imei-imei
Mina Santos is twenty-seven, works second shift packing conveyor rollers in the upper Midwest, and is taking welding classes because she's tired of wondering whether she could be doing something else.
Then a door appears where no door should be.
Helping a stranger through it puts Mina on the wrong side of a network of impossible workshops hidden behind ordinary industrial buildings. In the backshops, unfinished work takes physical form, creatures are built from plastic totes and metal scrap, and a gray card begins recording what Mina actually knows how to do.
The card calls her trade JOIN.
It does not make her an expert.
Now Mina is balancing work, school, family, and a loose guild of mechanics, electricians, fabricators, salvagers, and other people who enter the backshops after their regular shifts. Their magic is practical: strange skills only work when real knowledge, materials, and judgment support them. Mistakes still hurt.
And one old factory order is still running.
A young man is trapped inside it, and the unfinished system holding him is beginning to reach farther than anyone intended.
No chosen one. No demon king. Just unfinished work, people trying to get home, and the question of how much of yourself you owe to being useful.
A Midwestern portal fantasy about trades, found community, slow-burn romance, and learning that useful doesn't have to mean indispensable.