Ethan Hale woke up choking.

  Air tore into his lungs like it had somewhere better to be. He rolled onto his side and retched, dry and violent, fingers clawing at dirt and pine needles. His throat burned. His head rang. For a few seconds, he couldn’t tell if he was alive or in the long, humiliating middle of dying.

  The ground was cold beneath his cheek.

  Not asphalt.

  That was the first wrong thing.

  He lay there until his breathing slowed, until the ringing dulled enough that he could hear wind moving through leaves overhead. The smell came next—wet earth, sap, something sharp and green. No exhaust. No oil. No city rot.

  Ethan pushed himself upright.

  Forest.

  Tall trees, too straight and too close together, their trunks dark and old. Light filtered down in broken shafts, catching drifting motes in the air. He turned in a slow circle, heart thudding harder with every second.

  This wasn’t anywhere he knew.

  The last thing he remembered was the crosswalk. The light changing. His phone buzzing in his pocket. The truck horn—too close, too loud—and then—

  Nothing.

  “No,” he muttered. His voice sounded wrong, thin and swallowed by the trees.

  He checked himself with shaking hands. Arms. Legs. Chest. No blood. No pain beyond the ache in his lungs and a dull pressure behind his eyes. He stood, swaying, then steadied himself against a tree.

  This wasn’t how it was supposed to happen.

  He waited for the other shoe. The voice. The glowing screen. The sense of being watched.

  Nothing came.

  Minutes passed. The forest did not care.

  Thirst hit him all at once, sharp and dizzying. His mouth felt like it had been lined with ash. He swallowed and tasted nothing. Panic followed close behind, tight and familiar, but he forced it down. Panic wasted energy. Panic got people killed.

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  He closed his eyes.

  Out of habit—nothing more—he crouched and pressed his fingers into the soil. He traced a rough spiral, then crossed it once, then twice. The motion was automatic, muscle memory from a hundred pointless repetitions done alone in his apartment at three in the morning.

  A locating rite. Animistic. Embarrassing.

  He whispered the words under his breath, barely audible, already half-expecting the old, familiar disappointment.

  Something shifted.

  Ethan’s eyes snapped open.

  A thin line of light hovered in front of him, no brighter than candle flame. Gold. Steady. It pulsed once, then drifted forward, slow and deliberate, like it was waiting.

  His heart slammed against his ribs.

  “No,” he said. Louder this time.

  The light did not vanish.

  He stood there for a long time, staring at it, mind racing through explanations that collapsed as soon as he touched them. Hallucination didn’t explain the smell of water that suddenly reached him—clean, cold, undeniable.

  He followed.

  The light led him downhill, winding between trees, never touching the ground. When he stumbled, it slowed. When he hesitated, it pulsed, patient.

  It ended at a stream.

  Ethan dropped to his knees and plunged his hands into the water. Cold bit into his skin. He laughed once, sharp and hysterical, then drank until his stomach hurt and his hands went numb.

  Only then did he look back.

  The light was gone.

  He sat there, dripping, staring at the empty air where it had been. His hands shook harder now, not from cold.

  “That didn’t work,” he whispered. “It never worked.”

  The forest did not argue.

  A roar split the sky.

  It wasn’t distant thunder. It wasn’t an animal. It was too big, too layered, carrying weight that pressed against his chest. Birds exploded from the canopy, shrieking. The ground vibrated under him.

  Ethan scrambled to his feet and ran.

  He didn’t know where he was going. He only knew the sound was wrong in a way his instincts recognized immediately. He pushed through brush, ignoring scratches, lungs burning again as the roar came a second time—closer now, accompanied by a flash of orange light that reflected off the leaves.

  He burst from the treeline onto the edge of a cliff.

  Below him, the world was on fire.

  An army clashed in a wide valley, lines broken and reforming amid smoke and spelllight. Bolts of blue and white tore through the air. Explosions bloomed and vanished. And above it all—

  A dragon.

  Not a fairy-tale creature. Not a sleek, clever thing. This was mass and muscle and wings that beat the air into submission. Flames poured from its jaws in a roaring sheet, swallowing men and siege engines alike.

  Another dragon answered it from the far side of the valley, smaller, rider visible on its back, hands raised as magic flared around them.

  Ethan stared, frozen, bile rising in his throat.

  “This isn’t real,” he said.

  The heat on his face said otherwise.

  He backed away from the cliff edge, slow and silent, heart hammering hard enough that he was sure something up there would hear it. He turned and fled back into the forest as another roar shook the sky behind him.

  Branches tore at his clothes. Roots tried to trip him. He didn’t stop running until his legs gave out and he collapsed against a tree, gasping.

  He slid down to the ground and laughed.

  Not because it was funny.

  Because if he didn’t, he was going to scream.

  He had brought nothing with him through the crossing.

  No tools.

  No science.

  No knowledge that won wars.

  Only the things he should never have carried at all.

  And somewhere beneath the noise of spellfire and dragons, something had listened when he spoke.