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Ethan Cole's alarm buzzed like a wasp in his ear.
He groaned, slapped at his phone until the noise died, and rolled onto his back. Another morning. Another gray stretch of hours waiting for him. Twenty-two years old, with a degree he didn't care about and a job he hadn't yet found, Ethan felt less like a man and more like a placeholder in the world.
He dragged himself up, staring at the faint glow of his laptop screen across the room, its tabs filled with half-read articles, fantasy forums, and the kind of "what if" discussions that passed for company at 3 a.m. What if magic were real? What if there were worlds beyond this one? He had always liked those questions. Liked them more than the reality of empty job applications and the echo of his parents asking, So what's next?
Ethan pulled on a hoodie, shoved earbuds into his ears, and headed out for his daily walk. The city was half-awake: buses huffing at corners, coffee shops grinding beans, neon signs still buzzing against the dawn. He wandered without purpose, his playlist drowning the world—until the lights went out.
Not just the street lamps. Not just a block.
The entire city.
A hush fell, heavy and unnatural. His music cut off. His phone screen went black. And then—silence. Not the normal kind, but an all-consuming stillness, as though the world had been muted.
"What the—"
The air shimmered. It was like looking through heat waves on asphalt, except it spread across the sky, bending light into rippling colors. A sudden pull yanked at Ethan's chest, not physical but deeper, like invisible hands reaching inside him.
Panic rose. He tried to move, but his body was already dissolving—his fingers unraveling into threads of light. His scream never left his throat.
Darkness swallowed him whole.
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When Ethan opened his eyes, the world was wrong.
He lay on rough earth beneath a violet sky streaked with two suns. A forest stretched in the distance, its trees silver instead of green, their leaves shimmering like metal in the breeze. Strange birds wheeled overhead, their wings glowing faintly.
Ethan sat up fast, heart hammering. "Where… am I?"
That was when it hit him.
The sound. Every sound.
He heard the buzzing of insects half a mile away, the drip of water deep underground, the flutter of wings slicing through air. His breath was thunder in his ears. He could see each vein in the leaves, every grain of dirt beneath his hands, every ripple of wind bending the grass. The air carried scents sharp and overwhelming: damp soil, wildflowers, the musk of unseen animals.
His senses had exploded into something beyond human. Tenfold sharper. Too sharp. He clutched his head, gasping, as the world assaulted him with detail.
"Calm… calm down," he whispered, his own voice deafening.
It took minutes before he could focus enough to breathe without flinching. Slowly, painfully, he learned to narrow his attention—like adjusting a camera lens—until the chaos dulled into something manageable.
Only then did he notice the other detail.
A faint glow drifted across the ground in swirling patterns, like currents of light weaving through the soil and trees. Ethan blinked, realizing he wasn't just seeing—he was sensing. The world itself hummed with energy, and his body responded instinctively, as if part of him already knew how to read it.
"Magic…" The word left his lips like a secret.
And in the silence that followed, a whisper rode the wind. Not sound exactly, but something deeper, threading into his mind:
The stranger has crossed the veil.
The prophecy begins.
Ethan staggered to his feet, pulse racing. He had no idea where he was, or why he had been dragged here—but something had marked him already. Something that felt ancient, dangerous, and very, very real.
The ground trembled beneath him. From the forest's edge came the snap of branches, heavy footsteps moving closer. Ethan's newly sharpened senses picked up the scent of fur, the growl of a throat too large for any wolf he'd ever known.
He swallowed hard.
"Great. First day in Fantasy Land… and I'm already on the menu."
The shadows shifted. And the hunt began.
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