The whiteness receded as he fell, replaced by swirling colors that turned into shapes.

Familiar ones.

Furniture, walls, paintings...

He’d been here before.

Those bookshelves against the far wall. He’d read most of the books in there, over the years.

He was at the Regency again, but a different one. This was the one on Bernice.

But something was off.

There were people here, but he recognized none of them.

He walked out into the hall and looked around.

An old man came walking toward him, waving his cane.

“Halden! Wait up.”

He paused, frowning.

Who was this? The voice sounded familiar, but not the face.

Still, he waited.

“We have to talk,” said the man as he reached him. “I really don’t think it’d be wise to open the rift. I know the Emperor is breathing down our backs, but—”

“What are you talking about?” he heard himself ask. “And who are you?”

The old man blinked, staring at him.

“What do you mean, who am I? You’re pulling my leg again, aren’t you?”

“Sir, I have no idea who you are or what you are doing here...” He paused, looking around. “Or what I’m doing here, for that matter.”

When he looked at the other again, he saw the old man’s face had gone white.

“It’s happening, isn’t it? It really is.”

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“What?”

“Just like you told me it would. I always thought you were messing with me. But now... You do look younger. It’s not the lighting!”

“You’re not making any sense, old man. What are you talking about?”

His interlocutor took a deep breath.

“I’m Greg Groggan. Was your assistant for many years. We’ve been peers far longer, though you don’t know about that yet.”

Halden stared at the face. Now that he knew the name, he realized it was Groggan’s voice. That was why it sounded so familiar. And he thought he recognized those eyes now.

“This can’t be happening...”

Groggan grabbed his arm and pulled him away from the door, toward the end of the hall.

“We don’t have much time,” he said. “I have a message for you.”

“A message? From who?”

“From you, of course! You must hire me.”

“What?”

Groggan clicked his tongue. “Just listen, won’t you? When you go back into the past, make sure you hire me. Your younger self won’t want to. He’ll resist the idea, but it’s vital that you do.”

“You’re not making any sense...”

“You might feel like you can’t change things, and that is mostly true, but in this case, you’d just be making sure things happen the way they should. You did hire me, after all, didn’t you?”

Halden frowned.

“Well, yes, of course, but—”

“Just make sure it does happen.”

Lights swirled about him again.

“I don’t understand any of this...”

“Neither do I,” admitted Groggan before his face became a parody of itself, melting into the colors.

The hand that had held his arm was gone, replaced by stark whiteness which threatened to engulf him.

Halden wanted to scream, but he couldn’t.

He was in shock.

A message to himself?

How was this even possible?

Again, he felt himself fall.

Fast.

Colors popped all around him, splashing the whiteness like bursts of paint against a virgin wall.

A distant screech made him grit his teeth.

Where did the sound come from?

And the stench!

It smelled of rotting corpses.

He could feel his stomach churn as chaos suddenly erupted around him.

Fire lit up the sky.

A building exploded nearby.

And everywhere he looked, he saw mountains of decomposing bodies.

He averted his eyes. The only place he could look without feeling sick was up—so he looked up.

Within the fiery clouds were enormous ships.

Ships of a sort he had never seen before. Dark brown, long, thin, covered with protruding needle-like shapes that glistened in the night and made the constructions look like wild, giant, impossible, flying porcupines.

They were shooting at other, more familiar vessels—Imperial ships.

Where was he?

What was this place?

What was going on?

Another loud screech made him jump and turn around.

A monstrous creature—with bulbous eyes and dark red, fang-covered skin—rushed toward him. It must have been at least ten feet high. Blood and pieces of human flesh hung from its thousands of fangs.

Halden stumbled back and bumped into a pile of corpses. He felt himself sucked inside and screamed.

Everything went dark.

Then the darkness swirled and twisted and morphed into white.

And he was falling again.