When we returned from the Passage, the scent of that place still clung to my lungs—damp soil, sharp grasses, and something else… an undercurrent I couldn't name. As if the air of Orinlafec had sunk all the way into the marrow of my mind. Even the paint-and-metal smell of Harper's Brooklyn studio couldn't wash it out. Harper was still lying beside me, breathless, with that expression she always tried to hide—fear tangled with shock, softened by the stubborn childishness she used like a shield.
My palm was still burning.
But I barely cared about the pain. My thoughts were caught in a loop, circling a single point:
The green-eyed man's words.The exile of humans.Thuban.Chaos.
And above all… the reality of that world.
This couldn't have been a hallucination. The human brain can't fabricate an image it has never encountered with that level of precision. I knew this even before studying archaeology. The mind can imagine only fragments—never entire worlds.
And yet that plant root… the one in Orinlafec…It was in Harper's hand.
We hadn't imagined anything.We had been there.
I tried to stand, but my legs trembled. Harper wasn't doing much better.
"Jess…" she said softly. "This time… it was different. Right?"
I didn't look at her. If our eyes met, I was afraid both of us would shatter.
"Yes," I said. "Something on the way back… changed."
Harper's lips tightened. She was tense—too tense. And when Harper was tense, she hid behind chatter or sarcasm. I could see her reaching for some stupid joke.
I didn't give her the chance.
"Give me the laptop," I said.
I knelt in the middle of the studio, between the paint cans and half-finished canvases. My fingers still tingled with pain, but I forced them to open the laptop. Harper sat beside me like we were having a picnic. Even she avoided looking at me.
We were both avoiding the same thing—The memory of that man's eyes.Emerald eyes.A thought I didn't want to touch.
The computer hummed to life. I typed the first word—my hands shaking.
"Thuban."
Something deep inside me stirred. I had heard that word before. In a class? A book? A museum? Childhood? I couldn't place it.
The search results loaded instantly.
My chest tightened.
Harper leaned closer. "So… it's a star?"
"It used to be the pole star," I murmured. "A long time ago. Not anymore."
I scanned the results.Yes.There it was.
Thuban — the eye of the Draco constellation.Alpha Draconis.A binary star system.
The eye of the dragon.
Harper swallowed.I felt a cold shiver crawl up my spine.
Dragons…They didn't exist in Earth's biological record.No fossils. No physical remains.Only myths.Stories.Every culture had them, but none could explain why.
"The human mind can't invent something entirely new across every culture," I whispered. "Not something this specific."
Harper didn't reply.
"Dragons can't be a collective hallucination," I continued. "China, Europe, India, Mesopotamia… their dragons are all different, yet all the same. Why?"
Harper nudged my shoulder. "Jess… maybe people just like telling stories?"
"No," I said sharply. "Not like this."
The memory of those emerald eyes flashed again. That stranger's voice.
'Humans were exiled from here.'
"Why does every culture talk about dragons?" I whispered."Why are there no bones?Why no physical evidence?Why only legends?Because… maybe this world wasn't their home."
Harper's breath hitched.
"Come on," she said nervously. "You think dragons came from Orinlafec?"
"Maybe everything did," I said. "Elves, sorcerers, shadows… all of them. And humans too. But if humans were exiled—"
Before I could finish, Harper started laughing—nervous, thin, on the brink of panic.
"Jessica… listen to yourself. This isn't some TED talk. We're not insane."
I snapped the laptop shut.
"What if we aren't?" I asked. "What if it's real?"
The air between us tightened—thick, dangerous.
Harper rolled her eyes. "Jess, you're obsessing. I can't—"
"What exactly is 'crazy' to you?" I cut in. "People crossing between worlds? The plant root we brought back? The man who knew us? Which part is crazy, Harper?"
"I'm just—"
"You've been avoiding this since the beginning," I said. "Pretending this is some kind of game so you don't have to face what's happening."
Harper's face changed instantly.Her warm amber eyes flashed.
"No, Jess! I just— I'm not trying to control everything like you do! I'm scared, okay? Don't make me say it!"
I inhaled sharply.Her voice was trembling.
But she was angry too.
"You can't admit you're scared," she said. "Not even to yourself. You have to understand everything. Explain everything. Solve everything. But you can't, Jess! We don't know what's happening!"
Silence.
She exhaled shakily and looked away.
"I did my own research," she said quietly. "Just… in my own way."
I blinked."What?"
"Break the word apart."She drew a line in the air."Orin. Lafec."
She paused, then slipped into a tone almost like a lecture—her defense mechanism.
"'Orin' means song or hymn in Yoruba. In Welsh, it means light."
Her ironic smile was brittle, almost painful.
"'Lafec' doesn't exist in any Earth language."
She shrugged.
"Maybe we're spelling it wrong. Maybe their language uses symbols we don't have. Maybe we're not even pronouncing it right."
A bitter breath.
"Maybe we'll never know what it means."
Her words stunned me.I had not expected Harper to think this deeply.Something inside me cracked—softened.
Maybe we were both running from the same thing:The unknown.The fear.The truth.
I opened my mouth to say something—
And the ground vibrated beneath us.
Harder.Faster.
As if a door we'd left open was now slamming shut.
"Jess—!"Harper reached for me, but I didn't feel her fingers.
The world split open beneath us.
This time the fall was darker.Colder.Faster.
And with a truth burning in my chest, I whispered into the void
This time, will we be able to come back?