I Was The Only Omega In The Beast World Chapter 174: CP:174 The Vision Of Threshold

The light spread from the stones to Alex’s hands, up his arms, across his chest, settling finally in the curve of his belly where the small lives answered with their own glow—faint, golden, pulsing in rhythm with the stones.

Alex gasped. The sensation was overwhelming—not painful, but imnse. As though sothing vast had brushed against the edges of his awareness and was now pressing closer, trying to find a way in.

"Alex." Naga’s voice ca from sowhere distant, filtered through the light. "Alex, your eyes—"

"They’re glowing," Leo finished, and his voice was sothing Alex had rarely heard from him—genuine awe.

He couldn’t see his own eyes, but he could feel them—the strange heat behind them, the way the world had sharpened into impossible clarity. Every blade of grass was distinct. Every grain of soil in the dead circle was visible. And beneath the surface, deep in the earth, sothing was moving.

"The threshold," Alex breathed. "I can feel it."

"What does it feel like?" Zale’s voice was careful, controlled, but there was an edge beneath it.

"Like a door. A door that’s been closed for a very long ti, and sothing on the other side is pushing." Alex pressed his hands harder against his belly, against the stones, against the light. "The babies—they’re helping. They’re reaching through to the stones, and the stones are reaching through them to—"

The light flared.

Alex scread—not in pain, but in surprise, in the overwhelming force of sothing that had been waiting for months suddenly breaking through. The stones lifted from his palm, hovering in the air before him, each one blazing with its own distinct color. They arranged themselves in a circle, spinning slowly, and in the center of that circle, the air began to shimr.

An image ford.

Not solid—more like a reflection in water, or a mory projected onto smoke. But recognizable.

A door.

Massive, ancient, carved from stone that seed to absorb light rather than reflect it. The symbols on its surface were familiar—the sa symbols that had appeared on the artifacts when they activated, the sa writing System had translated in those early days when Alex was still learning what it ant to be a Bearer.

"The threshold," Lucas said quietly.

"Is that what it looks like?" Granite asked.

"That’s what it wants to see," Alex corrected. His voice was steady, though his hands were shaking. "The stones are showing what’s waiting."

The image flickered. The door shifted, and suddenly Alex could see what was behind it—not the door itself, but the space beyond. Darkness. Not the absence of light, but the presence of sothing else. Sothing that had been waiting.

"The shadow," he said. "The threshold leads to the shadow. Or the shadow is trapped behind it. Or—" He shook his head, the distinctions blurring. "They’re connected. The threshold and the shadow are connected."

The image flickered again, and Alex saw sothing else. A figure—not the shadow, but sothing solid. A man, a beastman to be precise. He stood at the gloomy edges of the darkness, eyes locked onto Alex, his posture rigid with sothing that might have been anticipation.

"That’s the Shadow Lord," Alex said, and he didn’t know how he knew, but he knew. "He’s waiting for the threshold to open. He’s been waiting for years."

The light began to fade. The stones lowered back into Alex’s palm, their glow dimming but not extinguishing. The image of the door wavered, dissolved, was gone.

Alex sat in the dead circle with seven warm stones in his hands and a belly full of small lives that had just helped him see sothing he’d never been ant to see.

"We need to tell Drakar," he said. "And Sally. And the snakelings. Everyone. We need to tell everyone what I saw."

Lucas helped him to his feet, one arm around his waist, supporting the weight of his belly. "Can you walk?"

"I can walk." Alex’s legs were steady, even if his hands were still shaking. "I need to write this down before I forget. System would have—" He stopped. Swallowed. "System would have recorded everything. Would have analyzed it. Would have told what it ant."

"System isn’t here," Naga said gently. "But we are. And we rember what you saw. We’ll figure it out together."

The walk back to the sanctuary was slower than the walk out.

Alex’s body had decided that the morning’s activities had been sufficient and was now registering its displeasure in a variety of creative ways. His lower back throbbed with every step. His hips ached with the particular pain of ligants stretching to accommodate a body that was changing faster than it could adjust to. The small lives inside him, exhausted by whatever they’d done with the stones, had settled into a heavy stillness that was almost more worrying than their earlier activity.

Leo noticed him favoring his right side. "Lean on ."

"I’m fine—"

"You’re limping. Your scent is sharp with pain. And the babies are quiet—too quiet." Leo’s arm slid around his waist, taking half his weight without waiting for permission. "Let us carry you when we can. You’ve done enough today."

Alex wanted to argue. He’d spent a year being the one who carried—the artifacts, the responsibility, the weight of keeping everyone alive. Being carried felt like failure.

But his body was making the argunt for him. His vision had gone slightly gray at the edges, and there was a strange buzzing in his ears that he recognized from the early days of his first pregnancy—the sound of blood pressure dropping, of exhaustion catching up, of a body that needed rest more than it needed pride.

"Just to the ridge," he said. "I can make it to the ridge."

Leo’s arm tightened. "To the sanctuary. To the sleeping alcove. To the pile of cushions Sally has been adding to every day because she saw you wince three days ago and decided that was unacceptable."

"Sally is—"

"Sally is your sister and she loves you and she’s been reading every book in Lucas’s archives about beastman pregnancies and she’s terrified and trying not to show it." Leo’s voice was matter-of-fact. "We all are. The difference is that she expresses it by building cushion forts. I express it by not letting you walk when your body is giving up."

Alex closed his eyes. The buzzing in his ears was getting louder.

"Okay," he said.

Leo picked him up.

It was easier than Alex expected—being carried. Leo was strong, and he was careful, and the position cradled Alex’s belly in a way that eased the pressure on his lower back. The small lives stirred slightly, reassured by the movent, and Alex felt the tension in his own chest ease a fraction.

Naga moved ahead, clearing the path. Lucas flanked them, his pale eyes scanning the treeline. Zale’s sphere drifted close, cool mist washing over Alex’s face, keeping the nausea at bay.

By the ti they reached the sanctuary, Alex was half-asleep.

He registered the courtyard—the familiar sll of woodsmoke and cooking, the sound of Sally’s voice sharp with worry, the snakelings’ questions overlapping in a wave of sound. He registered Granite’s massive form blocking the entrance to the alcove, and Drakar’s presence sowhere above, and the warmth of the cushions Sally had indeed been accumulating.

Then he registered nothing at all.