The blue light wasn’t bright.

  That was what unsettled Erika the most.

  It didn’t glare or blind—it existed, thin and calm, spread across the frozen ground like a shallow pool of liquid glass. The surface rippled subtly, expanding and contracting in a slow, deliberate rhythm.

  Breathing.

  Her own breath began to match it before she realized what was happening.

  With each pulse, the jade pendant against her chest warmed in sync, its heat no longer erratic but measured—almost patient. Like it had been waiting for this moment.

  She stopped at the edge of the light.

  Up close, she could see that the frozen soil beneath it had fractured into precise geometric segments. The cracks weren’t random; they formed concentric patterns intersected by sharp angles and vertical strokes.

  Circles. Lines. A structure.

  Not Tibetan. Not Chinese. Not anything cataloged.

  “This isn’t a language,” she murmured. “It’s a mechanism.”

  The air above the symbols felt different—thicker, warmer. As she crouched, a faint current brushed against her skin, lifting the fine hairs on her arms.

  She removed her glove again.

  This time, the cold barely registered.

  Her fingers hovered above the surface, hesitating just long enough for instinct to scream at her to stop.

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  Then she touched it.

  Heat surged instantly—far stronger than before.

  It tore through her arm and into her chest, flooding outward along pathways she’d never known existed. The sensation wasn’t pain, not exactly, but activation—as if something long dormant inside her had been abruptly switched on.

  The jade pendant flared.

  Emerald light spilled through the fabric of her jacket, bleeding into the blue glow below. The two colors didn’t clash. They intertwined, flowing along the carved lines as though they’d always been meant to meet.

  The ground vibrated.

  A low hum resonated through her bones, not loud enough to hear, but powerful enough to feel. Her boots lost their grip on the soil.

  Weight vanished.

  Erika gasped as the world tilted, then dissolved.

  The blue light rose, no longer bound to the ground. It climbed her legs, her torso, her shoulders, wrapping around her like water—warm, buoyant, impossibly gentle.

  She was floating.

  Above her, the night sky fractured.

  Not shattered—peeled apart.

  Darkness folded back like fabric, revealing a vast lattice of glowing blue pathways beyond, stretching in all directions like rivers suspended in the void. Symbols raced along them, flowing too fast to read, converging toward a single point.

  Her chest tightened as every line bent inward.

  Toward her.

  The jade pendant burned hot, then suddenly went cold.

  The light collapsed.

  Erika felt herself pulled forward—not falling, not flying, but transitioning, as if her body were being translated from one set of rules into another.

  There was no up.

  No down.

  No sense of distance at all.

  For one suspended heartbeat, she understood something with terrifying clarity:

  This wasn’t teleportation.

  It was relocation.

  The blue pathways folded inward, sealing behind her.

  And with that, Earth—its gravity, its air, its familiar silence—let go.