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Elias adjusted the focus. He saw a woman in a gown of woven light standing exactly where he stood. She was looking at a flower—a species that had been extinct for centuries—that only bloomed in the overlap of their worlds.

Before him stood an archway made of two intertwined birch trees, their white bark glowing like bone against the twilight. This was the entrance to the "Fold," a place where time didn't tick; it pooled. Elias reached into his satchel and pulled out the lens—a heavy, brass-rimmed circle of glass that had been passed down through three generations of his family. He didn't come to hunt or to gather. He came to witness. 853x1280_545c9b2260fc126601a0fee7b9457e29.jpg

Looking through the glass, the forest transformed. The shadows between the trees weren't empty; they were filled with the shimmering outlines of a city that had existed a thousand years ago. Towers of glass rose where the pines stood, and spectral figures moved through the undergrowth like silk caught in a breeze. Elias adjusted the focus

He didn't stay long. To watch for too long was to risk falling in, becoming just another shadow in a world that had already had its turn. He tucked the lens away, the vibrant city vanishing into the dark wood, leaving him with nothing but the scent of pine and the crushing weight of the present. Before him stood an archway made of two

The coordinates were etched into a scrap of parchment no bigger than a matchbox, but they led Elias to the exact center of the Great Pine Forest. He stopped when the air grew cold enough to turn his breath into silver ghosts.