Chapter 1: The Vortex Beckons
The air in the clearing tasted of wet pine and cold stone. Roope watched Niina adjust the strap of her satchel, the movement making the leather of her corset sigh. Under the bruise-colored sky, the polished leather gleamed, the deep V-neck framing a shadow that drew his eye down to where the laces pulled tight across her ribs.
“You’re sure about this?” he asked, his voice softer than he intended.
Niina turned, her emerald eyes catching the strange, sourceless light. A smile played on her lips, not quite reaching her eyes. “When have I ever been sure? That’s the point, Roope.”
She took a step toward the center of the clearing, where the air wavered like heat over a flame. Except it was cold, and the light was all wrong—a bruised purple bleeding into electric green. A low hum vibrated up through the soles of Roope’s boots, settling in his molars.
He shoved his hands into his pockets, fingers brushing the lint and a single, forgotten peppermint. “It just… appeared. While you were gathering wood.”
“I know,” she said, her back to him now. She was staring into the shimmering distortion, her posture one of rapt fascination. The short tunic she wore—more of a suggestion of coverage, really—left the long, toned lines of her legs bare until they met the top of her thigh-high boots. She was a silhouette from a fantasy he’d never quite felt he deserved. “It’s a door. Can’t you feel it? It’s pulling.”
What he felt was a dull, familiar ache in his chest. The adventure was always hers. He was just the one who carried the extra water, who made sure the fire was lit, who watched her blaze trails he was too cautious to follow. He loved her, with a devotion that was quiet and deep and, he feared, terribly boring.
“It could be dangerous,” he said, the practical protest sounding feeble even to him.
Niina laughed, the sound rich and utterly captivating. “Probably.” She glanced over her shoulder, her brunette hair flowing like a dark river. “Aren’t you tired of the same trails? The same views? I can recite the map of every national forest in Finland from memory. I want a map that hasn’t been drawn yet.”
Roope’s throat tightened. He heard the unspoken part: I want feelings that haven’t been felt yet. He knew his love, though steady, was a calm lake. Niina longed for a stormy sea.
The vortex pulsed, and the hum climbed in pitch. The silver birch trees around the clearing seemed to lean in, their white bark ghastly in the weird light.
“It might close,” Niina said, more to herself than to him. She took another step, and the swirling mist began to curl around her boots, kissing the leather.
Panic, sharp and electric, shot through Roope. It wasn’t fear of the unknown thing. It was the clearer, more terrible fear of watching her walk into it alone and being left behind in a world that would instantly become colorless and silent.
“Wait!”
She paused, one foot in the mist, and looked back. Her expression had shifted. The excitement was still there, bright and fierce, but beneath it he saw a flicker of something else. A question. A longing directed at him.
“Are you coming?” she asked.
It wasn’t a demand. It was an invitation. The most terrifying one he’d ever received.
His mind raced. Their tent was half-pitched back by the lake. They had jobs, a flat in Helsinki with herbs growing on the balcony. His sister was expecting a call next Tuesday. A whole life, orderly and predictable.
Niina stood at the threshold of the unseen, draped in mist, her green eyes holding his. She was offering him the chaos she craved. To say no was to choose the lake over the sea, and to watch her sail away without him.
He thought of her laughter at a shared joke, the weight of her head on his shoulder in deep sleep, the way she’d squeeze his hand just before she did something reckless. He thought of a future of Tuesdays, alone in their flat, wondering where she was.
“It’s now or never, Roope,” she whispered. The vortex swirled faster, pulling tendrils of her hair forward.
He didn’t decide. His body decided for him. He took a step, then another, the damp moss squelching under his boots. He didn’t run, but he closed the distance between them, his heart hammering against his ribs.
He reached her side. The hum was a physical pressure now, a thrum in the air that made his skin prickle. The world beyond the veil was a blur of swirling colors and deep, impossible shadows.
Niina’s hand found his. Her fingers were cool, her grip strong. She didn’t smile, but her eyes were blazing.
“Together?” she asked.
He looked at their joined hands, then at the abyss of light. He took a final, shuddering breath of pine and earth.
“Together.”
They stepped forward.
The world tore.
It was noise and light and a sensation of being poured through a keyhole. Pressure, then nothingness. Roope clung to her hand as if it were the only real thing in the universe.
Then it spat them out.
He stumbled, his knees hitting something soft and yielding. Not moss. Something else. The air was different—thicker, warmer, carrying a sweet, rotting perfume utterly foreign to a Finnish forest.
He gasped, looking up.
Niina was already standing, a few feet away, brushing herself off. She was breathless, her hair in wild disarray, her corset smudged with strange, phosphorescent pollen. But her eyes were wide with pure, unadulterated wonder.
Roope followed her gaze.
The silver birches were gone. They stood in a jungle of gargantuan, bioluminescent fungi whose caps glowed with a soft blue light. Vines thick as his arm hung like curtains, dripping with moisture. The sky overhead was a perpetual twilight, a deep indigo streaked with shimmering, nebulous veins of silver and magenta. The call that echoed through the towering, alien trees was not a raven’s, but something lower, more resonant.
Niina turned to him, her face illuminated by the fungal glow. She was radiant. “See?”
Roope pushed himself to his feet, his legs unsteady. The practical part of his mind was screaming questions about air, water, danger. But it was drowned out by the look on her face. He had followed, and for now, that was enough.
A sharp crack echoed from the dense foliage to their left. Not a branch falling. Something deliberate.
Niina’s posture shifted from wonder to alertness in a heartbeat, the adventurer taking over. She held up a hand, signaling silence.
Another crack. Closer. Something was moving towards them, something big, parting the giant ferns with deliberate, heavy steps.
Roope moved without thinking, stepping forward to place himself slightly in front of Niina. His heart was a drum against his ribs, but his voice, when he found it, was low and steady.
“Stay behind me.”
The thing that burst from the ferns was all leathery hide and shattered bone, its maw dripping with saliva that sizzled where it hit the glowing moss. Roope’s shove sent Niina staggering aside as the creature lunged, and he swung his pack in a wild arc, connecting with a sickening thud against its skull.