The campfire popped, a miniature explosion sending a brief constellation of orange sparks spiralling into the crisp October night. Eason Su watched them climb, his breath misting slightly in the cool air. He stared into the heart of the blaze, watching each stick and log catch the creeping embers, glow fiercely, then crumble into nothing. He glanced up at the tree silhouettes surrounding him in the evening chill of fall. This fire, mundane as it was, was still a powerful display of energy release. Years, decades maybe, of captured sunlight stored within the intricate cellulose structures of the tree, energy locked away atom by atom as it reached for the sky. Now, through rapid oxidation, those chemical bonds were shattering, violently liberating that stored potential as heat that pushed back the night's chill, bringing with it light that painted flickering shadows on the surrounding trees.

  It was a transformation, a conversion of patient, slow growth into immediate, consumable power. Despite the growth it generated across millennia, Eason was always mesmerized by the chaos it could create in an instant.

  He drew his knees closer to his chest, the rough denim a familiar sensation on his skin. This quiet observation, this detached analysis, was a habit born of long practice. Practice to escape the present moment, to be anywhere but here, focusing inward to blunt the edges of the world outside.

  Even surrounded by the Nevins' unwavering kindness, a part of him remained the fourteen-year-old runaway who’d finally stopped drifting across foster care rougher than the last, when he landed on their midwestern farm. They’d taken him in, clothed him, fed him, treated him with a quiet decency he hadn’t known could exist before.

  Mr. Nevin tried to bridge the gap, patiently teaching him the practical, tangible logic of machinery – how to diagnose a sputtering tractor engine, how to rebuild a cultivator, how to coax life back into stubborn equipment with grease and know-how. Mrs. Nevin ensured he had time for the schoolwork they encouraged, creating a space for the bookish, quiet kid he became. He’d even worked part-time at the local auto repair shop during high school, finding a certain satisfaction in the clean logic of machines.

  It still felt surreal, how drastically his world had shifted. To have completed college, let alone high school, made him question reality more often. Despite the Job offers, opportunities in bigger towns, cities even, the thought of leaving the familiar rhythm of the farm, the comforting predictability of the fields and the Nevins' quiet presence, had always felt too daunting. So, he stayed, working the land, helping neighbors fix their aging machinery, finding a measure of peace in the tangible world, even if the loneliness, the feeling of being an outsider owing to his Chinese heritage in this homogenous landscape, still lingered beneath the surface.

  "Thinking deep thoughts again, Su?" Artur’s voice broke the spell. He was sprawled back in his camping chair, nursing a soda, a wide grin on his face.

  He met Artur Lobo at that same college. Artur, boisterous and confident, son of another farm owner – though one considerably richer than the Nevins – had somehow seen past Eason’s reserve. They’d bonded over late-night study sessions fuelled by bad coffee and a weirdly shared interest for machines. Artur was solid, dependable, a counterbalance to Eason’s introspection.

  "Or just wondering how you got so lucky?" Artur winked, nudging his head towards Allison.

  And then there was Allison. He risked a glance to his right. Allison Nave. The name still felt new, miraculous on his tongue. Just a few months ago, she’d arrived – an agriculture student doing fieldwork, assigned to study something on the Nevin property. She’d asked him about crop rotation with a directness that bypassed all his defences, her gaze curious and intelligent. They’d talked for hours that first day, and somehow, improbably, kept talking.

  Now she was here, sitting close enough that he could feel the warmth radiating from her side, her face alive in the flickering light. The same question echoed in his mind: Is this real? He still found himself mindlessly vocalizing it to her or sometimes just whispering it to himself in quiet disbelief.

  Eason felt his ears warm. "Just watching the fire," he mumbled, poking at a log with his own stick, sending another shower of sparks upwards.

  Allison laughed, a warm, clear sound that cut through the slight chill in the air. "Leave him alone, Artur. He's allowed to be introspective." She leaned slightly towards Eason, then added, glancing back at the fire, "It is a good fire, though. Perfect marshmallow-roasting potential." She then shot a teasing look at Artur. "Unlike some people, who really need to develop their s'more skills beyond 'incinerated'."

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  Artur puffed up with mock indignation, already rummaging in the supply bag beside him. "Hey! Strategic charring enhances the flavour profile and ensures structural integrity for optimal chocolate meltage. It's an art form. Operation S'mores is a go!"

  Eason allowed himself a small, genuine smile at the banter. Maybe… maybe this was real. This small bubble of warmth, friendship, maybe even love, under the vast autumn sky. He watched Allison accept a marshmallow-laden stick from Artur, her eyes sparkling in the firelight as she searched for the perfect spot to toast it.

  He looked past the immediate circle of light, towards the silhouettes of the trees ringing their small clearing. Tonight, the familiar shapes seemed different, darker, the shadows between them deeper, more absolute. The usual night sounds felt… muted. A subtle tension hung in the air, a stillness that felt less like peace and more like anticipation.

  An irrational sense of being watched pricked at the back of his neck. He dismissed it as tiredness, the late hour, the cooling air playing tricks. He focused back on the fire, on Allison concentrating on achieving the perfect golden-brown marshmallow.

  It was then that the world went wrong.

  It wasn't a sound, not exactly. More like a pressure change, a deep hum that vibrated not in his ears, but in his bones, in his teeth. The crickets abruptly fell silent. The wind died, the leaves hanging unnaturally still. The fire didn't flicker; it seemed to freeze mid-pop, the sparks hanging suspended like orange jewels.

  Eason looked up, startled, meeting Artur’s wide-eyed, confused expression, seeing Allison lower her marshmallow stick, her head cocked, frowning at the sudden, profound silence.

  Then came the pull.

  It was immense, irresistible, like the universe had suddenly decided he was needed elsewhere, NOW. It wasn't physical, not like gravity, but an internal, fundamental tugging as if on his very core. Panic flared, sharp and cold. His first, only thought was Allison. He lunged towards her, hand outstretched, needing to anchor himself to the one solid point in his precarious world.

  Before even his fingers brushed her arm, the world dissolved.

  The campfire, the woods, the stars – they smeared into impossible streaks of violent colour and disorienting noise. It wasn't movement through space, but space itself twisting, compressing, wrong. He felt an unimaginable velocity, a sense of being torn apart and reassembled simultaneously. Through the nauseating chaos, he caught fragmented glimpses, terrifyingly brief flashes of presence beside him in the non-space – Allison’s terrified face contorted in a silent scream, Artur’s larger form pinwheeling away into a different smear of light. He tried to hold on, to shout, but his body wasn’t his own, his mind struggling to process the sensory assault. He felt Allison's presence rip away in one direction, Artur's vanish in another, like threads pulled from an unravelling tapestry. The sheer terror of seeing them disappear, of being utterly helpless, was a physical blow.

  The next instant, the impossible motion ceased with bone-jarring finality. He slammed into sharp, unforgiving rock, the force knocking the wind out of him and sending stars exploding behind his eyes. Pain flared, sharp and immediate, across his back and shoulder. For a long moment, pain kept him immobile, his vision filled with grey; slowly the grey transformed into rock, which then came into focus to be the side of a mountain. He smelled dead stone, the bite of cold wind, and the overwhelming surge of adrenaline mixed with agonizing disorientation. As his senses settled, he could smell more: ozone and something metallic, like old blood. He heard the whooshing sounds of fast-moving winds.

  He pushed himself up, coughing, his vision swimming. Jagged, dark rock stretched out around him, slick with a strange dampness. Sparse, twisted vegetation, like blackened wire, clung precariously in crevices. He appeared to be on a small, utterly desolate island, lashed by a turbulent, dark ocean under that impossible dark sky.

  He was shocked to find a moon dominating the view—huge, orange, and cratered like Mars reimagined. Then his gaze caught another, smaller and silvery like home, and then a third, fainter still. Three moons? The impossibility layered onto the disorientation. He didn’t know how to feel about this strange new world.

  Then he felt it as all his senses stabilized, a strange, low-level hum or tension seemed to thrum in the very air, making his teeth ache.

  In one direction, the distant horizon seemed unnaturally clear, holding a weird luminous quality; in the other, it felt heavy, dark, tinged with a sense of wrongness that prickled his skin. Panic seized him fully now. Did I get teleported? Is this a prank or did I hit my head?

  "Allison!" He voiced more of a fearful response to reality, but raw, cracked, it was snatched away by the wind. "Artur!" Only the howl of the wind over bare rock answered.

  He scrambled to his feet, ignoring the sharp pain in his ribs, scanning the barren landscape. No shelter, no resources, nothing familiar. He was utterly alone.

  The vision of Allison and Artur vanish into different vectors during that chaotic transit slammed back into him.

  Pulled away.

  Gone.

  Where? How?

  He sank back against a jagged outcrop, the sheer impossibility of it all crashing down.

  The campfire, home, his tentative grasp on happiness – all ripped away in an instant, replaced by this terrifying, exposed rock under a sky that wasn't his. He felt reality speed up. Fear, cold and absolute, began to tighten its grip, the ominous feeling from the woods now seeming like a pathetic understatement of the reality he'd fallen into. Survival seemed like a distant, abstract concept in the face of such profound isolation and hostility.