Elias Morgan never believed in fate. The only things he trusted were good books, black coffee, and the quiet solitude of a library. As a graduate student of Comparative Mythology, he had little patience for the romanticism his peers often attributed to the myths they studied. He was a skeptic, fascinated not by the gods themselves but by the cultures that created them. But that skepticism was about to be tested.
It began with a book—an old, dusty volume unearthed from the archives of the university's restricted section. It had no title, no author, no record in the digital catalog. Its cover was of dark, cracked leather, and its pages shimmered with faint blue ink that shifted as if alive. The symbols inside weren't Greek, Norse, Egyptian, or any language Elias recognized. But they felt familiar—achingly so.
He spent hours pouring over it, sketching the glyphs and comparing them to known scripts. One night, while tracing a swirling sigil with his fingertip, the ink surged up his skin like wildfire. The room around him groaned and warped. Bookshelves collapsed inward. Lights flickered and died. He tried to scream, but the sound was swallowed by the silence that followed.
Then came the fall.
Not down, but inward. Like being pulled through the center of his own mind. The sensation was dizzying, like falling through a whirlpool of stars. Colors bled into each other. The sigil on his hand burned, not with pain but with pressure—like a heartbeat echoing from a different world.
He landed hard on warm, red sand.
Above him, twin suns glared down from an alien sky, their light filtered through misty clouds shaped like animals—lion, eagle, dragon. Before him stretched a land unlike any he had seen: forests of crystal trees, mountains that floated above the horizon, and at the center of it all, a colossal tree that pierced the heavens. Its bark shimmered like metal; its leaves whispered secrets.
He stood slowly, dizzy, disoriented, and utterly alone.
Until he heard the whisper.
"This is where the stories begin."
The voice came from nowhere and everywhere. Male and female, old and young, mortal and divine. It chilled him even under the heat of the twin suns. He spun around, searching for a source, but found none.
A low growl pulled his attention to the horizon. Shapes moved—massive, unfamiliar. One had the body of a lion and wings of a hawk; another was a serpent coiled around a burning tree. Mythical beasts, half-formed and primal. Not the refined images from ancient art, but raw ideas barely given shape.
Elias backed away until he stumbled over a stone slab etched with the same sigils from the codex. He touched it—and visions flooded his mind: a child hidden from a monstrous father, a mother crying to the earth, a sky that had yet to be named.
He was in the place where myths were born. Aetherion. The primal cradle of legend.
But what was he doing here?
And how was he going to get back?