Transformed Traveler

The jarring lurch of reality snapping back into place was less a sensation and more a violent upheaval. One moment, I was adrift in the swirling vortex of interdimensional travel, the next, I was slammed back onto solid ground. Not just any ground, but *my* ground. The familiar, gritty asphalt of a back alley I’d known since childhood. The stench of overflowing dumpsters, the distant wail of sirens – it was all achingly, terrifyingly normal.

But I wasn't normal. Not anymore.

My powers, the very essence of my being, felt like a frayed wire, sparking erratically, refusing to obey. A tremor ran through me, not of cold, but of a deep, unsettling wrongness. The world around me shimmered, a faint distortion I could see with my enhanced vision, as if reality itself was still struggling to realign. Panic, sharp and icy, clawed at my throat, but beneath it, a familiar, burning rage simmered. Rage at this cosmic joke, at the sheer audacity of being ripped from my life and spat back out, fundamentally altered.