The battered phantom stone door hung in the center of the black pillar of light, the remaining seal engravings on its surface flickering like a neon tube about to lose power.
But it was becoming solid.
The edges of the frame changed from translucent to grayish-white stone, the texture spreading inward bit by bit. The black aura squeezing through the gap grew thicker and thicker, running down like melted asphalt.
A sound came from behind the door.
It wasn't speech.
It was the sound of chains dragging over stone, heavy and slow, over and over, each scrape carrying the piercing screech of metal.
Goten stood at the edge of the pit wall, craning his neck back to stare at the door.
"Are these things buying in bulk now? One door isn't enough, so they want to open another."
The chains grew louder. A length of black finger squeezed through the gap, its knuckles thick, its armor plates shaped exactly like those of the two guardians he had just smashed.
A mass of black-armored fingers clawed out through the gap, forcibly prying it another inch wider.
Goten's brow furrowed.
Not because of those hands.
It was because the Ki inside him was moving.
Not the way it moved when he circulated it himself, but as though something outside was tugging it along. The presence emanating from the door had formed some kind of resonance with his own Ki. Energy surged uncontrollably from his dantian toward his skin, heading in one clear direction: straight toward that phantom door.
"...Pulling me?"
Goten glanced down at his right hand. A faint golden glow covered his palm, not released by him, but drawn out by the door.
The metal platform beneath his feet was still pulsing. With every pulse, a little more Ki leaked out