The trio, despite their otherworldly origins and the chaos surrounding us, were surprisingly easy to talk to. Once the initial shock of meeting actual non-humans wore off, I realized how disturbingly normal they seemed. Their casual banter, the way they worked together, even their ridiculously human names—it all felt eerily familiar. Like hanging out with friends back home, except two had pointed ears and metallic skin. Yep, totally familiar.

  They'd commandeered several bottles from behind the bar, dragging them to a scarred wooden table where they examined the burnt section of the tavern with a focused intensity. Each took turns sampling from bottles that could've contained anything from premium whiskey to gasoline, and honestly, watching Cassie's face contort after each sip suggested it was mostly the latter.

  The acrid smell of charred wood mixed with whatever paint-stripping spirits they were testing created an oddly comforting tavern atmosphere. If you ignored we were trapped in a pocket dimension.

  I dropped into a chair across from Chas, trying not to wince as my makeshift curtain-toga rode up.

  Now that I could fully see the surrounding room, the burn pattern made my skin crawl. A perfect circle scorched through both ceiling and floor, with a geometric precision that didn’t seem natural. Nothing in nature burned that way. Hell, nothing on Earth burned that way without serious industrial equipment.

  "Two days," Felix said, answering my unspoken question while poking at the char marks. His finger came away covered in soot. "Two full days wandering this freaky spirit realm, trying not to think about being trapped."

  “We’re not trapped,” Cassie called out, then knocked back another shot of mystery booze. "Fuck me, this one tastes like regret and... is that cinnamon?"

  According to their rambling explanations, they'd entered through a proper portal. Some massive energy surge had slammed the door behind them. Stranded, just like me, except they'd been marinating for two days.

  Apparently, I wasn't the only one completely clueless about our predicament.

  "The tavern's definitely the epicenter," Chas explained, his weathered face creased with concentration. He gestured at the burn marks with his flask. "Whatever happened here, happened big. We hoped there'd be another exit, or at least some answers."

  His calm tone carried an undercurrent of uncertainty that made my stomach perform an uncomfortable flip. If the guy who pulled magic rods from thin air was worried, what chance did I have?

  "We were walking for nearly a day, majorly creeped out by how empty everything was," Cassie said, abandoning her poison-testing to gesture wildly. "Just dead silence everywhere. No birds, no bugs, no nothing. Then—BAM!"

  She threw her arms out so dramatically she nearly smacked Felix in the face.

  "This giant energy beam just hammers into the sun! Punched a hole clean through. Maybe an hour ago? Time's weird here."

  I nodded, shuddering at the memory. “I saw the sun has a hole in it.”

  "Had," Felix corrected helpfully. "Pretty sure it's collapsing now."

  "Oh good, that's so much better."

  "Didn't expect to find you here, kid," Chas said. "Normally, people just turn a corner, take a wrong step, and boom—spirit realm. They don't get dragged in by..." He waved vaguely at the geometric burn pattern. "Whatever the hell this is."

  "There's a shitload of ambient mana in the air," Felix observed, now on his hands and knees examining the burn edge. "So whatever happened was definitely magical."

  Cassie sidled up next to him, taking an exaggerated sniff that made her sneeze. "I'd say it feels like more of an ass load," she said with a grin that promised trouble.

  "You'd certainly know," Chas called out, not even looking up from his flask.

  The tavern went silent except for the faint crackling of settling wood. Felix's shoulders started shaking. Then he broke, laughing so hard he nearly face-planted into the soot. Cassie whirled around, her death glare so intense I swear the temperature dropped.

  "I have swords," she said sweetly, her hand drifting toward her hip where, yes, she absolutely did have swords. Plural. "Sharp ones. Recently sharpened. Did I mention sharp?"

  Chas threw his hands up in mock surrender, though his grin suggested he regretted nothing. "It was right there!"

  "Mana?" I interrupted, the word cutting through their banter like a record scratch. "You guys keep saying mana. Like... magic mana?"

  All three heads swiveled toward me with perfect synchronization. Creepy.

  Chas snapped his fingers, pointing at me like I'd just solved a riddle. "Oh, right, translation issues? Maybe you call it Chi? Cosmic Energy? The Force? Different worlds, different words, same floaty magic stuff."

  "I know what it is," I said hesitantly, my voice doing that embarrassing thing where it goes up an octave. "But it's not real... is it?"

  Their looks made me feel judged.

  "Of course it's real," Cassie said slowly, like she was explaining colors to someone. "What did you think was making Felix's lightning?"

  "So how did you get here, exactly?" Chas asked, suddenly. His tone stayed casual, but his eyes sharpened.

  I froze. My mouth opened and closed like a fish discovering air. Somehow, in that moment, I felt like I'd just massively fucked up.

  These three seemed trustworthy enough—or at least as trustworthy as spirit-realm exploring strangers could be. They were stuck here too, which put us in the same terrific sinking boat. But mana? Actual, real magic?

  And how the hell could I recognize a symbol for radiance when I'd never seen it before? That little detail now gnawed at me like a splinter in my mind.

  My hand shot out, grabbing one bottle on the table. I spun it around, squinting at the label in the flickering light.

  Because, of course, that was the one I grabbed. The universe was still laughing at me.

  Cassie had been drinking it without dropping dead, and she looked human enough. Human-ish. Human-adjacent?

  I popped the cork—it came free with a sound like a dying gasp—and took a massive swig before my brain could list all the reasons this was phenomenally stupid.

  The taste hit me in how only something over-proof can. I coughed, sputtered, and slammed the bottle back down.

  "Smooth," Cassie observed. "Very dignified."

  "Okay. Okay. Story time."

  I told them everything.

  The words tumbled out like someone had opened a dam. The domed room that defied physics. Fractals that writhed and danced like living things. That damned light rune that had basically downloaded itself into my brain without asking permission. The golden circuits that had wrapped around me like a forceful security blanket. And finally, the delightful sensation of being hurled face first into the tavern.

  As I spoke, Felix abandoned his burn-pattern investigation to claim a chair, producing a small notebook from somewhere and actually taking notes. Cassie straddled a chair backwards, her expression morphing from skeptical to intrigued to "what the fuck?" Even Chas, who'd been playing it cool, straightened in his seat like someone had jabbed him with a cattle prod.

  "I don't understand what you mean by 'circuit,'" Chas said when I finally ran out of words. His casual demeanor had evaporated, replaced by laser focus. "Like a path?"

  I paused, mental gears grinding. How do you explain electronics to people who might not have discovered electricity?

  "Like... a set of pathways for energy?" I said slowly, choosing each word like I was defusing a bomb. "Uh, imagine a closed loop where energy flows between multiple... runes? But the loop branches into other paths with even more runes, creating this big, interconnected network. Like..." I gestured vaguely, trying to pull an analogy from thin air. "Like veins in a leaf?"

  Felix's eyes went wide.

  "I've never heard them called circuits," he said, spinning his bracer around with practiced ease. "But did it look like this?"

  The bracer projected a complex rune into the air above our table, and I nearly knocked over the Deathroot Wine reaching toward it. The image hovered between us—a dense cluster of interweaving lines and symbols that pulsed with soft inner light. Like looking at a constellation that someone had tangled in a knot.

  "Yeah!" I leaned forward, probably too eager. "But imagine that, except way bigger. Like, a million more runes crammed in there."

  "Ben, that's a Soul Seal—my Soul Seal. Well, a candidate, anyway." His voice carried the disbelief you reserve for crazy conspiracies. "It's three distinct runic concepts blended into one unified purpose. People train their entire lives to bind just one. Something a million times more complex would be..."

  "Impossible?" I suggested.

  "I've been to a lot of worlds," Chas interjected, giving Felix a meaningful look. "Haven't seen proof that anything is really impossible yet. Just different flavors of highly improbable." He turned back to me, and I felt that studying gaze again. "You speak like you've never heard of monsters, runes, or mana before today."

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  "I've heard of them," I said carefully, feeling like I was navigating a conversational minefield while blindfolded. "But mostly in books. Stories. Games. Where I come from, we don't have..." I gestured broadly at everything. "Any of this. Really."

  The change was instant and terrifying.

  That sensation of rebellion I'd felt from Chas—like standing next to a very polite tornado—suddenly focused on me with the intensity of a laser beam made of pure skepticism. It pressed against my thoughts, probing at the edges of my mind like fingers testing a lock.

  "Bullshit," he said, his voice thundering through the tavern. "No mana, no monsters... How the fuck does life even function without mana? You're full of shit, kid!"

  My heart attempted to exit through my throat. Words tumbled out in a desperate scramble, tripping over each other in their rush to save my ass.

  "Well, maybe we call it something else! Dark matter? Quantum fields? I don't know!" My hands moved frantically. "We don't have magic—we have science! We study things, figure out how they work through observation and experimentation. Repeatable results! Peer review! But we have stories about magic—thousands of them. Millions! Every culture, every time period. Movies, books, games, these weird forums where people pretend to be wizards—"

  As suddenly as it had come, the pressure vanished. The absence left me feeling hollow, like someone had removed a weight I hadn't realized I was carrying.

  Chas leaned back in his chair. He shared one of those loaded looks with Felix and Cassie—the kind that contained entire conversations in a glance.

  "He either has a stronger will than Diana," Chas said slowly, a grin spreading across his weathered face, "or he's telling the truth. I'll be damned—you're human, aren't you?"

  My heart skipped a beat, and I looked at Cassie.

  "The fuck's a human?" Cassie asked, and I just stared at her.

  "Wait," I managed, pointing at her. "You're not?"

  She scoffed, rolling her eyes. "I thought you looked plain. Like someone forgot to finish making you. And the way you speak—all proper and shit—is too fucking fancy to be a Gaian."

  "Gaian," I repeated dumbly. "That's what you are?"

  She nodded emphatically, making her braids create a percussion symphony. "Children of the First Ones," she said with a practiced kind of pride.

  "Chas and I are Florans," Felix added helpfully, like that explained anything at all. "We're literally the most common people in the Multiverse. Like, statistically impossible to not have met one. So you knew that, right?"

  I shook my head slowly, and Felix gaped at me.

  "Florans?" I ventured. "Like... Flora? Plants?"

  Felix nodded slowly, like he still couldn’t believe my answer.

  "Florans are born from world-trees, kid," Chas explained, apparently taking pity on my obvious confusion. "So any world that has life usually has Florans. It's like... universally true."

  "Except Earth, apparently," I muttered.

  "That where you're from?" Cassie leaned forward, and I caught a whiff of whatever she'd been drinking. It smelled like poor choices and cinnamon. "Urth? That's a weird fucking name for a world."

  Before I could defend my planet, Chas's attention snapped to the doorway. His entire posture shifted to tense in a split second.

  "Beacons first," he announced, somehow plucking three meter-long silver rods from absolutely nowhere. "You can ask Ben more questions when we're out of here. Assuming we get out. Which we will. Probably."

  Felix and Cassie moved like someone had flipped their "serious mode" switches. Tables and chairs went flying aside with purposeful efficiency while I stood there gaping at the spot where Chas had just violated several laws of physics.

  "We'll use the ambient mana inside the burnt area," Felix explained, already twisting his rod with practiced movements. Golden runes flared to life along its length, casting dancing shadows that seemed to move independently. "Should give us the range we need to get home."

  A sharp metallic click, and a vicious-looking spike extended from the rod's bottom. Felix raised it high and—CRACK!

  He slammed it into the floorboards with enough force to make the entire building shudder.

  "For fuck's sake, Felix!" Chas bellowed, physically wincing at the damage. "Those things cost more than your Bracer! We're trying to use them, not turn them into very expensive nails!"

  Felix had the grace to look sheepish, rubbing the back of his neck. "Sorry, just... excited to actually use one? They're so shiny."

  "You just..." I gestured weakly at where Chas had manifested the rods. "From nothing. Just..." My hands made increasingly desperate motions.

  "Probably looks like that, yeah," Chas said, apparently finding my confusion amusing. He pushed forward the lobe of his pointed ear—which was a lot pointier up close—revealing an orange earring. A tiny blue sapphire in the center flickered in a way that hurt to look at. "Mana sanctum. Storage artifact from the previous age. Still useful for keeping things you don't want to lug around. Like these, for example."

  He reached into that same nowhere-space and pulled out white linen pants and a matching shirt. The fabric looked soft, clean, and most importantly, not made from tavern curtains.

  "Let's get you out of that crime against upholstery," he said, tossing the clothes at me. "Wouldn't want to give Lana more reasons to file complaints. She'd bitch for days if we showed up with some ugly naked guy. No offense."

  "Hey!" I caught the clothes reflexively. "I'll have you know this is a quality curtain. Premium thread count. Who's Lana?"

  "Most things found in a spirit realm won't transfer when we leave," Chas explained. "So you'd likely pop out ass-naked in her lab. And nobody wants that. Trust me."

  "Lana's a Vildar," he continued, measuring out a space about a meter high with his hands. "Beast-folk. About yea high, beady eyes that judge your life choices, white or brown fur they let you pet, mildly psychotic conflict resolution methods, and hopelessly addicted to sweets."

  I blinked. "Sweets? Like... candy? That's weirdly specific for a racial trait."

  "Then you've never met a Vildar," Cassie chuckled, driving her beacon into the floor with considerably more restraint than Felix.

  "And things don't follow through because this realm isn't real?" I asked, trying to piece together rules that seemed to change every five minutes.

  "Actually—" Felix started, probably about to launch into a detailed explanation.

  "It's complicated," Chas cut him off with a sharp gesture. "If the original entrance was still on Ark, the transfer would be clean. But using beacons? The destination is set, but the route we take to get there is gonna be pure chaos. Sort of depends how old this realm is, how it was formed, whether it's naturally occurring or manufactured, the phase of the moon, what you had for breakfast—"

  He stopped mid-ramble, gaze locked on the doorway.

  The light had changed. Where there'd been twilight before, now absolute darkness pressed against the doorframe like a living thing. Not the darkness you get at night—darkness with intent.

  "Uh, guys?" I pointed with a shaking finger. "Why does it look like someone turned off the outside?"

  Without warning, an icy shockwave blasted through the tavern.

  The windows screamed, spider web cracks racing across the glass like frozen lightning. The floor bucked like an angry bull, and I barely kept my feet as bottles launched themselves from shelves in a symphony of destruction. Soot erupted from the burnt area, creating a momentary indoor snowstorm of ash that coated everything in grey.

  Chas moved.

  I didn't see him stand. Didn't see him run. One second he was sitting, the next he was at the door, leaving only an afterimage and the vague impression that the laws of physics definitely didn’t account for it.

  Felix and Cassie jogged after him like this was normal. I followed, trying not to step on the growing minefield of broken glass while clutching my new clothes.

  It wasn't hard to spot what had stolen their attention and, apparently, their ability to speak.

  The wounded sun in the sky—you know, the one with a hole punched through it—had apparently decided that wasn't dramatic enough. It was collapsing in on itself in a cascade of dark purple light that made my eyes water just looking at it. Streams of molten plasma spiraled inward, leaving technicolor afterimages burned into my eyes.

  It looked like a massive eye. Purple iris, black pupil that seemed to drink in light, crackling with energy that definitely wasn't friendly, sat in the sky. It stared down at us with the kind of cosmic indifference that made you realize just how small you really were.

  "Cassie, Felix, get that last stake in the ground!" Chas commanded, his voice cutting through our collective shock. "We need to go. Now. Yesterday would be better!"

  Neither of them moved. They stood frozen, transfixed by the nightmare above, like deer caught in headlights the size of a planet.

  "It's an eye," Cassie whispered, and for the first time since I'd met her, genuine fear bled through her voice. "It's a fucking eye. Why is it a fucking eye? Eyes shouldn't be in the sky! That's not where eyes go!"

  Chas drew in a deep breath that seemed to pull in more than just air. He made a quick shoving motion toward us, and that sensation of rebellion flared into something entirely different.

  Warmth flooded through me like liquid sunshine, eating away the icy terror that had been clawing up my spine. Instead of feeling invasive, it felt like someone had wrapped me in a blanket and handed me hot chocolate. After everything that had happened today—the kidnapping, the dimension-hopping, the complete breakdown of reality as I knew it—I desperately needed all the comfort I could get.

  "They call that the Eye of Aryman," Chas said, jerking his thumb at the cosmic horror like it was a disappointing piece of modern art. "Named after the dead God of Spirit. It's not a real eye—probably—but it does mean we're about to be completely, thoroughly, catastrophically fucked. So. Beacon. GO!"

  The spell broke. Felix snapped out of his trance first, spinning on his heel and sprinting back into the tavern like his ass was on fire.

  Chas produced a wooden case from his impossible earring storage and shoved it at Cassie hard enough to make her stumble. "Armor. Now. If we're still here when that thing finishes whatever it's doing, you're going to need it. And probably a drink, but armor first."

  He turned to me, eyes landing on Winchester. "New guy? What's with the stick? Can you bash things with it? Please tell me you can bash things with it."

  I hesitated, gripping the staff tighter. The smooth wood felt warm under my fingers, almost alive. "Uh, fight with it? No. I mean, if I needed to, yes? Maybe? I just found it under the bar."

  Chas held out his hand. "Let me see."

  I handed Winchester over, immediately feeling like I'd just given away a security blanket to a stranger.

  Chas examined the staff with the reverence of someone handling either a priceless artifact or a very dangerous explosive. His hands ran along the smooth wood, and I swear I saw his expression soften for just a moment.

  "When a spirit realm voids out—when the sun goes completely dark," he explained conversationally, like we weren't standing beneath an apocalyptic eye, "creatures called Glids show up. They feed on the ambient mana, consume what's left of the realm, then presumably go back to whatever nightmare realm that spawned them."

  "Glids are real!?" Cassie's shout echoed from inside the building.

  When Chas reached Winchester's orb, something strange happened. Soft white light, textured like heat waves over summer asphalt, rolled from his hand to hover just above the metal surface. The staff responded with a deep, resonant hum that felt more like a greeting than a sound.

  Without ceremony, he tossed the staff back to me. I caught it awkwardly, nearly dropping it in my scramble.

  "Hit 'em with that end," he said, pointing at the orb with a grin that belonged on someone about to do something inadvisable. "You'll be fine. Probably. The stick likes you."

  "The stick likes me," I repeated flatly. "Great. Good talk."

  We rushed back into the tavern to find Cassie struggling into elaborate leather armor that seemed to have more buckles than was strictly necessary. Felix knelt on the floor, measuring distances like he was planning to demolish the building.

  "Yes, Glids are real!" Chas barked. "No, I don't want to stick around for show and tell! Ben—clothes! Now! Felix—beacon! Faster! Cassie—stop fighting with that chest piece, it goes on backwards!"

  "It does not go on backwards!" Cassie protested, definitely wearing it backwards.

  I snapped into action, shedding my curtain-toga with maximum efficiency. The linen clothes slipped on like they'd been tailored for me—soft, comfortable, and mercifully not made from heavy burlap. They even had pockets.

  "Ben, give me a hand?" Felix called from where he knelt, looking frazzled. Sweat beaded on his metallic brow, which raised interesting questions about Floran biology I didn't have time to contemplate.

  "What do you need?" I asked, dropping beside him.

  "Just hold the beacon steady. I'm dropping the Radiance rune when this goes in to conserve mana." He positioned the spike carefully.

  "Holding things I don't understand is basically my specialty," I said, gripping the silver rod. It thrummed with energy that made my muscles tense.

  Felix chuckled despite our circumstances. As he shifted position, several small pouches tumbled from his vest, scattering across the scorched floorboards.

  "Oh shit," he muttered, scrambling to collect them.

  I helped gather the scattered items, noticing one pouch had spilled open to reveal a simple silver ring. Nothing fancy, just a plain band that caught the light.

  "It's from my mother," Felix explained quietly, his voice dropping to something more vulnerable as he carefully tucked everything away. "We don't have mana sanctums like Chas does. Few people do. Chas is..." He paused, glancing toward the door where Chas stood silhouetted against the nightmare sky. "He's something else. This might get intense, but we'll be fine. He's gotten out of worse."

  It sounded like he was trying to convince both of us. My grip on the beacon tightened, and I felt a small amount of the tension ease up a bit.

  And then the light went out.