Chapter 1

Twelve to sixteen weeks. He’d survived a divorce that took eighteen months and a house fire that clocked in at four hours of actual flames, so he supposed he could handle a few months of waiting. The theory—Dimensional Homeostasis Topological Geometry, or DHTG to friends who didn’t exist—was sound. He’d checked the math seven times, once while standing in the charred ruins of his kitchen, holding a melted spatula and wondering if his insurance would cover a new blender.

He closed the laptop and took off his glasses, rubbing the bridge of his nose. The apartment was quiet, too quiet, which was why he jumped when the air in front of him split open with a sound like a zipper tearing through silk.

It wasn’t a hole. It was a fold, a ripple in the space where the wall should have been, and it smelled like ozone and damp soil. Ricky blinked, considered whether he’d finally snapped under the strain of frozen dinners and loneliness, then decided that if he was going to hallucinate, at least it would be interesting.

The fold expanded, and he was pulled through.

He landed on his back in soft grass, his glasses askew, his dignity entirely absent. Above him, a sky the color of bruised plums stretched between silver-leaved trees that hummed with a low, resonant tone. Ricky sat up slowly, patted his pockets, and confirmed he still had his phone, his wallet, and the half-eaten granola bar from two days ago. Priorities.

“You are not dead,” said a voice, melodic and calm.

A woman stood a few feet away. She was tall, with skin the shade of warm clay, and her eyes were large and dark, framed by hair that seemed to shift between green and gold as she moved. She wore robes of a fabric that looked like woven moonlight. Ricky stared. She stared back.

“I’m not?” he managed.

“You crossed a threshold. Most do not survive. You have a resilient constitution, or you are very lucky.” Her accent wrapped around the words like honey. “I am Elara. You are on Terranth.”

Ricky stood, brushed grass from his trousers, and introduced himself. Elara did not seem surprised by his arrival. She explained, with the patience of someone accustomed to bewildered visitors, that Terranth was a world without humans but rich in magic—a force accessed through visualization, through the mind’s eye.

“Show me,” she said. “Picture a flame in your palm. Hold it there. Feel its warmth, its light.”

Ricky closed his eyes. He saw nothing. Not a spark, not a flicker. The inside of his head was a blank wall. He opened his eyes. “I can’t.”

“Try again.”

“I have a condition. Aphantasia. I can’t form mental images. I don’t even dream pictures.” He said it flatly, the way he’d said it to countless doctors, therapists, and one particularly confused optometrist.

Elara’s expression shifted from encouragement to curiosity. “You cannot see the spell before you cast it? That is… unprecedented. Every child on Terranth learns through visualisation. It is the only way.”

“Then I’m useless here.”

She tilted her head, studying him. “Or you are an anomaly. And anomalies often break the rules. Perhaps your mind works in a way that does not require sight—a different kind of magic, one based on understanding rather than imagining.”

Ricky thought of his theory, the equations that described the topology of dimensions. He thought of the fire, the divorce, the long nights proving something no one cared about yet. “You want me to science my way through magic?”

“I want you to try,” Elara said. “You are the first human I have ever met. I suspect you will not be boring.”

A small, humming presence zipped past Ricky’s ear, then circled back to hover inches from his nose. It was a bird—no, a hummingbird, but smaller, and its eyes glowed like embers. It chirped, and the sound vibrated straight through his skull.

“Ah,” Elara said, “and it seems you have attracted a Zip. They imprint on a single being for life. You are now married, in a manner of speaking.”

The hummingbird landed on Ricky’s shoulder, tucked its tiny head under its wing, and purred. He had a wife. A hummingbird wife. Because of course he did.

“Great,” he muttered. “Does she cook?”