Judith lifted the mug to her lips again, the coffee now lukewarm as it slid down her throat. The familiar bitterness blended with the smell of damp earth, where the rest of the group sat drinking in the lazy silence of another early shift under the open sky.

  Amit shattered the quiet.

  “A kaiju would still be better,” he said, propping his elbow on the table. “And when one shows up here, all of you owe me that bet.”

  George let out a short laugh.

  “If some giant monster appears here, thinking about your bet is going to be the last thing on our minds, Amit. Pretty sure you watched too many movies when you went back to ‘civilization’ on leave.”

  A few chuckles. A few tired head shakes. Same conversation as always, theories, exaggerations, jokes made to drag the boredom out of their bones.

  Eventually, one by one, the group drifted off to start their routines.

  Judith’s tasks were the usual: maintain the site, confirm the dimensional chest logs, sweep the dust that always returned no matter how sealed the windows were. On good days, she sharpened tools. Nothing major. Nothing new.

  Later, standing on the second-floor balcony of her cabin, she rested her hands on the railing and gazed out toward the city beyond the treeline. That was where the natives lived, descendants of the society that had grown here over the last century. Most had never seen a cellphone, didn’t even know such a thing existed. They lived in a rhythm that felt similar to Earth’s medieval age, and seemed perfectly content.

  She could have chosen to live there too. Become an adventurer, a mercenary, a traveling trader. There was something intoxicating in that kind of straightforward life.

  Judith stepped off the porch and followed the narrow path into the woods. Routine patrol. No outsider was allowed near the site. That rule was one of the few taken seriously.

  The air was quiet enough to make her drowsy. Judith yawned and leaned her back against the thick trunk of a tree.

  “An hour nap should do,” she muttered, settling down.

  Sometimes she slept during her shift. Nobody cared. In this corner of the New World, nothing ever happened. No threats. No changes.

  “If I sleep for a few hours, who cares? It’s always dead out here,” she whispered, eyes drifting shut. “It’s not like anything important is going to happen right now.”

  And then, the ground shuddered.

  Not the soft tremor of wind or settling earth, but a deep quake that made every leaf tremble at once. The world seemed to hold its breath. Judith’s eyes snapped open. There were no earthquakes here. That was impossible.

  She sprang to her feet, pulling her axe from her dimensional storage. Her grip tightened on the handle, instinct faster than thought. A roar tore through the air, like dozens of storms cracking open at once. For a heartbeat, gravity flickered, her body lifted half a foot, weight stolen away, and then reality slammed her back down.

  A white flash erupted from the direction of the village. Sound vanished. It was as if the light itself swallowed everything, leaving only a blinding, suffocating white. Seconds later, a sharp crack tore through the air, followed by another tremor strong enough to knock her down. She hit her knees, steadied herself, axe still firm in her grasp, breath ragged.

  And she ran.

  Judith sprinted down the trail, heart battering against her ribs. The forest felt different now: the air heavier, thick with something she couldn’t name. Every step crushed leaves and twigs underfoot, but even that sound seemed muted, as if the world was still recovering from the flash.

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  When she broke through the tree line, she saw the village. Or rather, the aftermath of whatever had happened there. A white radiance was fading over the village, dissolving like luminous mist. A shiver climbed her spine, it wasn’t just light. It was mana. Dense, living, pulsing, like a heat that resonated with the beat of her own blood.

  Her body reacted before her thoughts caught up. She knew exactly what this meant. The seal. Something had happened to it. Years of speculation, theories, endless briefings that never led anywhere. All of it crashing into this moment.

  She swallowed hard. Her grip tightened around the axe handle. She ran faster. If something dangerous had emerged, they would have to contain it until someone stronger arrived. Reinforcements. Specialists. People actually trained for impossible things.

  Kaiju? The thought flickered through her mind as she forced her breathing steady. Dimensional mage? Spirit? Phantom?

  ...or demon?

  She braced herself for the worst. But she wasn’t ready for what she found. As the last of the glow faded, the silence that followed felt wrong. Heavy. Compressed. Like the air itself was holding its breath. Judith slowed without realizing it. Voices reached her first, faint at first, then growing. And then she saw them.

  People.

  Not one or two. Dozens. Appearing as if they had stepped straight out of the air. Some stumbled when their feet touched the ground. Others stared at their own hands like they were seeing them for the first time. Some smiled. Some sobbed. Some dropped to their knees and kissed the dirt like it was holy.

  No monsters. No demons. No massive creature from ancient nightmares. And somehow, that felt even more unsettling. Judith stopped, bewildered. Was that what the seal had been holding? People? Ordinary people? For years they had guessed everything else, entities, energy, some catastrophic dimensional collapse. But never this.

  Across the open square, she spotted Amit and the others running in, weapons drawn. Their expressions all mirrored her own: confusion, hesitation. No one knew whether to help, retreat, or attack.

  Judith stepped forward. That was when something moved at the forest’s edge. A figure slipped out from between the trees. For a heartbeat, Judith froze, its silhouette looked like it had horns. But when it stepped into clearer light, she saw the truth: leaves. Twigs tangled in its hair. Just a boy. She exhaled the breath she had been holding without noticing, a hand rising to her chest by reflex.

  For a moment, she had been sure it was a demon.

  His black clothes were dirty, caked with soil and debris. His skin was pale, almost unnaturally so, like someone who hadn’t seen sunlight in a long time. He ran his fingers through his hair, brushing out leaves, moss, dirt, like someone who had just stood up in a hurry.

  The young man’s face was unusual. Not handsome in the conventional sense, but marked by a strange presence. Something both familiar and foreign, as if he didn’t quite belong to the world he stood in.

  He opened his mouth to speak, but the voice that came out wasn’t his.

  “Are you insane? We almost died because of your stupidity! Why did you have to help Mr. Shitpants? Why didn’t you just go through the damn portal? Why did you stall? You only put me in life or death situations!”

  The voice was female, irritated, yet when Judith looked around, there was no one else with him.

  The young man sighed and rubbed his face.

  “Alright, alright. I promise I won’t put you through anything like that again. I think…”

  Judith blinked. He was talking to no one?

  “But how was I supposed to know the throne was going to malfunction?” he continued, still speaking to the empty air.

  “With your track record of bad luck and attracting insane situations, you should be the one expecting this kind of crap. At least we’re on Earth now. I hope you calm down for a while, enough diving into danger.”

  The feminine voice responded to the boy, but strangely, there was no one else there. Only Judith and the boy. Maybe the voice was something only he could hear. But if that were true, how was Judith hearing it too?

  She took half a step back without thinking.

  At last, he looked at her. He approached slowly, curious rather than threatening. His eyes locked onto hers.

  “Excuse me. This is going to sound a bit strange, but… are we in Maine?”

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