The transition had been violent, a physical assault on the senses that left Raina gasping for air that felt too thick and tasted too green.
She was on her hands and knees, her fingers dug deep into a substance that was definitely not the concrete floor of the diner basement. It was mud—black, viscous, sucking mud that smelled of ancient decay and stagnant water.
Raina blinked, her eyelids fluttering rapidly as her brain tried to reboot. A moment ago, she had been holding a halogen work light, worrying about the structural integrity of a limestone tunnel in Texas. Now, the light was gone, replaced by a suffocating, grey twilight that seemed to filter down through a canopy so dense it choked out the sky.
"Shock," a voice hissed near her ear. "Dilated pupils. Rapid respiration. Tremors in the extremities. Rainy. Look at me."
Raina turned her head slowly. Her neck felt stiff, the muscles locked in a spasm of terror.
Nix was crouched beside her. The small man had lost his glasses in the tumble, or so she thought until she saw him pull them from his shirt pocket, wipe them on a sleeve that was already caked in muck, and jam them back onto his nose. Without the lenses, his eyes looked too big for his face, wide and luminous in the gloom.
"We fell," Raina whispered. Her voice sounded thin, swallowed instantly by the oppressive silence of the forest. "We fell into the hole."
"We traversed a spatial shear," Nix corrected her, his voice a frantic whisper. He grabbed her upper arm. His grip was surprisingly strong for a man of his stature, his fingers digging into her bicep with a desperation that cut through her numbness. "We didn't fall down, Rainy. We fell through. Now, you need to lower your volume. We are not the apex predators here."
Raina pulled her arm away, scrambling backward until her spine hit the gnarled root of a massive, weeping tree. She pulled her knees to her chest, her breath coming in short, sharp hitches.
"This is a hallucination," she stated, her voice trembling but gaining volume as panic began to curdle into hysteria. "It's the mold. The black mold in the basement. I read about this. Neurotoxic spores. I'm lying on the concrete floor having a seizure."
Nix lunged forward, clapping a hand over her mouth. His palm tasted of dirt and the overwhelming, metallic ozone of the Weald.
"Listen to me," Nix hissed, his face inches from hers. "If this were a hallucination, your brain would populate it with things you know. Look around. Look at the flora."
Raina's eyes darted frantically over his hand. She looked at the tree she was leaning against. The bark wasn't wood; it looked like calcified bone, grey and porous, weeping a slow, black resin that smelled of tar. The ferns around them weren't green; they were a sickly, pale violet, pulsating slowly as if breathing.
"You don't have the imagination for this, Rainy," Nix whispered, slowly removing his hand. "Neither do I. This is the Shadow Weald. And the aperture is closed."
Nix turned away from her, scuttling on all fours toward the spot where they had landed. He was moving with a frantic, jerky energy, his hands patting the air, feeling for something that wasn't there.
"It has to be here," Nix muttered to himself. "Residual ionization. A heat signature. Something."
Raina watched him, her mind slowly accepting the unacceptable reality. She wiped her hands on her jeans, leaving streaks of black slime on the denim.
"Nix," she said, her voice shaking. "Where is the door? Where are the stairs?"
"Gone," Nix said, not looking back. He stood up, spinning in a slow circle, scanning the tree line. "The portal was unstable. A hiccup in the geometry. It burped us out and sealed the wall behind us."
Raina forced herself to stand. Her legs felt like jelly. "So we open it back up. You're the mechanic. You and Marcus fix things. Fix the door."
Nix turned to look at her. His expression was a mixture of pity and terror that chilled Raina to the bone.
"I fix carburetors, Rainy," Nix said softly. "I fix wiring. I don't fix tears in the fabric of reality without a fifty-ton generator and a stabilizer ring. We are locked out."
Raina stared at him. The silence of the forest pressed in on them. It wasn't a peaceful silence. It was a predatory silence. It was the silence of a room where everyone has stopped talking because a gunman just walked in.
"Locked out," she repeated.
"We need to find a natural rift," Nix said, his eyes darting to the dark spaces between the trees. "A thin spot. But to do that, we have to move. We can't stay in the impact zone. The smell... the smell of the transition attracts things."
Raina wrapped her arms around herself. The air was freezing, a damp, penetrating cold that seeped through her sweat-soaked tank top.
"Attracts what?" she asked.
From somewhere deep in the fog, a sound echoed. It was a wet, guttural grunt, followed by the snap of a branch thick enough to be a man's leg.
Snort.
Nix froze. He looked at Raina, and she saw the color drain completely from his face.
"That," Nix whispered. "Boar-Kin. We need to move. Now."
Meanwhile, in the reality of the Slipgate Diner, the silence was of a different quality.
It was the heavy, drowsy silence of a Texas afternoon, broken only by the low hum of the commercial refrigerator and the rhythmic shhhk-shhhk of Marcus Hale sharpening a knife.
Marcus stood at the prep station, his mind drifting. The adrenaline of the morning had faded, leaving behind a pleasant, weary buzz. He was thinking about Liri, about the heat of her skin, about the way she was currently sleeping in the back office like a dragon guarding a hoard of gold.
He paused, the knife hovering over the steel.
A breeze brushed the back of his neck.
Marcus frowned. The air conditioning vents were located in the ceiling, blowing downward. This breeze had come from below. It had curled around his ankles and traveled up his spine.
And it smelled wrong.
The diner usually smelled of bleach, bacon grease, and old coffee. This breeze carried a faint, distinct scent of wet earth. It smelled like a grave that had been dug in a swamp.
"Pearl," Marcus said quietly, not turning around. "You catch that?"
In the corner booth, Pearl had stopped eating.
The Glimmuck was frozen, a half-eaten pancake dangling from her fork. Her large, innocent eyes had undergone a subtle shift. The pupils had blown wide, swallowing the irises until her eyes were black pools. Her nostrils flared, testing the air.
She dropped the fork. It clattered loudly onto the Formica table.
"Bad air," Pearl said. Her voice was deeper than usual, lacking its normal bubbly chirp. It sounded like gravel grinding together. "Tastes like... rot. Tastes like the Between."
Marcus set the knife down. He wiped his hands on a rag, his movements deliberate and calm, though his heart rate had just spiked ten beats per minute.
"The Between," Marcus repeated. "You mean the Weald?"
Pearl nodded slowly. She slid out of the booth. She didn't walk like a teenage girl now; she moved with a predator's low center of gravity, her head lowered, tracking the scent.
"The floor is shaking," Pearl whispered.
Marcus looked down. The water in the soaking tub near the sink was vibrating. Tiny ripples were radiating from the center, creating concentric rings that bounced off the stainless steel sides.
It wasn't an earthquake. It was a localized tremor, originating from the rear of the building. From the hallway that led to the basement trapdoor.
The door to the back office opened.
Eira stepped out. She didn't look like someone who had been resting. She looked like a sentinel who had heard a twig snap.
The High Elf was fully dressed, her leather armor strapped tight, her hand resting on the pommel of the short sword at her hip. Her eyes were sharp, scanning the room with a terrifying intensity.
"The pressure," Eira stated, her voice cutting through the room. "The atmospheric density has dropped fifteen percent in the last thirty seconds. My ears are popping."
Marcus turned to face her. "I felt it too. Draft coming from the back."
Eira strode forward, ignoring him, heading straight for the rear hallway. "Where is the mechanic? Where is the human female?"
Marcus checked the clock on the wall. "They're unloading the truck. Taking the lumber around back to the storm cellar entrance. They should have been done ten minutes ago."
Eira stopped. She turned to look at Marcus, her expression grim.
"The truck is silent," she said. "I do not hear the engine. I do not hear their voices. I hear only the wind."
Marcus felt a cold knot tighten in his gut. He grabbed the sawed-off shotgun from under the counter.
"Pearl," Marcus ordered. "Back door. Check the truck."
Pearl was already moving. She kicked the back door open and vanished into the blinding sunlight of the parking lot.
"Eira," Marcus said, racking the slide on the shotgun. "With me. The trapdoor."
They moved into the narrow hallway that connected the kitchen to the storage rooms and the basement access. The air here was noticeably colder. The smell of the swamp was stronger, cloying and thick.
The trapdoor was a heavy oak panel set into the floor. It was currently rattling in its frame.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
It sounded like something was breathing underneath it. A massive, rhythmic inhaling and exhaling that was sucking air down through the cracks in the wood.
"It is open," Eira hissed, drawing her sword. The steel sang as it left the scabbard. "The seal is broken. The Void is leaking up."
"Nix and Raina were down there," Marcus said, his voice tight. "They were taking lights down."
"If they were down there when the pressure dropped," Eira said, her eyes fixed on the vibrating wood, "they are not down there anymore."
The back door slammed open again.
Pearl burst back into the kitchen. She looked frantic. She wasn't just hungry or alert; she was scared.
"Gone!" Pearl shouted.
Marcus spun around. "Who's gone?"
"The truck is empty!" Pearl cried, waving her arms. "The wood is on the ground. The lights are gone. But Nix is gone! Rainy is gone! No smell! No footprints! Just... gone!"
Marcus looked at Eira. Eira looked at the trapdoor.
"The tunnel," Marcus realized. "They went down to prep the tunnel."
"And the tunnel swallowed them," Eira finished. She stepped forward and kicked the latch on the trapdoor.
She grabbed the iron ring and heaved the door open.
A blast of wind roared up out of the darkness. It wasn't just air; it was a physical force, screaming like a jet engine. It blew Eira's hair back, whipping the golden strands around her face. It knocked a stack of boxes off the nearby shelves.
The smell was overpowering now. Moss. Decay. Old blood.
Marcus shielded his eyes against the grit flying up from the basement. He shined his tactical light down into the hole.
The stairs were there. The concrete floor was there.
But at the far end of the basement, where the sub-tunnel entrance should have been, there was a swirling, grey vortex. It looked like a bruised eye in the fabric of the world, pulsing and throbbing.
And as they watched, it began to shrink.
"It is collapsing!" Eira shouted over the roar of the wind.
"We have to go down!" Marcus yelled, stepping toward the stairs.
"No!" Eira grabbed his shoulder, hauling him back with a strength that belied her slender frame. "Look at the aperture! It is one-way! It is venting! If you step into that, it will shred you to atoms! It is closing, Marcus! It is too late!"
Marcus fought against her grip, staring down into the dark. "They're in there! Nix! Raina!"
His voice echoed down the concrete stairs, but the only answer was the howling of the wind as the vortex spun faster and faster.
With a final, thunderous CRACK that shook the entire building, the grey light winked out.
The wind died instantly.
The silence slammed back into the hallway, leaving their ears ringing.
The basement was dark again. Just a normal, dusty basement.
Marcus stood there, chest heaving, the shotgun heavy in his hand. The smell of the swamp lingered in the air, a ghostly reminder of what had just happened.
"They are gone," Pearl whispered, standing in the doorway, her hands covering her mouth. "The Weald ate them."
Marcus looked at the dark hole in the floor. He thought about Raina's cynical smile. He thought about Nix's nervous twitch. He thought about the fact that he had sent them down there to haul lumber while he made omelets.
"Eira," Marcus said, his voice deadly quiet. "Wake your sister. Get your gear."
Eira sheathed her sword. She didn't argue. She didn't offer platitudes. She understood the look in his eyes. It was the look of a commander who had just lost contact with a patrol.
"We are going on a hunt," Eira said.
"We're going to war," Marcus corrected her. He turned and walked back toward the kitchen, racking the shotgun again just to hear the sound. "Nobody takes my people. Not even hell."
Raina pressed her cheek against the cold, slimy bark of the tree root, her breath held tight in her burning lungs.
"Pig Men," she repeated in her head. The words bounced around her skull, refusing to seat themselves in reality.
Her brain, desperate for logic in a world that had abandoned it, immediately tried to file the term under "Texas Problems." She knew about feral hogs. Everyone in Weedfield knew about them. They were nasty, three-hundred-pound tanks of bristle and muscle that tore up fences and gored dogs. They were dangerous, yes, but they were animals. You shot them, you trapped them, or you climbed a tree and waited for them to get bored.
But as the footsteps squelched closer through the mud, Raina's logic began to fracture.
Thud-squelch. Pause. Thud-squelch.
The rhythm was wrong.
A boar has four legs. It trots. It scuffles. This sound was a heavy, rhythmic cadence. Left foot. Right foot.
It was walking on two legs.
Raina felt a fresh wave of nausea that had nothing to do with the dimensional sickness. The creature wasn't just big; it was heavy enough to make the water in the puddle next to her cheek vibrate with each step.
"Nix," Raina breathed, the word barely a ghost of sound. She grabbed his wrist again, her fingernails digging into his skin. "That's not a pig. Pigs don't walk like that."
Nix didn't look at her. He was staring through the gap in the roots, his eyes wide and unblinking behind his mud-smeared glasses. He was shaking—a fine, high-frequency tremor that vibrated through his arm into hers.
"Boar-Kin are not Sus scrofa," Nix whispered back, his voice tight with suppressed panic. "They are... amalgams. Bipedal structure. Opposable thumbs. Tool users. They don't just gore you, Rainy. They tie knots."
They tie knots.
That simple phrase terrified Raina more than the roaring vortex had. Animals killed you because they were hungry or scared. Animals were honest. Things that tied knots... things that used tools... they had intent. They had cruelty.
The footsteps stopped.
The silence that followed was heavy, filled only by the wet, rasping sound of heavy breathing. It sounded like a bulldog with a sinus infection, magnified ten times.
Sniff. Sniff. Huffs.
"It smells the soap," Nix whimpered softly. "We smell like lemon cleaner. We smell like the Diner. We are a neon sign in the dark."
Raina looked at Nix. She saw the defeat in his eyes. He was a creature of the Slipgate, a mechanic who understood the math of the universe, and right now, his math was telling him they equaled zero. He was ready to curl up and wait for the end.
A spark of anger flared in Raina's chest. It was hot, sharp, and entirely welcome. It burned away the cold paralysis of the shock.
She wasn't going to die in a swamp. She hadn't survived the military purge, the betrayal, and the crushing guilt of her past just to end up as bacon for a pig-monster in a dimension that didn't appear on Google Maps.
"Stop it," Raina hissed.
She released Nix's wrist and grabbed his face, forcing him to look at her. Her hands were cold and muddy, but her grip was iron.
"Nix. Look at me."
Nix blinked, his eyes focusing on her.
"I don't care if it knows algebra," Raina whispered fiercely, her eyes locking onto his. "I don't care if it ties macramé. It breathes, right? It bleeds?"
Nix nodded slowly. "Yes. Thick hide. subcutaneous fat layer. But... yes. Biology applies."
"Good."
Raina released him and looked down at the mud. Her hand closed around a rock—a jagged, heavy chunk of grey slate about the size of a grapefruit. It wasn't a gun. It wasn't a knife. But it had an edge, and it had weight.
She hefted it, testing the balance. It felt primitive. It felt real.
"You said they're flanking us," Raina whispered. "Which side?"
Nix adjusted his glasses, sniffing the air again. He pointed a trembling finger to their left, toward a dense cluster of violet ferns.
"Wind shift," he murmured. "The scent is stronger there. He is circling to cut off the retreat to the water."
"Then we don't retreat," Raina said. She crouched low, shifting her weight onto the balls of her feet. The mud sucked at her boots, but she ignored it. She felt the old instincts coming back—not the engineer who fixed circuits, but the survivor who had walked away from a burning convoy.
"I can handle this, Nix," she said, though she wasn't entirely sure she could. "I'm not a soldier like Marcus. I don't have a magic sword like the whatever is out there. But I'm meaner than I look. And I am done being the victim today."
She looked at the mechanic.
"You find us a way out," she ordered, her voice low and hard. "You do the math. You check the sensors. I'll buy you the time."
Nix looked at the rock in her hand, then up at her face. He saw the set of her jaw, the cold fire in her eyes. He seemed to straighten up slightly, pulling a small screwdriver from his pocket. It was a pathetic weapon, but he held it like a dagger.
"Variable inserted," Nix whispered, a small, terrified smile touching his lips. "Prey is hostile. I like it."
The bushes to their left rustled. A massive, dark shape began to separate itself from the shadows, stepping into the grey light.
Raina gripped the rock until her knuckles turned white.
"Come on then, porky," she breathed. "Let's see who ties the knot.