Liam blinked, taking in his new surroundings. Gone were the fluorescent lights and steel shelves of the academy. He was now in what looked like a library, but grander. Massive stone columns
climbed toward a domed ceiling painted with constellations that seemed to subtly shift.
The crimson-haired girl stood behind a massive lectern, her eyes wide, clutching a staff made of
glowing, pale wood. She wore a deep purple tunic and knee-high leather boots.
"By the Ancestors' Tears," she whispered, her voice laced with a thick, melodic accent. "The Convergence… it opened! And you fell right through it!"
Liam looked down at his standard-issue military boots, then up at the girl. He felt a weird, floaty sense of calm, the kind he always felt when everyone else was panicking.
"Apologies, ma'am," he said, giving her the perfectly crisp, academy-standard nod. "I appear to have stumbled into the wrong section of the Quartermaster's. Could you perhaps direct me to the nearest exit? I'm due back for reveille."
The girl stared at him as if he'd just asked for directions to a dragon's lair. "Reveille? Exit? You…
You just materialized in the Grand Library of Eldoria! You're standing on the very nexus point of the Plane-Jumper! And you are bleeding!"
"Bleeding?" Liam glanced down. On his forearm, where the sextant had grazed him, a deep,clean slice was steadily weeping crimson into his uniform sleeve. He hadn't felt a thing.
"Oh, right," he said casually, pulling a clean white handkerchief from his pocket and wrapping it around the cut. "Just a minor scrape. Probably got it on one of those old boxes."
The girl's jaw dropped. She gestured frantically toward a massive, glowing Rune-Circle etched
into the floor beneath where he was standing. "You walked right out of a dimensional tear
created by a rogue Plane-Jumper spell! That much raw arcane energy should have incinerated you, and yet you're worried about 'reveille'!"
"It was an accident," Liam insisted. "I touched a glowing orb and a rusty compass. Look, I'm guessing you're not the librarian, but do you know how to reverse this? I need to get back for morning inspection."
The girl finally lowered her staff, a bewildered look of reluctant fascination replacing her terror.
"My name is Elara," she sighed, rubbing her temples. "And no, I don't know how to 'reverse' it.
The Plane-Jumper is an erratic, ancient piece of technology. It could take days to recalibrate the nexus. You, Recruit O'Connell, are currently stranded in the realm of Eldoria."
She walked around the lectern, examining his uniform with a curious tilt of her head. "No armor,
No magic, no fear. Are you some kind of barbarian warrior? Or maybe a traveling fool?"
Liam sighed. He was supposed to be doing inventory, not having an existential conversation
with a possibly magical, very beautiful stranger.
"I'm just a guy who needs to go back to military school," he told her, exasperated. "Is there a
manual for this Plane-Jumper thing? I'll fix it myself."
Elara burst into a sudden, genuine laugh—a clear, bell-like sound that made the shifting
Constellations on the ceiling seem brighter.
"A manual?" she chuckled. "Oh, this is going to be terrible for you but absolutely hilarious for me. Come on, Recruit. You're the first dimensional stowaway we've had in two hundred years. We
need to get you out of this library and into a change of clothes before the High Council realizes
the most powerful magical artifact in the realm just spat out a very confused, very careless, and
very… unfeeling soldier."
She grabbed his uninjured hand, pulling him away from the pulsing Rune-Circle