The problem with Veridia City, Elias Vance decided, was that it was a metropolis built entirely out of caffeine, concrete, and sheer, exhausting momentum. At 7:00 AM on a Tuesday, the momentum was winning.
Elias, 22, dressed in a black apron and perpetually smelling of burnt sugar and espresso grounds, was behind the counter of "The Grind," a boutique coffee shop nestled between a high-end financial firm and a vintage comic book store. He didn't mind the job. It was predictable. Predictable was good.
He slammed a tamper down, compacting a puck of grounds with a precise 30lb of pressure—a measurement he'd memorized weeks ago. "That's one triple-shot oat-milk mocha for Mr. Henderson," he called out, sliding the cup across the polished wood.
Mr. Henderson, a man whose expensive suit looked permanently stressed, grunted, took his coffee, and vanished back into the human current of the morning rush.
Elias leaned back, wiping his hands on a towel. He felt the familiar, dull ache behind his eyes that only four hours of sleep could grant. He'd spent most of the night playing a retro fantasy game, slaying dragons and saving digital kingdoms, an escape that felt increasingly vital given the bland, un-magical reality of his life.
He was just a guy. A guy with a mountain of community college debt, a small, sad apartment that smelled vaguely of garlic, and a talent for steaming milk. He was the anchor of nothing and the hero of no one.
As he reached for the pitcher to start another order, it happened.
The air in the shop—normally thick with the comforting aroma of roasted beans—turned metallic. The high-pitched whine of the espresso machine abruptly pitched downward, sounding like a dying cello string.
For a single, agonizing second, the world fractured.
Elias blinked, and the familiar neon sign outside, The Grind, wasn't neon anymore. It was a tangle of moss-covered, phosphorescent roots, glowing with sickly, purple light. The glass window didn't show the street; it showed a terrifying, impossible vista: skyscrapers bent into impossible spiral horns, their tops swallowed by an orange, churning fog.
The people in the shop didn't move. They were statues—their clothing twisting into strange, woven hides, their faces stretched and alien.
Then, just as suddenly, the sound returned, the metal smell was gone, and the coffee shop was normal. The espresso machine whined healthily. The window showed the normal, miserable street traffic of Veridia City. Mr. Henderson was halfway out the door, still rushing.
Elias froze, his hand still suspended over the milk pitcher. He looked around wildly.
"Hey, Elias? You good?" asked Maya, the cashier, who was scrolling through her phone. "You just checked out for a second. We got a line."
Elias stared at her. She was wearing her standard-issue, sensible eyeglasses. Her face was normal. "Did... did the power flicker?"
Maya glanced at the fully lit pastry case. "Nah. Maybe a headache? You look kind of pale."
A customer, waiting impatiently for his double-shot Americano, cleared his throat.
Elias forced a thin smile, his heart still hammering against his ribs. It hadn't been a flicker. It had been a vision. A hallucination vivid enough to be a memory.
Too many video games, he thought, shaking his head. Too little sleep.
He tried to focus on the task, pouring the milk, but his hand trembled, and he over-aerated it, producing a thick, soap-like foam. He dumped the milk down the sink. Wasteful, but he couldn't serve that.
He started a fresh batch, focusing on the rhythmic hiss of the steamer. He needed to be steady. He had work to do. He had a predictable, dull life to maintain.
As he finished the second latte, crafting a perfect rosetta of foam art, he reached for the small, metal shaker of cinnamon.
His fingers brushed the cold shaker, and he saw it again, but smaller, contained. Under the mundane reality of the stainless steel, he saw a shimmer of fractured silver and pulsing blue light. It was a tiny, intricate mechanism, like the gears of a broken watch, embedded in the metal.
Elias yanked his hand back as if burned.
The tiny fragment of the Aether-Key, still completely hidden in the future, had sent a microscopic tremor across the Veil. Elias Vance, the ordinary young man, had felt it—a silent whisper that said: The clock is running.
He wiped the sweat from his brow, his heart still racing. He picked up the shaker again, gingerly.
It was just cinnamon.
He shook it onto the latte, handed the cup over, and looked out the window at the blindingly normal, mundane, exhausting city. He did not know that, somewhere out in that rush of people, an ancient woman named The Sybil was turning the corner, specifically looking for the bewildered young man whose vision had just confirmed he was the one.
His three years had begun.