Michael never imagined building a kingdom, let alone one stretched across two worlds. Back then, he was just another 25-year-old trying to survive a family outing.

  “What a view.” Michael admired it as he took in the New York City view from on top of the tallest skyscraper around.

  “See, I told you it was worth coming,” responded his father smugly. He almost had to drag Michael out of the house to get him to come.

  “Yeah, the videos don’t do it justice; this place deserves the name of World Trade Center.” He agreed, squinting to see if he could locate where his family was renting from there.

  Waiting in line to use the coin-operated binoculars, this museum-like tour brought back a memory of that time as a kid, when the authorities accused him of stealing from a museum.

  He shook his head as he tried to forget that. His turn to use the tower viewer with limited range of motion arrived. And as he looked around, he saw the town where he lived and looked for his house.

  He thought of the millions the state had spent to build this, how people on the streets looked even smaller than ants. I wonder if people with that kind of money think of us as anything more than insects. How would I be if I had this much wealth and influence?

  He started recalling how he had spent his past year after graduating, either in his tiny bedroom, at work, or with his small group of friends. He had focused on graduating as his primary goal, and now that he had finished, he didn’t have any goals others had set for him to reach.

  Michael, feeling the weight of his own perceived worthlessness, tried to remind himself of the blessings he had. He was just an overweight office worker at 25, but he had a roof over his head and food on the table, thanks to his parents’ sacrifices.

  “Look, Mom, our house is over there,” he said as his mother took over.

  Michael forced a slow breath through his nose, the way he used to before starting a match.

  Back in high school, and even through part of college, he’d lived for it. Muay Thai. Wrestling. A little Jiu-Jitsu. He wasn’t some prodigy, but he’d put in real hours: bruised shins, sore ribs, mat burn on his forearms, the quiet satisfaction of being exhausted for a reason. Training had been the one place his head went silent.

  Then graduation happened. A job. Long commutes. “Just for a week” turned into months. He stopped going because he was tired, and he stayed tired because he stopped going. His gym bag ended up under his bed, collecting dust. The scale climbed, his cardio vanished, and the mirror stopped looking like someone who could move.

  Yet even now-standing this high above the city, feeling small and pointless-he could still remember how it felt to react without thinking.

  He took this chance to go to the restroom to wash his face and try to think positively.

  He thought to motivate himself as he looked at his green eyes in the mirror, which reminded him of all his parents had left behind for his future. Although he knew he was privileged to a degree, always had a home, food, loving parents, access to an education, and now an above-average-paying office job, he felt empty.

  “Aaaaaah!” A girly screech finally took his attention as he rushed to see what caused it.

  As Michael emerged from the restroom, a situation unfolded that sent a jolt of fear through him.

  The man didn’t look like a robber. He wasn’t wearing a ski mask or a hoodie. His face was out in the open. He looked prepared. Mid-forties, lean but wiry. His hair was cut short and uneven, like he’d done it himself. A cheap gray windbreaker hung open over a dark shirt, but it didn’t fit right, too loose at the shoulders, like it hid the outline of whatever he carried. His eyes kept moving, not panicked but attentive and scanning.

  In his right hand was a pistol that didn’t belong in a tourist building, held low and steady, finger indexed along the frame like he’d handled it before.

  After borderline screaming something Michael did not understand, he lifted his gun and shut down the four cameras in the room consecutively, as if he had it memorized, one of them Michael didn’t even notice was there until it was smoking.

  Michael quickly hid in the hallway, praying not to be spotted by the criminal.

  His mind started racing. How the hell did he get a gun in here? This place had as much security as an airport. Michael was stunned by the situation. The tourists were panicking, pinning each-other to the glass. A security guard was on the floor ahead of them, with the criminal blocking the stairway.

  Michael has to figure out how to get past this one while hiding in the restroom hallway parallel to the one for the elevator and stairs that were on the other side of the criminal. The buff security guard on the floor had his neck bent at an unsightly degree, and the hallway to the elevator and stairs was smoking, yet Michael could not see why from his angle.

  What kind of person does this?

  He’d already killed a guard. No demands. No exit. Cameras were destroyed after exposing your face, and a room full of civilians was in one of the most-watched buildings in the country.

  Whatever this was, it wasn’t about money.

  The terrorist started walking forward towards the tourists with his back towards Michael, who panicked as he saw he was walking in the general direction of his father, who was standing in front of his terrified mother.

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  Michael got goosebumps as he saw the pistol arching upwards to point at his father. He started sprinting to the gunman ten feet away without even having given it a thought.

  Hearing heavy footsteps behind him, the terrorist started to turn counterclockwise as a huge man ran at him with no care for his life, which appeared in the corner of his eye. He lifted the pistol away from Michael’s dad to eliminate the threat.

  Now what? Thought Michael, a few feet away from the man, as he just processed the fact that he was running to an armed maniac with a gun, turning to aim at him. Michael saw the gunfire as he kept going, tackling through.

  Get away from them. An old memory surfaced as he thought of taking the terrorist far away.

  Suddenly, a small black dot appeared and grew exponentially before him, forming a black ring whose edges distorted the surroundings, like a heat haze. On the inside of the ring, he was puzzled to see tree trunks. The ring expanded just fast enough to swallow them up with their momentum as the terrorist felt his ribs break as the air in his lungs escaped against his will.

  With no time to ponder the change in environment, Michael grabbed the hand holding the gun, trying to take control as he sandwiched the criminal against the tree. Driving his left shoulder into the man’s sternum, he could feel a whisper of pain coming from his arm, while with his right, he wrestled the gun to aim away from his face. The oxygen-deprived man pulled the trigger, not knowing where he was aiming, nor would he find out.

  Michael felt the warm blood slightly sprinkle on his left cheek and eyebrow as the corpse gave out and fell before him. With his ears ringing, he stared while hyperventilating.

  “He is dead,” he muttered between breaths, though he barely heard himself from one ear. Tilting his head downwards, he saw both his hands; his right had some of the dead man’s blood sprinkled on it, and his left one was dripping his own blood. He spun around, but the portal was gone. Just the trees, corpse, and the pistol lying in the dirt beside a circle of runes burned into the ground, while mountains covered the horizon.

  Grabbing the gun, he stood looking at the criminal. He was now lost in God knows where, no food, no water, and with blood loss from a hole that went all the way through his left bicep. Why do I not feel anything towards this? Is it because that guy deserved to die? Am I in shock? What are these symbols?

  As the ringing in his ears faded, the clearing started to feel familiar in a way he couldn’t describe until an old memory snapped into focus.

  Years ago, on a school field trip, he’d gotten separated from his class and drifted into a museum wing filled with antique weapons. Spears. Swords. Rusted armor behind glass. Then a flintlock pistol, small, ugly, and amusing in a way the others weren’t. He’d leaned closer, staring at it far too long.

  The lights had flickered once… twice… and then everything went black.

  In the darkness, a pale blue circle had formed out of nothing on the other side of the display. From inside it, translucent, tentacle-like shapes unfurled, breaking through the glass loudly as if it wasn’t there. They coiled around the flintlock and yanked it free. The pistol vanished into the blue ring, and in that same heartbeat, Michael had seen something on the other side: old and young men arranged in a semicircle, symbols glowing across the ground in different colors, trees standing behind them like silent witnesses.

  Then the circle shrank and disappeared. The lights came back on. The cameras resumed. And the empty space in the broken display case left only one obvious culprit: the kid standing there alone.

  Michael had spent years convincing himself it was a hallucination-stress, imagination, anything. But now, staring at the trees and the scorched runes in the dirt, this place matched it. Exactly.

  The trees were taller now, with thicker trunks, fuller canopies, and young saplings had sprung up where there used to be open ground. But none of the greenery dared cross the scorched symbols burned into the dirt. The ring remained bare and hardened, as if the earth there had been sealed into stone where the rune-like markings were.

  Michael felt even more dizzy as his situation grew more pressing.

  I need to get back home. Michael thought of a safe place; his warm bed came to mind as his safest and most comfortable place. He imagined his bed right in front of him, as if to at least fall on it and bleed to death there instead of in some unknown forest.

  While he pictured the bed in front of him, as if reality wanted to fulfill his wish, another black dot grew into a large circle, through which Michael could see his bedroom. It was a little dark, as the only illumination came from the lines of sunlight sneaking through the blinds.

  Michael was stupefied at the sight. He couldn’t even generate a thought for a second. Did I do that? He questioned.

  He walked closer, growing more confused as to how the room was not lit by the light that came from his side of the portal. As he moved closer, what he could see through the portal grew.

  More curious than worried, as his bleeding arm would kill him anyway if he didn’t find a way home fast, he raised his good arm and slowly pushed it through the portal.

  The first thing he noticed was that the warmth of the sun on his hand disappeared on the other side, and he could see his hand growing dark, with none of the light from his side reaching it.

  His pupils dilated at the thought of getting home. He pushed his whole arm through and pulled it back, examining it only to find it just as it was before.

  Smiling, he stepped over the lower edge of the portal that hovered an inch above the floor, yet he lost his balance when he stepped on the other side, which was a little higher off the floor. As he stumbled to gain some sort of support, his arms flailed out. His good hand gripped the wooden edge of the bed, and his left hand tried to grasp the hazy border of the portal.

  As the already bloody hand let go of the gun as it tried to clamp down on the border of the portal from the inside of his room, the tips of his fingers felt a sharp pain as he released and regained his balance.

  Michael noticed that the palm that grabbed the edge from the outside was smooth, feeling like a rounded cylinder, but as his fingers wrapped back into the portal and hit the inner side, it drew narrow to a point, it was like a sharp scalpel that made deep cuts, that he only felt when putting pressure on it as the cut was so clean.

  As he looked at his palm and saw blood coming from a line across his 4 fingers, he wished for the portal that hurt him to disappear, and it did. He was stunned once again, now while standing in his dark room, blood dripping on the floor.

  As his focus slowly faded, Michael remembered his parents. How worried they must be. Could there be another madman with them to harm them? He wished to be with them; he remembered their horrified faces while he tackled the terrorist.

  As he lost his balance, a new portal opened in front of him, revealing a view of scattered people, panicked and turning to look at him. He stumbled through, his barely conscious mind keeping him clear of the edges.

  He landed on the floor on his left arm, as a deep crimson smeared the floor. With what he had left, he turned belly up and saw the portal leading to his bedroom. His last thought was that he didn’t want anyone going through the portal into his home. And his vision faded to black as the portal shrank into nothingness.