The transition felt like drowning in light. Reality stretched, compressed, inverted. Colors that shouldn't exist flickered at the edges of my vision. For one endless moment, I existed everywhere and nowhere, a consciousness suspended between dimensions.
Then the world snapped back into focus.
The Clockwork Arboretum sprawled before us in all its impossible glory.
We stood on a platform of interlocking brass gears, each tooth the size of a dining table. The gears rotated slowly, grinding against each other with a sound like distant thunder. Above us, trees the height of skyscrapers reached toward a sky that wasn't quite a sky, their branches heavy with copper leaves that chimed softly in a wind that smelled of rust and roses.
