The transition was not a walk, nor a fall; it was an absolute, violent erasure of the world he knew.
One heartbeat, Marcus Hale was standing on the concrete step of The Slipgate, the Texas humidity clinging to his skin like a wet towel, the smell of asphalt and exhaust in his nose. The next heartbeat, the concrete vanished from beneath his boots. The red glare of the neon sign, the idling delivery truck, the reassuring presence of Eira and Liri.. it was all scrubbed away, replaced instantly by a crushing, alien pressure.
He did not stumble. His boots found a grip on something soft and yielding, sinking an inch into damp, spongy earth.
Marcus froze.
His first instinct, honed by years of combat patrols and firefights in dusty hellholes, screamed at him to drop, to find cover, to return fire. But his body remained rigid, locked in a position of hyper-aware stillness. He didn't panic. Panic was a luxury for civilians. Instead, he executed a rapid, internal systems check, his mind racing through the OODA loop.. Observe, Orient, Decide, Act.. while his body remained a statue.
The first thing he noticed was the silence.
It wasn't the quiet of an empty room; it was a heavy, physical weight pressing against his eardrums. The air here was thick, viscous, and cold.. much colder than the Weedfield morning he had just left. It felt as though he had been submerged in a deep, stagnant pool. The sounds of his own breathing, usually sharp and distinct, came to him muffled and distant, distorted as if traveling through water.
Underwater, he thought, his pulse thudding a slow, heavy rhythm against his ribs.. Muffled.
He moved his eyes first, scanning the periphery without turning his head.
He was standing in a forest, but it was like no forest he had ever seen on Earth. The trees were titanic, their trunks as wide as houses, stretching up into a canopy so dense it strangled the sky. The bark was black.. a deep, volcanic glass color that looked slick and wet. Drifting between these massive pillars was a mist, thick and curling, glowing faintly with suspended flecks of gold that spiraled lazily in the stagnant air.
This was the scene. The exact scene he had glimpsed through the diner window when reality had smeared and glitched. He was inside the hallucination.
His hand flew to his hip, a reflex faster than thought.
Empty.
His fingers clawed at the denim of his jeans, finding only the fabric of his pocket. No holster. No pistol. He reached over his shoulder, seeking the reassuring weight of the M16 strap. Nothing.
Damn it.
He was a soldier without a weapon in a hostile zone. He felt a phantom weight on his chest for gun what was not there.. the "just in case" hardware he had locked away in the cabinet back at the diner. He was naked, tactically speaking. Just a man in an apron and a t-shirt, standing in a world of monsters.
He forced his breathing to slow, fighting the muffled, underwater sensation that threatened to disorient him. Hold still. Listen.
He kept his feet planted close together, minimizing his profile, and began a slow, deliberate pivot. He turned by shifting his weight from heel to toe, grinding into the mossy floor without lifting his boots, ensuring he made no sound Moving 360 degrees.
Dense trees. Mist. Shadow. The illuminating gold flecks in the fog were the only source of light, casting the world in a perpetual, dreamlike twilight. There were no paths here, no signs of the Pig Men, no recognizable landmarks.
He stopped his turn, facing the direction he thought he had come from. The direction where, seconds ago, a diner door had been.
"Eira?" he whispered.
The word died on his lips, swallowed instantly by the moss and mist. It didn't echo. It just fell flat, suffocated by the heavy air.
He reached his hands out, fingers splayed, pushing into the empty space in front of him. He pressed against the air, hoping to feel the cold glass of the diner window, the wood of the doorframe, or the warmth of Eira's skin.
She has to be right there, he thought, a desperate tightness gripping his chest. "I didn't walk. I didn't move. I just... shifted."
His fingertips met nothing but damp, cold mist. He waved his arms in a wider arc, searching for a seam, a ripple, a temperature differential.. anything that would indicate the threshold he had just crossed.
Nothing.
He closed his eyes for a second, focusing intensely. He tried to summon the feeling of the "sky-bond" Eira had placed on him. She had pressed his hand to her heart; she had told him their paths were twisted together.
"If I'm cut, you bleed," she had said. "If I die, you feel it."
He focused on that invisible tether, trying to feel her presence. He imagined her standing just feet away, on the other side of an invisible wall, her green eyes wide with shock, Liri clutching her arm. He imagined the smell of the diner.. the coffee, the bacon, the sanitizer.
For a fleeting second, he felt a phantom warmth on his palm, like the ghost of a touch, but it faded as quickly as it came, washed away by the chill of the forest.
He opened his eyes. He was alone.
He looked down at his feet. The ground was carpeted in a thick, velvety moss that seemed to bruise purple where his boots compressed it. He realized with a jolt that he had left the girls alone. Eira had her magic, yes, but she was exhausted from the fight the day before. Liri was a child in spirit, if not in years. And the Glimmucks... Pearl and Nix were thieves, survivors. Without him there to anchor the defense, what would happen if the Pig Men returned?
The delivery driver. The man was still out there with them. A civilian.
Marcus clenched his fists, his knuckles turning white. The helplessness was a bitter taste in his mouth. He had to get back.
"Think, Hale," he hissed to himself.
He looked at the mist again. The gold flecks. They weren't just drifting randomly; they seemed to be flowing, moving in a subtle current like a slow-motion river of light.
He took a cautious step forward, lifting his boot high to clear a twisted black root that snaked through the moss like a petrified vein. He placed his foot down, testing the weight. Solid.
He took another step.
The muffled, underwater sensation in his ears shifted slightly. A sound penetrated the gloom. It wasn't the heavy, wet thud of boots this time. It was softer.
Chime. Clink.
It sounded like wind chimes made of glass, or... coins hitting a counter.
Marcus froze mid-step, balancing on his back leg. He turned his head slowly, tracking the sound. It was coming from his left, deeper into the tree line.
He didn't have a weapon, but he had his hands, and he had the lethal training of a Sergeant. He lowered his center of gravity, crouching slightly, and began to move toward the sound. He moved with the predatory grace of a hunter, placing the outside edge of his boot down first, rolling to the inside, making no noise on the damp moss.
As he moved, the air grew colder, and the smell of ozone sharpened, stinging his nostrils.
He reached the trunk of a massive tree, its bark rough and cold against his shoulder. He pressed himself against it, using the black wood as cover, and peered around the edge.
There, in a small clearing illuminated by a cluster of the glowing blue flowers he had seen from the window, stood a structure.
It wasn't a building. It was an archway.
It looked ancient, made of two curving tusks of gray stone that met at a sharp point twenty feet in the air. The space between the stone tusks shimmered with a restless, oily energy.
And standing in front of it, facing away from him, was a figure.
It wasn't a Pig Man. It was too slender, too tall. It wore a cloak of tattered gray fabric that merged with the mist.
Marcus held his breath, his muscles coiled like springs. He scanned the ground near his feet for a weapon.. a rock, a heavy branch. His hand closed around a fist-sized stone, slick with moss. It was pathetic compared to an M16, but it could crush a windpipe if delivered with enough force.
The figure turned.
It wasn't an elf. It wasn't human.
It was a face made of smooth, white porcelain.. or bone.. without features. No eyes, no nose, no mouth. Just a blank, white oval staring into the forest.
Marcus tightened his grip on the rock. He had stepped out of his diner to check the road, and he had fallen into a nightmare. But Marcus Hale didn't run. He didn't break.
He waited, watching the blank-faced entity, and listened to the muffled, underwater silence of the world that had stolen him.
The silence was the first thing that violated his senses. It wasn't just the absence of noise; it was a physical weight, a thick, suffocating blanket that smothered the world.
One second ago, the diesel engine of the delivery truck had been ticking over with a rhythmic, metallic clatter. Texas cicadas had been screaming their mid-morning song from the dry grass across the street. The air had been heavy with the scent of exhaust fumes, frying bacon, and sun-baked asphalt.
Now, there was nothing.
Marcus Hale stood frozen, his boots planted in a substance that felt like wet velvet. He didn't move. He didn't breathe. His heart hammered against his ribs.. thud-thud, thud-thud.. and in this new, oppressive quiet, the sound of his own pulse was deafening, echoing wetly inside his skull like he was submerged in deep water.
He was underwater. That was the sensation. The air pressed against his eardrums, dense and viscous.
He kept his feet locked together, refusing to stumble, refusing to give in to the vertigo that spun the world sideways. He was a soldier. Panic was a luxury he couldn't afford. If you panic in a kill box, you die.
Slowly, agonizingly slowly, Marcus turned his head.
The delivery truck was gone. The cracked pavement of the parking lot was gone. The diner, with its peeling paint and neon sign, was gone.
He was standing in a cathedral of shadows. Titanic trees, their trunks as wide as houses and black as coal, stretched up into a canopy so dense it strangled the sky. The air was a twilight gray, cold and damp, smelling of ancient mold, crushed pine, and ozone. Drifting through the massive trunks was a mist.. thick, curling tendrils of fog that glowed with suspended flecks of gold. The gold particles didn't just float; they spiraled, moving with a lazy, hypnotic intent, illuminating the gloom with a faint, bioluminescent light.
"Eira?"
He tried to shout, but the sound died on his lips. The air swallowed his voice instantly, dampening the acoustics so that his own name for her sounded miles away, muffled and distorted.
He reached his hands out, fingers splayed, grasping at the empty air where the doorframe should have been. He clawed at the mist, hoping to feel wood, glass, metal.. anything solid.
Nothing but cold, wet vapor.
He spun around in place, keeping his center of gravity low, his hands instinctively dropping to his waist for weapons that weren't there. He was unarmed. He was alone. And he was standing in the exact landscape he had glimpsed through the diner window.. the Slipgate world.
The realization hit him with the force of a physical blow to the gut. He hadn't walked anywhere. He hadn't chanted a spell. He had simply stepped across a threshold that shouldn't exist and fallen through the cracks of reality.
Control, he told himself, forcing his breathing to slow. Assess. Orient.
He was a ghost in this world. A glitch. But ghosts didn't have heartbeats this fast.
He shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans, seeking any tool, any advantage. His fingers brushed against lint, a crumpled receipt, and then.. hard, warm metal.
The coin. The hesh-kel.
He wrapped his fingers around it. The moment his skin made contact with the dark, engraved metal, a pulse of heat shot up his arm, shocking in the damp cold of the forest. It wasn't the ambient heat of a pocket-warmed object; it was active, generating its own thermal rhythm.
Marcus pulled it out. In the gloom of the forest, the coin seemed to drink the meager light. The symbol carved into its face.. the circle intersected by three lines.. seemed to vibrate against his palm.
You shouldn't have interfered, the old woman had said. Every witness has a price.
Eira had called it a marker. A target. It told the Hunters where he was. It made him a piece on the board.
A marker.