What Lies Beyond

What Lies Beyond

In-universe date	Era Nova, Early January, Year 6
Real-world date	2026-10-06
Author	Percival van der Berg
Category Type	Character News

It had been months since we first began studying the obsidian.

What started as a collection of strange black stones had led us back to the ruins where I had first discovered them. From there came countless sketches, measurements, failed reconstructions, and more questions than answers.

We had learned that the obsidian alone was not enough.

We had discovered that something had once been used alongside it.

And eventually, we had found that something.

Copper.

Even then, success had not come easily. We spent days refining the apparatus, repeating experiments, adjusting every component we could think of. Most attempts accomplished nothing. Others produced little more than a faint hum or a brief distortion in the air.

But we continued.

We had come too far to stop now.

Another arrangement was prepared in the workshop. The obsidian frame stood at the centre, surrounded by the copper apparatus we had spent so long refining.

I checked the measurements one final time.

“Begin.”

The mechanism was activated.

At first, nothing happened.

Then came the hum.

It grew louder than before, spreading through the workshop as the copper fittings began to vibrate. The air within the frame warped violently, and a faint purple light appeared between the obsidian blocks.

I stared in disbelief.

The light spread across the entire frame.

Then the gateway opened.

A strange, shifting surface now filled the space within the obsidian. Its deep violet colour seemed almost alive, moving constantly while unfamiliar sounds echoed from somewhere beyond it.

Nobody spoke.

For a moment, all we could do was stare.

After weeks of investigation, we had finally succeeded.

The ruined structure had not been some forgotten monument.

It had been a gateway.

I stepped toward it, my journal still in hand. I wanted to understand what lay beyond, even if only through observation.

I reached out.

My hand stopped.

There was something there.

I pushed forward again, but an invisible resistance prevented me from passing through. I tried from another angle. Nothing changed.

One of my associates attempted to cross the threshold himself.

He stopped just as I had.

We tried again.

And again.

The gateway remained open, but something prevented us from entering.

I stood before it for a long while, staring into the unknown world beyond.

We had spent weeks asking what the structure was.

Now we knew.

The answer only raised a far greater question.

Where did it lead?

I looked back at the workshop.

We had reached the limits of what our current equipment could tell us. We lacked the instruments necessary to properly study the gateway, the materials to investigate its strange barrier, and the knowledge required to understand whatever forces were allowing it to function.

For now, we would have to wait.

The gateway would be carefully documented and secured until we could return with better equipment and a more complete understanding of what we had created.

I closed my journal and looked back toward the portal one final time.

When I first discovered the ruined structure, I had wondered what purpose it had once served.

Now, after weeks of study, experimentation, and failure, I finally had my answer.

We had uncovered something that had been hidden from the world for who knows how long.

A gateway to somewhere beyond our own.

And although we could not yet cross it, I knew one thing with certainty.

This was only the beginning.