The air tasted wrong.
That was the first sign - before the shimmer, before the tear, before the screaming began. The air carried that metallic tang that meant reality was about to break.
"Formation!" she roared, blade already in hand. "Second gate incoming!"
Around her, the others moved with the precision of soldiers who'd fought this battle a thousand times before. Shields locked. Spears leveled. Mages took position at the anchor points without needing orders.
They'd been mid-engagement when the taste came. The first gate still poured creatures into the ravine - twisted things with too many limbs, carapaces that turned steel, mandibles that could shear through armor. Her forces had been pushing forward, methodical and brutal, the way they'd learned over centuries of endless war.
Now the air behind them was tearing.
"Command!" Lieutenant Saevris appeared at her side, blood streaming from a gash across his temple. "We're boxed! First gate ahead, second gate-"
"I can see it," she snapped, watching reality split open like a wound. The shimmer was already widening, that terrible wrongness spreading as another world pressed against theirs.
Two gates. They'd faced two gates before, but never like this. Never caught between them with nowhere to retreat.
"Rearguard, pivot!" she commanded. "Split formation - half on each gate! Mages, barrier priority on the new breach!"
The creatures from the first gate sensed weakness. They surged forward, a wave of claws and teeth and alien hunger. Her soldiers held - barely. Shields cracked under the assault. A soldier to her left went down, dragged under by something.
Behind them, the second gate was opening faster than it should. The tear widened, and she could see through to the other side - a world of crimson sky and writhing vegetation that moved with predatory intent.
"It's accelerating!" one of the mages shouted over the din. "The energy saturation - the first gate is feeding the second!"
Of course it was. Gates attracted gates. They'd known that for centuries, but knowing and experiencing were different things.
The second gate vomited its first wave.
These creatures were different - smaller, faster, covered in barbed quills that launched like projectiles. They hit the hastily-formed rearguard in a chittering swarm.
"Hold the line!" she bellowed, but the line was already fracturing.
Two fronts. Too many enemies. Not enough soldiers.
She made the calculation in heartbeats: stay in formation and get crushed between two floods of monsters, or break formation and maneuver.
"Mobile defense!" she ordered. "Anchor squads hold position! Strike teams -rotating assault pattern!"
The formation shattered into controlled chaos. Squads of five peeling off, hitting weak points in the monster waves, falling back before they could be overwhelmed. It was desperate tactics, the kind you used when proper strategy had failed.
It was also the only reason they lasted more than five minutes.
She led the first strike team herself, blade singing as it carved through chitin and flesh. Her soldiers moved with her - perfect synchronization born from fighting together for longer than most civilizations existed. They hit the creatures from the first gate like a spear thrust, cut deep, withdrew before the mass could surround them.
"Second team, rotate!" she commanded.
Another squad surged forward, hitting a different angle. The pattern held -barely. Each strike team buying seconds for the anchor squads to stabilize, for the mages to maintain barriers, for anyone to catch their breath.
But the creatures kept coming.
From both gates now, endless rivers of alien horror. Her soldiers were falling. Not many - they were too well-trained, too experienced for that -but each loss mattered when they had no reinforcements.
"How long until the new gate stabilizes?" she shouted at the nearest mage.
"It won't!" the woman screamed back, barely audible over the roar of combat. "The energy interaction - both gates are destabilizing each other! If they collapse-"
She didn't finish. Didn't need to. Collapsing gates released catastrophic energy bursts. If both gates went critical while they were standing between them-
"Prepare for emergency withdrawal!" she commanded. "We need to -"
The world exploded.
Not metaphorically. The space between the two gates ignited with raw, uncontrolled energy as they began tearing into each other. Reality itself seemed to scream.
The shockwave hit like a physical wall.
She saw her soldiers thrown like leaves in a storm. Saw creatures from both gates incinerated mid-charge. Saw the barriers her mages had raised shatter like glass.
Saw Lieutenant Saevris disappear into a surge of impossible light.
"FALL BACK!" she roared, but her voice was lost in the cacophony.
The gates were collapsing. Both of them. Feeding on each other in a cascade failure that turned the ravine into a maelstrom of unleashed dimensional energy.
She tried to run. Tried to reach her soldiers. But the energy was everywhere now, tearing at reality, pulling at anything caught in its field.
A creature - she couldn't even tell which gate it came from - lunged from the chaos. She pivoted, blade coming up, but something slammed into her from behind. Another shockwave. Or a collapsing barrier. Or reality itself giving way.
She hit the ground hard. Tasted blood. Tried to rise but her leg wouldn't respond.
Around her, the world was ending. Gates collapsing into each other, creatures burning, her soldiers -
Where were her soldiers?
She tried to shout orders but her lungs wouldn't fill. Tried to stand but something was wrong with her body. Everything felt distant, muffled, like she was underwater.
The energy swirled closer. Violet and crimson and colors that shouldn't exist, all mixing into a vortex that was pulling everything toward its center.
She saw figures in the chaos - some running, some fighting, some already still. Couldn't tell who they were. Couldn't tell if they were hers or creatures or just shadows cast by dying reality.
Get up, she commanded herself. Get up. Your soldiers need you. Get up.
Her body didn't listen.
The vortex pulled harder. She felt herself sliding across the ravine floor, drawn toward the collapsing gates like debris in a flood.
Get up.
But the darkness was rising, and her vision was narrowing, and somewhere in the chaos she thought she heard someone screaming her name -
Or maybe that was just the sound gates made when they died.
The world went violet.
Then crimson.
Then black.
Diary recovered from the Northern Gate Archives.