Naomi’s entire world begins to spiral from what seems like the smallest of details: her wedding ring has vanished without a trace. At first, it feels like nothing more than a careless mistake, but as she tears through her apartment in a panic, the truth hits her with crushing weight—the ring is not just a piece of jewelry. It is a symbol of safety, of her marriage, of the family she is desperately trying to hold together, and its disappearance feels like an omen, the first crack in a fragile glass pane about to shatter. Sweat clings to her skin as she rummages through every drawer, her heart pounding with the growing dread that someone may have taken it, or worse, that fate itself is sending her a cruel warning. Relief briefly washes over her when her phone buzzes with a message from June—she has found the ring while cleaning. Yet even in this moment of supposed calm, Naomi cannot shake the unease gnawing at her. Why June? Why now? Was this discovery simply chance, or the opening act of something far darker that is waiting to erupt?

June, too, is being dragged into a nightmare she never asked for. After lending a sympathetic ear to Ted and hearing the shattered confessions of his ruined marriage, she suddenly finds herself marked as the enemy by Leslie, Ted’s furious and jealous partner. What begins as whispers of resentment erupts into a public spectacle when Leslie lashes out at June in a crowded café, slapping her across the face and humiliating her before stunned onlookers. It should have ended there, but Leslie is not content with a single act of cruelty. She launches a campaign of destruction, poisoning June’s reputation with malicious rumors, sabotaging her work, and turning her daily life into a minefield of fear.

In Beyond the Gates, every flicker of light is followed by a storm, and for Naomi and June, the trials they have endured are nothing but the opening chapter of a much darker saga that threatens to consume them all.