The Avalon gate frame stood in the deepest level of Ouroboros headquarters, in a hall we had built for it and never once shown to anyone outside the company.
It did not look like much when it was dormant. A ring of pale crystal twelve metres across, braced in a cradle of dark steel, its surface etched with lines so fine they only appeared when the light caught them at an angle. Around its base sat four squat cylinders, the collars, each one humming at a pitch just below hearing. Cables ran from them not to the city grid but to a bank of aetherite cells along the far wall: our own power, stored in our own crystal, owing nothing to anyone.
Kali had been right. If we had drawn a single watt from Luminalis to open this, Brightforge's rebalance logic would have found it and thrown everything she had through the line.
