The New Gate Novels & Stories

His real voice slipped through for half a breath. The next trouble came through the side door, where bad news usually entered. In the First Gate, symbols had weight. It stained sleeves, cracked floors, moved through crowds, and made ordinary people choose sides before they understood the question. The freeway dust pressed against every window while paper wings marked the next turn of the case. Nothing about the Final Gate War felt clean. It felt like another emergency arriving before the last one had been wiped off the stones. Then the Gate Opener dragged it under.

“Ember.” “Mm?” “We need to discuss the gate.” “Do we, though?” I don’t look up. “Or could the gate simply be a beautiful, unspoken mystery between us, a thing we never—” “It’s six feet tall.” “It’s abstract.” “Ember.” He comes into the room, and there’s a slow, deliberate danger to the way he moves, and I finally look up, and his face is fighting very hard to be stern and losing at every seam. “A council elder photographed my front gate. She is going to show people. She told me to my face — I want you to understand she said this directly to my face, in the driveway — that she intends to use it as the background of her holiday cards.”

On New Year’s Eve, Kian Newman never came home. Instead, he had someone deliver a container of frozen ravioli and sent me a single message: "Stay safe this year." I had barely locked the screen when a photo popped up in the company group chat. Isabel Wilkinson, Kian's assistant, had posted it. It was a lavish holiday dinner spread across the table, every dish clearly homemade. The caption read: "Someone spent all day cooking so I could have a taste of home. Love you."

Oh, so that's the calm before the storm, I believe. Just then the door opened with a boom which echoed around the now silent room. The storm is finally here. They were all looking weirdly at the door with their jaws almost touching the floor and the surprise still evident on their faces since they shouted out loud. Okay! I wasn't expecting such a reaction but what's with the door? They looked even more shocked when the door flew open with a bang.

Eon brought them to a tree house. Or what seemed to be a tree house because the tree house was just an entrance because they had to enter another door and crossed a garden and entered a metal gate covered with some vines that if you don’t know where the gate was, you’ll never find it. Also, it seemed that for the gate to be opened, you had to have the password to it. In Eon’s case, the gate asked for his thumbmark. A camera also swirred and focused on their faces before the metal gate swung open with a loud thud. Lina realized how thick and heavy the metal gate was with how loud the noise it produced when it opened.

the gatekeeper asked through the microphone above the two-way communication buttons in the guard room. Keyara heard the question from the supervisor and responded. "Please open the gate. I want to go out!" Keyara shouted in front of the CCTV screen, which seemed to have a pan-tilt-zoom function. The speaking gatekeeper immediately pressed the button to open the gate, causing the four-meter-high gate to move and spread. As soon as the gate partially opened, Keyara rushed out eagerly. After successfully passing through the partially opened gate, Keyara quickly walked along the eastern side of the house. The house on that side had a black fence that covered the entire front area.

As we stood in the quiet of the mother world, Toby’s voice crackled through the long-range link from the Grand Navigator’s vessel. "Mom! Dad! You need to see this," Toby said, his voice filled with a frantic, adventurous excitement. "I’m at the edge of the Andromeda Reach. The First Gate didn't just lead to the core. It’s a network. I’m picking up a signal from outside the galaxy. It’s rhythmic. It’s sixty beats per minute."

Rain misted Evelyn’s face as she stepped onto the overlook. Rowan came beside her. Gabriel stood on her other side, silent. For once, neither man spoke. Below, the eastern gate was visible through a gap in the terrain. Closed. Barricaded from the outside. Vehicles had been piled before it, not like refugees waiting to enter, but like a desperate wall built after something had already tried to get through. Warren stared at it, pale beneath the dirt on his face. “That gate is never sealed from the outside,” he said.

To leave behind all of Creation and be utterly unmade so as to free the God within ourselves. The Gate itself appeared to have some sort of gravitational pull. The closer we got to it, the more it seemed to draw us in, as though we were boats on an incoming tide. It remained closed for the whole of our approach and, I must confess, the thought of opening it terrified me. I had no idea what would happen if it were to swing wide. What might lie beyond it, or what would happen to all that lay before it on this side. I had even less of an idea how one would go about opening the Gate. What sort of key would unlock it? More importantly, what key would lock it again—and keep it locked—if it were to

The path curved sharply, then— A tall metal gate rose in front of them, dark and cold, guarded by two cameras. Nathan stopped the car. “Stay quiet. I’ll try the codes.” Noah leaned closer as Nathan typed the first sequence. Nothing. Another code. Still nothing. “Nathan…” Noah whispered. “Wait.” Nathan typed a longer string of numbers. Silence. Then— Click. The gate slid open. Noah let out a shaky breath. “You’re brilliant.” Nathan gave a humorless smile. “No. Victoria is just predictable.” They drove in. The gate closed behind them with a heavy thud.