The portal chamber was a place of profound silence and immense, contained power. It was a vast, circular room where the cold air hummed, vibrating in my teeth and bones like a plucked lute string.

  The walls were not stone but a seamless, black material covered in a lattice of glowing silver runes that pulsed with a slow, rhythmic hum, like the heartbeat of a sleeping god. In the center of the chamber, there was no archway or door. There was only a shimmering, unstable tear in the fabric of reality itself—a vortex of swirling, silent colors that defied logic.

  Dust motes that drifted too close to its edge were not sucked in; they were simply annihilated in tiny, silent flashes of light.

  The Game Master was waiting for us by the portal's edge. The chaotic energy seemed to bend around him, leaving him in a small pocket of perfect, bureaucratic stillness.

  “The entry point is a ruin north of the village of Oakhaven,” he said, his voice not needing to rise to be heard over the thrumming of the portal. “That is your first destination. Find the village. Gather your bearings. Liam, your reconnaissance begins the moment you arrive.”

  “So, what’s the kill-count record for this place?” Faelar asked. He gave the massive, double-headed axe on his shoulder—Bessie—a series of short, eager chops in the air. The heavy steel whooshed ominously. “I like to have a goal to aim for. Bessie gets hungry.”

  “Your goal, Faelar Stonefist,” the Game Master replied, his tired eyes fixing on the dwarf, “is to not get your entire team killed before the first sunrise. Try to consider that a personal best.”

  “Let me guess,” Liam’s voice was a lazy drawl as he adjusted the new bandolier of knives across his chest. “The locals are friendly, the weather is lovely, and there are no giant, man-eating insects?”

  “Assume the opposite on all counts,” the Game Master said flatly.

  He looked at me, his eyes holding mine for a long moment. “Remember your role, Kaelen. You are the anchor.”

  His gaze swept over the rest of the team—the drunk, the thief, the gardener, and the mad scientist.

  “Try not to destroy the entire continent before your second day. Good luck.”

  He gestured towards the vortex. There was no ceremony. No fanfare. Just a hole in the world.

  “Well, lads,” Faelar boomed, “into the giant, glowing arsehole of the universe we go! Who’s buying the first round on the other side?”

  He went first, squaring his shoulders and marching into the shimmering chaos with a defiant grunt.

  Liam followed with a fluid, cat-like grace, giving a final, theatrical bow to the Game Master before stepping backward into the light and vanishing.

  Willow took a deep breath, clutching her pouch of seeds. Her face was serene. She walked in as if stepping into a garden, her small form swallowed by the light.

  Elmsworth, muttering about the theoretical implications of non-Euclidean travel and adjusting the sleeping chicken on his shoulder, shuffled in after her.

  I was the last. I gripped my spear, feeling the leather wrap against my palm. I took one final look at the familiar grey stone of the Citadel—the only home I had known for half my life—and stepped into the void.

  It was not a step. It was an unmaking.

  My discipline screamed. The fall was a silent, vertigo-inducing plunge through an endless, starless night. My senses were torn away one by one, leaving only the cold, hard logic of my training to keep my consciousness from shattering into a million pieces. I was a point of order in a sea of chaos.

  For Faelar, the experience was physical. He felt a pressure like a mountain squeezing him through a keyhole. It was claustrophobic and deeply, physically unpleasant, a violation of his very nature. He gritted his teeth, his knuckles white on the haft of Bessie, and endured by imagining he was headbutting the universe.

  Liam’s consciousness was scattered like a handful of thrown sand. It was a dizzying rush across a thousand points at once. He saw fleeting glimpses of other worlds—a city of brass floating in a sea of fire, a forest of crystalline trees under a purple sun, a silent, grey world of ash and dust—before being violently snapped back together.

  Willow felt the life-force of countless worlds brushing against her soul. Joy, sorrow, birth, and death. It was a million billion lives lived and lost in a single, overwhelming wave of empathy that brought tears to her eyes.

  Elmsworth was utterly fascinated. He was not a passenger; he was a scientist observing a car crash from the inside. He tried to analyze the trans-dimensional physics of the journey even as his physical form was being twisted and stretched through the very fabric of space-time, scribbling frantic, invisible notes on a psychic notepad in his mind.

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Then, as suddenly as it began, it was over.

  Reality reasserted itself with violent force.

  I was spat out of a similar shimmering tear, stumbling forward. Gravity grabbed me, and I landed hard on my hands and knees in thick, cloying mud.

  The air hit me first. It was heavy, humid, and filled with the cloying, sweet smell of decay mixed with the sharp, metallic tang of ozone.

  Around me, the others were picking themselves up, groaning and cursing.

  “By my ancestors’ hairy balls,” Faelar roared, pulling his face out of the mud with a loud, wet squelch. He wiped slime from his beard. “That was unpleasant. I taste purple.”

  We were in a forest, but it was unlike any I had ever seen.

  The trees were black and gnarled, their branches twisted into agonized shapes as if they had died screaming. They dripped a thick, grey sap that sizzled faintly where it hit the ground.

  The earth was a mire of black mud and gnarled roots that looked like skeletal fingers breaking through the soil.

  There was no sunlight. The sky was a bruised canopy of swirling clouds. The only light came from strange, bioluminescent fungi that clung to the tree trunks, casting the entire swamp in an eerie, shifting glow of sickly blues and purples.

  And it was quiet. Utterly, unnaturally silent. No birds. No insects. No rustle of unseen creatures. It was the silence of a graveyard.

  My training slammed back into place, a welcome structure in the disorienting newness.

  I pushed myself to my feet, the mud sucking at my boots.

  “Report!” I barked. My voice sounded harsh and flat in the oppressive quiet.

  “Everyone sound off! Faelar, Liam, secure the perimeter. Willow, check for magical threats. Elmsworth, are you… are you taking notes?”

  “I am attempting to catalogue the unique bio-luminescence of this fungal species!” the wizard chirped. He was already poking a pulsating purple mushroom with the end of his staff.

  “It appears to be a non-photosynthetic organism with a self-sustaining arcane energy source! The magical radiation here is off the charts!”

  He looked at Nugget, who was perched on his shoulder.

  The chicken, who had been a calm slate-grey upon our departure, was now a flickering, sickly green color. She looked radioactive.

  “Remarkable,” Elmsworth muttered, holding a monocle to his eye. “The ambient magic is causing a rapid fluctuation in Nugget’s chromal state. She is reacting to the necrotic radiation. I must document this. She is effectively a Geiger counter with feathers.”

  “Never mind the bloody mushrooms, wizard!” Faelar grumbled, spitting mud. “This whole world smells like a troll’s armpit. Let’s find this Oakhaven place and get a proper drink.”

  Despite his complaints, Faelar hefted Bessie. The giant axe looked terrifyingly at home in this grim place. He began a slow, steady sweep of the area around the defunct portal.

  Liam didn’t respond verbally. He was already moving. He scrambled up one of the twisted trees, his movements a silent, fluid dance. He perched on a high branch, his sharp eyes scanning the oppressive canopy, knives ready in his hands.

  Willow was kneeling. Her palm was pressed against the corrupted soil, her eyes closed. She looked pale, sweat beading on her forehead.

  When she looked up, her eyes were filled with pain.

  “The earth is in pain here,” she said, her voice trembling. “It’s not just the plants. It’s the soil itself. It feels… sick. Like a fever that won’t break. Something is poisoning it from deep below. It hurts to touch it.”

  A sharp, clear whistle cut through the air from above.

  It was Liam. He was pointing deeper into the swamp.

  We moved towards his position, Faelar and I taking point, weapons raised.

  About a hundred yards from our entry point, the silence was broken by the visual evidence of violence.

  Half-sunk in the black mud was a broken wooden cart.

  One of its large wheels was shattered, the spokes sticking out like broken ribs. Its contents—sacks of grain and a few simple farming tools—were spilled and scattered across the dark earth.

  The mud around it was churned up, clear signs of a recent, desperate struggle.

  Liam dropped silently from a branch, landing in a crouch without a sound.

  “Happened within the last hour,” he said. His voice was a low whisper, devoid of his usual mockery. He was all business now.

  “Tracks of three, maybe four villagers. They were moving fast, running. They were attacked by at least two large hostiles. Heavy, cloven hooves. The ground is too soft for a clear print, but they were dragging something. Or someone.”

  Faelar knelt, his nose close to one of the deep, cloven tracks. He took a long, deep sniff, ignoring the stench of the mud.

  “Demons,” he growled, a deep rumble of hatred vibrating in his chest. “I can smell the brimstone under all this rot. Faint, but it’s here. It’s the same stink as the ones in the quarry back home.”

  My eyes scanned the scene, my mind piecing it together. An ambush. Farmers, likely from Oakhaven, attacked on their way home.

  Willow let out a small gasp.

  She had drifted toward a patch of brambles. Her eyes were fixed on something small and pale nestled in the mud.

  She knelt and gently, reverently, picked it up. It was a simple, hand-carved wooden doll of a little girl. Its dress was stained with mud, and one of its arms was missing.

  “There were children,” she whispered, her voice barely audible. She clutched the small toy in her hand as if it were a holy relic. Her eyes flashed with a sudden, fierce anger I hadn’t seen before.

  The evidence was clear. A trail of deep tracks and heavy drag marks led away from the cart, deeper into the oppressive gloom of the forest.

  As we stood there, taking in the grim tableau, a sound sliced through the unnatural silence like a razor blade.

  It was a scream.

  A single, high-pitched scream of pure terror, originating from the direction of the trail.

  It was abruptly cut short.

  I looked at the trail. Then I looked at the faces of my team.

  The confusion was gone. The chaos was gone. The banter was dead.

  Faelar’s face was a mask of grim fury, his knuckles white on Bessie’s haft.

  Liam’s hand rested on the hilt of a dagger, his eyes cold and sharp, calculating angles of attack.

  Willow’s gentle features were hardened, her jaw set, clutching the wooden doll.

  Even Elmsworth had stopped his note-taking. He shoved his parchment into his robe and gripped his staff, a strange, dangerous light in his ancient eyes. Nugget, sensing the shift, hunkered down, her green feathers bristling.

  The mission had found us. Oakhaven and reconnaissance could wait. These people could not.

  I made my first command decision on Xylosian soil.

  “We’re following that trail,” I said, my voice hard as steel. “Now.”