Meet the main character - you ✨
One day your whole world crumbles around you. Literally. The sky splits, and everyone you know turns into dust. You escape to the thousands of glowing portals to any dimension imaginable. Only you are trapped, and hun...
The landing's rough. Again. Some force shoves you out of the portal, you fall on your hands and knees– tumble and roll down the hill. Something white blinks closer and closer, grass pokes in your face– you thrust your arms in front–
"Phew." You stop but a step away from the wall.
White cracked paint. At least the grass feels nice under your cheek, and it's rather warm. A little too humid and very, very quiet.
Finally, you manage to sit and look up.
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"Wow."
The lighthouse towers above and its wide beam lights up thousands of portals. Some are on the ground, some float a little higher while others hover closer to the top. A double wow, all of them are linked to the lighthouse, the shiny faint laces disappear into the windows.
You trace your fingers along the wall and walk around. Feels more real that way, keeps you grounded. Otherwise, well, just looking at all the portals makes your head spin. They seem the same only at a first glance. Actually, you can't even find two similar ones anymore. The brims are all different colours, the surfaces rougher or hazier, or darker, or– Through some you can even see whole cities, others show a snowy wilderness or tropical jungle.
"Is there some kind of a... map?" Can one put billions and billions of parallels onto a single map? You shove your hands into your pockets, and they bump into something. So you pull that out. The wrapper rustles, and you toss the Wands' treat into your mouth. You don't have many left, but chewing on the gluey sweetness is calming.
You stop by the door. A simple rickety wooden door. It's not ajar, and yet something tells you it will give way. You push and peep inside. Dark. Empty. Then a spiral staircase winds up – apart from that there's nothing. Or no one.
You walk to the nearest portal on the ground. It looks nice, some village, and people definitely hurry past. Your fingers sink through. They set off ripples, and the image blurs. You jerk your hand away and look back at the lighthouse. All the portals are tied to it, aren't they? And, overall, it seems deserted, and you'd rather know where you are going so...
You sigh and return to the door.
The first step creaks under your weight, and you freeze.
Nothing. You climb on faster, some other stairs creak too, but you don't mind them anymore. The staircase narrows, and you take the handrail and climb on. Until it's so cramped in there, you can hardly squeeze sideways. And dusty, and several times your face knocks down a spiderweb.
One last stair. You huff and tumble into the dim room.
Triple wow. It's dark inside but for the glowing hologram floating in the middle. Only it looks more magic than tech and takes up most of the room. Shimmering laces pierce right through the walls, they're all tied to a different swirling dot on this magic map.
