As the voice finished speaking, the text remained floating in front of Sebastian.

He reached out to touch it, to see if it was really there. His hand moved through it as though it were mist, and like mist, it dissolved, all text fading save for the countdown, which moved to the corner of his vision, floating a few feet in front of him and staying somehow fixed in place even when he moved his eyes.

He was still holding his phone. There was blood on the screen for some reason. He wiped it away. The last text message stared him down: Too late. It's here.

Whoever had sent it, it wasn’t Magnus, and he no longer thought it was a joke.

What is going on? he texted back.

The end of all you’ve ever known.

What does that mean? Who are you?

The answer appeared immediately with no delay. It had in the previous messages as well, but they’d been so short that before now he’d only registered it subconsciously.

You have been calling me Anubis. You have been looking for me. That intention has allowed me to contact you now. And you just so happen to be the closest living being to something very important, to something that will, perhaps, save your world. But time is short. You have a Scion awakening in your immediate vicinity. You need to leave now.

He had so many questions, but he listened. He’d been looking for Anubis and Osiris, and apparently had found one of them.

Fine. Where do I go?

Again, no delay in the answer. No one could type that fast. No one could even speak that fast.

Outside. Climb on the roof. You will see something unusual. An aberration. You need to touch it, and not let go no matter what. You need to push yourself into it.

Sebastian rushed for the doors. At the rear of the building there was a rickety metal staircase that he could climb to get to the disused roof deck.

But what he found outside stopped him in his tracks.

What had been a scorching autumn day was now warm, but comfortable.

This wasn’t what had stopped him.

Nor was it the crowds of people, everyone, locals and tourists alike, staring up into the sky, some with mouths hanging open in disbelief, some whispering to themselves in Dutch, English, Chinese, or a host of other languages.

What stopped him dead was what they were looking at. Or more precisely, what they weren’t looking at.

The shapes, which had been floating in the sky for an entire year, somehow visible day or night and no matter where you were in the world, were now gone. Vanished without the slightest trace, as though they were but a collective hallucination.

It made sense in a way. The rumble had ceased, and it had begun with the shapes’ arrival.

Now both were gone, and Sebastian was certain that what had replaced them was something far more sinister.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

He pushed these thoughts away and, ignoring the people all around staring dumbly into the sky, ran up the stairs to the roof.

He had been up here on a couple occasions during the time he’d been working at Anomaly Labs, and it had never held more than a stack of weathered lawn chairs.

Now, the chairs were still here, but there was something else as well.

Something far more out of place.

In the center of the roof, floating five feet off the ground, was an inconsistency of light. An aberration, Anubis had called it. It looked like an undulating, rainbow lens-flare floating in space.

The cracked wooden flooring lining the roof deck creaked as Sebastian approached, and he hoped he wouldn’t fall through.

He reached the aberration without disaster. His heart was pounding, and he could feel sweat forming along his spine. He lifted his hand to touch it as Anubis had instructed, then hesitated. He had no idea what he was getting into, what touching it would do.

But this was precisely what he’d been after, what he’d spent the past year searching for: answers.

He touched the aberration.

And immediately wanted to stop, a feeling of utter wrongness flooding his entire body.

But, not wanting to find out what would happen if he ignored Anubis’s warning to not let go, he kept pressing, pushing his hand into it, until there was a sudden sensation of falling upward, and he found himself high above the city at the edge of the roof of some skyscraper he didn’t recognize.

Except it wasn’t a roof, because there were floors above him. Floors he could somehow see through. It was the same for the walls around him. They were there, but not.

He had the sense that he was witnessing the underpinnings of reality. He could even see cars in the distance, seeming to drive on air, the road they were on simultaneously visible and invisible. Everything somehow in perfect focus despite the distance.

All he could do was stand there and stare in disbelief at what he was seeing, and at what had just happened.

He’d been teleported.

His phone buzzed in his hand.

This is a transition zone. You need to hurry, you have 52 seconds before it integrates. If you are still in it when it does, you will die. Look around for something like a playing card. It should be obvious.

Sebastian noticed as he read the text message that the number of seconds he had left kept ticking down. 52, 51, 50…

He didn’t spare a thought to wonder how this was possible. It was such a minor thing now compared to all that had happened in the past few minutes.

Instead he looked for the card, which was indeed obvious, pulsing light flickering off it as though to draw attention, and he went over and picked it up.

It looked like a card from a trading card game, but without text, and the image shifting rather than static. Instead of cardboard, it was made from something metallic and weightless. It felt like it would hover in the air if he were to let it go.

Captions once again appeared in the air in front of him, though no voice accompanied them this time.

Anomaly Relic discovered.

First Relic discovered.

Title earned: The First Explorer

Relic discovered during initiation.

Title Earned: Prologue Jumper

Titles? He’d earned titles? What was going on?

His phone buzzed and he was reminded he was on a time limit. Realizing he didn’t know how to leave, he quickly scanned the new message.

You need to leave now. Go back to where you entered. You will feel a vibration in the air. Exiting is far more dangerous than entering. Push through as hard as you can. Do not stop or you will die. And your card won’t save you from this method of death. Not yet.

Ignoring the part about dying for the moment, Sebastian shoved both phone and card into his pocket and turned his gaze to the edge of the roof he’d first appeared at, searching for the aberration.

It only took him a moment to spot it. It looked different from this side. Somehow dangerous.

He rushed over to it, feeling time running out. He’d had forty-five seconds when he’d finished reading the text. How long did he have now? Ten seconds? Five?

Don’t think about it, he told himself. He stuck his hand into the aberration, felt the vibration, and pushed.

[https://i.imgur.com/LfKB3o7.jpg]

He wanted to stop almost immediately, agony flooding his body and his entire being feeling like it was fluttering in and out of existence.

He kept pushing.

There was a sudden woosh of space collapsing in around him, and then his world went black.