Ethan was by every statistical metric, exceptional. He excels in everything.
At sixteen, his life was a masterpiece of efficiency. His AP Calculus homework sat completed on the corner of his desk, perfectly aligned with his physics textbook. On the shelves above, wrestling trophies gathered dust next to debate club plaques. He wasn't just smart; he was adaptable. He understood the systems of the world school, social hierarchies, parental expectations and he played them like a grandmaster playing chess against a novice.
But as he laid his head on his pillow that Tuesday night, listening to the hum of the central heating, Ethan felt a familiar, dull weight in his chest. Boredom. The world was too predictable. Inputs led to expected outputs. There was no mystery left.
He closed his eyes, drifting into a shallow sleep.
It started as a hum , a frequency so low it vibrated in his teeth. Then came the heat.
Ethan's eyes snapped open.
His room was gone. The darkness wasn't the comfortable gloom of his bedroom; it was a void. In the center of that void, hovering directly above him, was a fracture in reality. It bled light, not the yellow of the sun or the white of a bulb, but a violent, churning crimson.
"What the..." Ethan scrambled backward, his instincts screaming that this was physically impossible.
The light didn't just shine; it pulsed like a dying heart. It expanded, consuming the void, turning his vision into a wash of red static. He tried to shout for his parents, but the sound was swallowed by a deafening crack—the sound of the universe splitting open.
The crimson light burst.
The sensation of falling lasted forever, and then ended in an instant.
Ethan gasped, his lungs spasming as they inhaled air that tasted of copper and ash. He wasn't in his bed. The softness of his mattress was replaced by cold, uneven cobblestones digging into his back.
He pushed himself up, his head spinning. "Mom? Dad?"
His voice cracked. It wasn't the silence of a house at night; it was the silence of a graveyard.
Ethan blinked the spots from his eyes and looked around. The blood drained from his face. He was in a town square, or what used to be one. The architecture was archaic,timber-framed houses and stone towers, but they had been decimated. Buildings were torn in half as if by a giant claw. Fires smoldered in the ruins, casting long, dancing shadows against the night sky. There were no sirens, no cars, only the crackle of burning wood.
It looked like a medieval war zone.
"This is a dream," Ethan whispered, his analytical mind trying to categorize the data. "Lucid dreaming. Induced by stress."
"O, Spirits of the Vengeful Earth..."
The voice was soft, melodic, but trembling with an emotion so heavy it felt like a physical weight.
Ethan turned his head.
Ten feet away, in the center of the shattered plaza, a girl was kneeling. She looked to be about his age. She wore a long, flowing dress that might have once been white, but was now stained with mud and soot. Her hair was the color of moonlight, falling in messy tangles around her face.
She was kneeling inside a complex geometric circle drawn on the stones in what looked like blood. The circle was glowing with a faint, dying red light—the same red he had seen in his room.
She wasn't looking at him. Her hands were clasped so tightly her knuckles were white, and her forehead was pressed against the cold stone.
"I offer my soul," she sobbed, her voice breaking. "I offer my future. I offer everything."
Ethan stood up slowly, his sneakers scuffing the stone. The sound made the girl freeze.
She slowly lifted her head.
Ethan stopped breathing. Her eyes were striking—a piercing violet—but they were dead. There was no light in them, only a vast, drowning sorrow and a sharp, icy edge of hatred. Tears streaked through the soot on her cheeks.
She looked at Ethan, taking in his strange flannel pajamas, his modern haircut, his terrified expression. She didn't look surprised. She looked resigned.
"It worked," she whispered, though she sounded like she wished it hadn't.
She stood up, her movements stiff and exhausted. She pointed a trembling hand toward the ruins of the town around them. A massive claw mark was gouged into the stone fountain behind her, deep enough to hide a car in.
"They took everything," she said, her voice dropping to a cold hiss. "My family. My people. The creatures of the Void... they left nothing but ash."
She stepped out of the blood circle and walked toward him. The air around her seemed to shimmer with a strange energy. She stopped just inches from him, looking up into his eyes.
"I summoned you, Outworlder," she said, and the air pressure dropped, making Ethan's ears pop. "I do not ask for your pity. I do not ask for your kindness."
She grabbed his hand. Her skin was freezing.
"I ask for your rage," she commanded, tears finally spilling over. "Take revenge for me. Kill them all."