretended you weren't terrified. You pulled them forward. They followed."
Myra's breaths came faster.
Amber light pulsed.
Reflections shifted.
In one trunk, she saw herself in the collapsing Hollow—dragging Nellie by the wrist, shoving people toward the bottleneck, shouting over the roar.
In another, she saw herself laughing on the march, making stupid jokes so the kids wouldn't think about how long the mud had dragged on.
In another, she saw herself meeting Aiden for the first time—sizing him up, deciding in a heartbeat that he'd help keep people alive, then weaving herself into his orbit as if it had been his idea all along.
"I kept people moving," she said. "That's not a lie. That's survival."
"Yes," the voice said. "For them."
The forest dimmed.
The reflections leaned closer.
"What about you?" it asked.
Myra opened her mouth.
Closed it.
She didn't know what she'd been about to say. Something clever, probably. Something that made her sound stronger than she felt.
"I don't—"
"You don't stop," the reflection said. "Not really. You deflect. You joke. You push. You promise. You never admit you're scared unless it's turned into a punchline first."
The image in the trunk changed again.
She saw herself the night before, in the temporary dorm—dragging her blanket across the floor with exaggerated grumbling, dropping beside Aiden and Nellie, making a joke about traumatized squirrels so Nellie would giggle instead of shake.
"You told them you weren't scared," the reflection whispered. "You were lying."
Myra swallowed. "If I'd admitted how scared I was, Nellie would have cried harder and Aiden would have tried to fix it. That wouldn't help."
"Would it have hurt?" the reflection asked.
She didn't answer.
"Or would it have meant someone else had the chance to pull you forward for once?"
Something hot crawled up her chest.
Anger.
Shame.
Fear.
All tangled.
"This is stupid," she snapped. "What do you want? For me to sit down and pour my heart out to myself? I don't have time for this. People out there are still bleeding from the Hollow. Aiden's doing whatever the Gate did to him. Nellie—"
"Nellie's waiting," the forest said.
This time, it wasn't just one reflection.
Every mirror-tree around her spoke at once.
Hundreds of Myras' mouths moved in eerie synchronization, voices overlapping into a strange, layered chorus.
"She's small," they said. "She's soft. She's terrified. And she trusts you."
The nearest reflection leaned even closer, glass-surface rippling.
"You're afraid you'll fail her," it said. "The way no one failed you."
Myra blinked, stunned. "What?"
"No one told you it was okay to be scared," the reflection said. "You learned how to be the loud one, the bright one, the forward-pushing one. Caravans don't have room for soft, remember? So you carved sharp edges around everything soft."
It smiled sadly.
"Now look at you. Trial candidate. Storm-survivor. Lightning-boy's right hand. Everyone's already decided you're strong."
Branches shivered overhead.
Leaves chimed faintly.
"You could fall apart in front of them," it said, "and they'd still think you were fine, as long as you made it sound like a joke."
Myra's vision blurred.
She blinked hard.
"I don't want them to worry," she said, voice low.
"Lie," the reflections said together.
Her head snapped up. "It's not."
"It's not just that," the nearest insisted. "You don't want them to see how much you need them. Because if they see it… they might leave. Or worse—they might stay and then die anyway."
The forest silence pressed in.
Myra's shoulders trembled.
She thought of Aiden stepping into the Gate with that stupid, calm look on his face.
She thought of Nellie's tiny fingers denting her skin.
Of Runa's quiet, unshakable promise: So I'll crush whoever tries.
She thought of what it had felt like when Aiden didn't come out of the Thorn Gate on time.
The hole.
The slow, horrible realization that maybe, this time, jokes and momentum and sharp edges weren't going to be enough.
"I don't want to lose them," she whispered.
Amber light brightened.
The trees seemed to lean closer.
"Better," her reflection said. "Closer to truth."
Myra swallowed.
She could feel it inside her—the old habit, the urge to soften it, turn it sideways, turn it into something less raw.
She didn't.
"I am scared," she said.
Her voice cracked on the first word.
"I'm scared that if I stop talking, everyone will hear how loud my heart is pounding. I'm scared that if I admit I'm terrified, someone will tell me to sit down, and I don't know who I'd be if I wasn't the one dragging everyone forward. I'm scared that Aiden will look at me differently if he sees how much I need him to come back. I'm scared that Nellie will realize I don't have a plan and she'll stop looking at me like I know what I'm doing."
Her hands shook.
The air wavered.
Amber light flared along the nearest trunk.
Most of all—
"I'm scared," she said, voice barely audible now, "that if I stop lying with my smile… I won't know how to move at all."
Silence.
Then the Hollow breathed.
Every tree in the forest pulsed with light at once, amber veins blazing bright. Reflections rippled, faces warping, twisting—and then, slowly, settling.
One by one, the other Myras stepped back from the glass, their features softening, their eyes losing that predatory focus.
Only one reflection remained close.
Her.
Exactly her.
Mud on her cheek. Hair frizzing. Eyes red-rimmed and raw.
But when that Myra smiled, it looked tired.
And real.
Text shimmered faintly in the air:
[TRUTH ACKNOWLEDGED]
[VEIL ONE: PASSED]
[PENALTY: NONE]
[REWARD: MINOR RESONANCE CLARITY]
Heat brushed her chest.
Not burning.
A gentle warmth, like someone pressing a small lantern behind her ribs.
Her thoughts cleared a fraction. Her heartbeat steadied.
The reflection lifted a hand.
Myra did too.
Their fingers touched the glass.
It felt warm.
It felt like touching her own skin.
"Better," the reflection said. "That's one."
"One what?" she asked.
"One lie you don't have to live inside anymore."
The forest shifted.
Trees slid aside without moving, space rearranging itself. A path opened ahead—narrow, lined with trunks whose mirrors now showed not her face, but distant shapes. Some looked like scenes. Some looked like doors. Some looked like Aiden's silhouette. Some like Nellie's hunched shoulders. Some were dark.
The nearest reflection stepped back into its trunk, becoming just another angle of herself again.
The voice whispered, softer now, as the path brightened.
"Walk forward, Myra Lynell. The Amber Gate is not finished with you yet."
She let go of the glass.
Her hand was still trembling.
But her steps felt steadier.
She pulled in a breath, thought of Aiden in some other trial-space facing storm and teeth alone, thought of Nellie's small, stubborn heart waiting for both of them—
—and walked into the deeper forest of lies.
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