I grabbed my backpack from where the dragon had set me down, pulled out my phone, the fishing line, and the small bell. Then I dug around until I found two sticks — not in the bag, on the ground near the cave entrance, half-buried in the moss.
(Old habits.)
I jammed one stick into the soft earth on the left side of the cave mouth and the other on the right. Wrapped the fishing line between them, about ankle height, and tied the bell to the middle of the line so it would ring if anything tripped it.
The dragon had said this area was safe. I believed him. Mostly.
(But I'm still on guard with my new surroundings. Never be too careful.)
I stepped over my own trap and walked into the cave.
The first five feet were dark. Just rock and moss and the smell of damp earth, cool air pushing against my face like the cave was breathing out. I turned on my phone's flashlight and swept it across the walls — rough stone, a few roots poking through from above, nothing remarkable.
Then the lanterns lit.
One by one, right side of the tunnel, spaced about six feet apart. Small flames sitting in iron brackets bolted to the stone. But the fire was wrong — blue, not orange. Steady, not flickering. And the heat was off. I held my hand near one and felt warmth, but it was thin, distant, like the memory of heat rather than the real thing.
(These aren't normal fires. There's something else in them. Something that feels like — )
I didn't have the word for it yet. Magic felt too simple. Too much like a label slapped on something I didn't understand. But the flames were definitely not burning fuel. There was no smoke, no soot on the brackets, no char on the stone above them. They'd been here a long time, and they'd been burning the whole time, and nothing about that was natural.
I turned off my flashlight. The blue flames gave enough light to see by — a cool, even glow that turned the stone walls into something almost beautiful. The tunnel stretched ahead of me, straight and wide enough for two people to walk side by side. The ceiling was high — eight feet, maybe nine. Whoever had built this place hadn't built it for humans my size.
(Or maybe they had. Maybe they'd built it for something that could be both.)
I checked my phone. The screen was still glitchy — the display kept twitching at the edges, thin lines of static crawling across it like ants. I tried making a call. Nothing. Tried again. Dead air. Then I opened the browser and — it loaded. Slowly, painfully, like it was pulling data through a straw, but it loaded.
"Phone calls aren't going through," I muttered. "But the internet's working. Sort of."
(How is that even possible? I'm in another world. There shouldn't be any signal at all. Unless the fairy ring connection goes both ways — not just for people, but for data. Or unless my phone is picking up something here that it's interpreting as a network.)
I put the phone back in my pocket. That was a problem for later. Right now, I had a cave to explore.
The tunnel went straight for about twenty feet before it opened up. Not into a room — into a junction. The main tunnel continued forward, but branching off on both sides were smaller tunnels, each one framed by a stone archway with a nameplate carved into the keystone.
The first one on my left said LIVING AREA.
I stepped through.
It was bigger than I expected. The ceiling was higher here — vaulted, with the blue lanterns spaced along the walls in a pattern that felt deliberate, almost decorative. The room was furnished. Not lavishly, not like a palace, but furnished — a bookshelf against the far wall, half-full of books with cracked spines. A desk made of dark wood, heavy and solid, with a chair pushed in neatly. Two more chairs near the center, angled toward each other like they were waiting for a conversation. A low table between them. A woven rug on the stone floor, faded but intact.
(Someone lived here. Someone who read books and sat in chairs and had conversations.)
I ran my fingers along the bookshelf. Dust, but not thick. Like the room had been sealed well enough to keep most of it out. The books were in a language I couldn't read — the characters looked like a cross between Arabic calligraphy and something older, more angular. Beautiful, but meaningless to me.
I moved on.
The next tunnel said KITCHEN.
This one was more practical. A large clay stove built into the wall, with an oven compartment below it and a flat cooking surface on top. A wooden table with four chairs in the corner — sturdy, simple, the kind of furniture that gets made once and lasts forever. Pots and utensils hung from hooks on the wall, all of them made from a dark metal I didn't recognize.
And at the back of the kitchen, another tunnel branched off. The nameplate above it was worn — the letters half-eroded, like water had been dripping on them for years. I could make out two words: STORAGE or COLD ROOM. The rest was gone.
I took one step toward it and stopped.
(No.)
I didn't know why. There was nothing wrong with the tunnel — it looked the same as the others, same stone walls, same blue lanterns. But something in my gut pulled back. A feeling, not a thought. Like the air coming out of that tunnel was a different temperature than the rest of the cave. Not colder. Just — wrong.
(I'd rather not go down there.)
I backed up, turned around, and walked out of the kitchen.
"So many tunnels," I said, mostly to hear my own voice. "So little time."
I passed several more archways without stopping — each one with a nameplate I couldn't fully read, each one leading to a room I didn't have the energy to explore. The main tunnel kept going, the blue lanterns marching ahead of me in their steady, patient line.
(Come to think of it, these blue flames give off the same amount of light as regular fire. They just feel different. Like they're powered by something else.)
I was about to turn back when I saw it.
One more archway, set slightly apart from the others, the stone around it a shade darker than the rest. The nameplate was clearer than the others — sharper edges, deeper carving, like whoever had made it wanted this one to last.
STUDY ROOM.
I stepped through.
And stopped breathing.
The room was enormous. Not just big — cathedral-big. The ceiling disappeared into shadow above me, and the walls were lined floor to ceiling with bookshelves, every shelf packed tight with books of every size and color. Leather bindings in black and brown and deep red. Cloth bindings in blue and green. Some books were thin as pamphlets. Others were thick as bricks, their spines cracked and faded from use.
In the center of the room sat a desk. Heavy, dark wood, like the one in the living area but larger. A chair behind it, pushed back slightly, like someone had stood up and walked away and never come back. Books were stacked on the desk — not shelved, not organized, just piled there in the middle of being read. And at the far end of the room, another door. Closed. No nameplate.
(What is this place?)
I walked to the desk. The dust here was thicker — a fine gray layer covering everything, undisturbed. I could see the shapes of things beneath it. A pen. A small jar, probably ink. A piece of paper with writing on it, the words hidden under the dust.
And the books. A stack of them, five or six deep, all bound in dark leather. I picked up the one on top — black binding, heavier than it looked — and blew the dust off the cover.
A cloud of gray billowed up and I coughed, waving it away with my free hand. When it cleared, I looked at the cover.
The title was stamped into the leather in silver lettering. The first word was damaged — scarred, like something had scraped across the surface and taken the letters with it. But the rest was clear.
_______ SPATIAL MAGIC
I stared at it.
(Spatial magic. Like — space? Like moving things through space? Like storage?)
I opened the cover. The pages were thick, cream-colored, and the text inside was — English. Not the angular script I'd seen on the other books. English. Clear, readable, slightly old-fashioned English, like a textbook from a hundred years ago.
(Why is this one in English when nothing else is?)
I didn't have an answer. I didn't care. I had a book about magic, written in a language I could read, in a world where magic was real. The questions could wait.
I flipped through the first few pages. Diagrams. Instructions. Illustrations of hands making gestures, with arrows and annotations. The first chapter was titled "The Summoning Square: A Practitioner's First Portal."
(A portal. A square you summon out of thin air. You reach in and store things, and they stay exactly as they were — temperature, freshness, everything preserved.)
My hands were shaking. Not from fear this time.
I closed the book and tucked it under my arm.
(I'll read this properly later. When I'm not running on thirty-plus hours of no sleep and whatever my brain is doing with these migraines.)
I looked at the closed door at the far end of the room. It sat there in the shadows, plain and unmarked, giving away nothing.
(Not today.)
I turned and walked out of the study.
The main tunnel stretched in both directions — deeper into the cave on one side, back toward the entrance on the other. I pulled out my phone. The clock said 4:30 PM. EST, technically, but it was the only time I had.
"Not even sure if this is the right time for this world," I said. "But I'll go by mine until I figure it out."
(Right. Time to head out. Make that fire pit. He said he'd bring dinner, and I said I'd make the fire.)
I turned left and walked back toward the entrance, the blue lanterns lighting my way, the book warm under my arm like it was alive.
I stepped out of the cave mouth into the late afternoon light — and caught my foot on the fishing line.
The bell rang. I went down hard, one knee hitting the dirt, the book sliding out from under my arm.
"Darn it — I forgot that was there."
I sat there for a second, half-laughing, half-annoyed, the bell still swinging on the line. My own trap. I'd walked right into my own trap.
(Smooth, Heather. Real smooth.)
I got up, brushed the dirt off my knees, and noticed a sting on my forehead. I touched it — my fingers came away with a tiny smear of blood. A small cut, probably from a rock when I fell.
(Great. Add it to the list.)
I walked over to the river and knelt down at the edge. The water was so clear I could see my reflection — messy hair, dirt on my chin, and a thin red line across my forehead where the cut was.
I splashed water on my face, washing off the dirt and the dried sweat and the last thirty-something hours of everything. The cold hit my skin and I gasped — not from pain, but from how good it felt. Clean water. Cold water. The kind of simple thing you never think about until you don't have it.
I looked at the cut in my reflection.
"At least it'll heal in a couple of days," I said. Then I sighed, because talking to my own reflection in a river in another dimension was apparently my life now.
I picked up the book, tucked it back under my arm, and turned to face the clearing.
(Now what.)