The Rift that leads to you

Chapter 1

Some people believe in parallel realities. Some believe in aliens. And for others, there are dimensions, rifts, and sectors.

In the eighteenth dimension, a dark-purple expanse stretched between worlds, filled with white points of light humans called stars. A vast headquarters filled with enormous gears and intricate mechanical structures floated within it, all bronze and dark gold. Some gears turned on their axes. Others moved slowly through the void, locking into one another. At the center, a vivid purple light burned without ever dispersing into the surrounding darkness.

There were no planets here.

Only endless space between worlds, with islands floating through it that looked, from a distance, like stones, as one of the Keepers might have put it.

For nearly a year, measured by human time, two beings had worked together inside this enormous structure. From the outside, they looked exactly like humans, apart from their hair, their mannerisms, and their origins.

Their job was simple only at first glance.

They closed rifts between worlds and kept the reality of one dimension from bleeding into another.

“New rift!” a tired voice called out.

The young man who just shouted had hair that looked dark beneath the shadows of the gears, though a greenish tint showed through.

“What sector?” another male voice called from farther down the corridor, rich and velvety. A moment later, firm footsteps echoed through the headquarters.

The gears kept turning. Small mechanisms ticked along the walls, while every so often the floor trembled beneath their feet with the movement of the enormous machinery.

Kain stopped in front of a gigantic gear that doubled as a map. The glow from the rift caught his dark green hair and brought out its color.

Billions of impossibly fine mechanical lines were engraved into its surface, paths between dimensions, sectors, and worlds.

They didn’t need to study the system to understand it.

For them, it was instinctive.

One glance at the lines, one barely perceptible shift in the machinery, and they already knew exactly where a rift had appeared.

Kain rubbed the back of his neck wearily.

Then his gaze caught on one of the lines.

From somewhere deep inside the mechanism, a glowing white crack was spreading outward.

Kain froze.

His shoulders slowly dropped, and his hands gave a strange little tremor. A watch sat on one wrist. It looked completely ordinary, almost human.

Kain had never been to the human world.

He walked over to the table and called out again:

“Fourth Dimension. Sector Twenty-Five!”

The familiar ease returned to his expression. He turned lazily toward the table and continued:

“I’ll make you a map.”

He picked up something that looked like a pen, if it could even be called that. It was actually ink in solid form.

Kain placed its tip against a sheet of parchment and flicked his hand.

The ink moved across the parchment almost by itself. It raced over the surface, forming lines, symbols, and hieroglyphs. Some marks transformed into images. Others became new paths.

Slowly, a map of the rift took shape before Kain.

He picked up a large metal instrument that looked like a cross between a compass and a small statuette vaguely resembling a tin boat. He pointed it toward the white crack he had drawn on the map.

The rift trembled.

The white glow intensified.

The young man with crimson hair finally stepped forward to take the map. His name was Rain.

He took the parchment without a word and tucked it beneath his black cloak, which was dark enough to look almost gothic in places.

Then he slipped a strangely shaped knife in after it, turned, and walked away, disappearing beyond the walls of the headquarters.

Rain had never been much of a talker. There was a task, and he completed it. He thought of himself as nothing more than another gear in this enormous machine, and closing rifts mattered far more to him than Kain’s endless jokes and sarcasm, the kind Rain never quite understood.

Fourth Dimension. Human World.

Meanwhile, far from the mechanical structures of the eighteenth dimension, an entirely different kind of life was unfolding in one of the cities of the fourth.

In Manevral, the walls of an enormous university of fine arts towered over beautiful European streets lined with old buildings, narrow alleyways, and small squares.

Students streamed in and out of the university, carrying easels, folders of sketches, and half-finished sculptures.

Some hurriedly discussed an upcoming exhibition. Others argued about their professors. Someone was always trying to explain the idea behind a new piece to their friends right in the middle of the hallway.

The university was never truly quiet.

Especially at the end of the day.

And right at that moment, an agonized, utterly exhausted scream came from behind one of the doors.

“Ah! I can’t do this anymore!”

Inside, a red-haired girl sat hunched over a completely blank sketchbook.

She stared at the empty page as if it were personally responsible for every problem in her life.

Two friends sat on either side of her.

Emma let out a dramatic sigh, adjusted her hair, and was the first to break the silence.

“Iris, be honest… you didn’t sleep again, did you?”

Iris slowly looked up.

Before she could answer, the other girl glanced at her sketchbook. With a sympathetic sigh, she lowered her brown eyes to the blank page.

“You didn’t even draw anything.”

Her name was Mei.

Mei had always been a little strange.

Not in a bad way, just strange in her own particular sense.

She and Iris had been friends for about a year. Emma was different. They had known each other since school and had already been through practically everything together.

Iris had known Mei since their first year, though they had only become genuinely close after Mei returned to university.

She had taken academic leave during her third year and had almost disappeared from their lives.

Then she came back.

And somehow, after that, the three of them became inseparable.

By now, the three of them were the kind of trio who were always helping each other, dragging each other out of trouble, and, naturally, getting each other into new trouble in the process.

Now all three girls leaned over Iris’s empty sketchbook.

Emma suddenly giggled, clearly preparing to say something she’d said a million times before.

“I know what you need.”

Iris gave her a suspicious look. She already knew exactly what the girl in the glamorous pink shirt was about to say.

Emma smiled sweetly.

“Girl, you need a man.”

She said it with such a flirtatious tone that all three girls immediately burst out laughing.

It had become their little inside joke. Emma blamed practically every problem in their lives on their lack of the right man.

Iris let out a tired breath, trying not to smile.

“No, I need some sleep.”

She snapped her sketchbook shut, got up, and started shoving her supplies into her bag without much concern for organization.

Emma and Mei quickly gathered their things and followed.

By the time the three girls stepped into the noisy hallway, Mei and Emma had caught up with Iris. The three of them moved down the corridor together, a glamorous but thoroughly troublesome trio.

“Don’t listen to Emma and forget the boyfriend idea,” Mei said with a gentle smile, tossing her sketchbook bag over her shoulder.

Emma snorted as she bent over her own bag, digging through it for her lipstick without slowing down.

Iris looked at Mei with interest.

“Try lucid dreams,” Mei said brightly.

Iris stopped for a second.

“Lucid dreams?”

“Yes.” Mei perked up and hurried a few steps ahead. “You can control your dreams. Create your own world.”

Iris gave a skeptical sigh.

Suddenly, Mei tossed her hair dramatically and continued.

“And do whatever you want.”

She winked, then smiled with an exaggeratedly mysterious expression.

Iris couldn’t hold back her smile and laughed.

She looked at Mei, then glanced over at Emma.

Emma was calmly putting on lipstick, having pulled out not only the lipstick but a little mirror as well.

When she noticed Iris looking at her, Emma paused her ritual and quickly jumped back into the conversation.

“Actually… that’s not a bad idea.”

Iris raised an eyebrow.

Emma sheepishly put away the lipstick, then gave her a flirtatious smile.

“Maybe you can make yourself a cute guy.”

Iris laughed.

She was just about to ask Mei more about lucid dreams when Mei suddenly quickened her pace, darted through the university doors, and called back dramatically:

“Oh my God! If this is just for your own selfish, twisted little purposes, I’m not telling you anything!”

Mei laughed and ran off.

“Nope. Now you’re telling me everything!” Iris laughed, chasing after her.

Emma was left behind.

She looked down at her heels, sighed in resignation, and hurried after them.

Fourth Dimension. Human World.

Almost every window in the red-haired girl’s house had gone dark.

Only one still glowed on the second floor.

Iris’s entire family had been asleep for hours.

Iris lived with her family. Not because she couldn’t afford to live on her own, but because she was impulsive and unpredictable enough that sometimes she didn’t even trust herself. And despite her eccentric personality, she was deeply attached to her family.

In her bedroom, Iris sat on her bed with her head tilted skeptically to one side, reading an article on her phone.

Lucid Dreams: How to Learn to Control Your Dreams.

She scrolled down.

Sighed.

Scrolled again.

Another sigh.

“I can’t believe I’m actually doing this,” she muttered, as though scolding herself for her sudden interest instead of finally drawing the sketch she needed for her end-of-semester assessments, or at the very least, finally getting some sleep.

Iris’s room was bright and simple, with vintage touches scattered throughout the minimalist decor.

The walls were covered with sketches, photographs from trips, and her own paintings, along with, of course, an endless collection of cups filled with pencils.

Some sketches had been thrown together in minutes. Others were pieces she’d spent weeks working on.

But the painting above her bed stood out the most.

It was a large horizontal piece depicting a night sky. On one side was a moon with a human face; on the other, a sun with the same little quirk. Clouds drifted between them, surrounded by stars Iris had painted herself.

Once, her mother had told her the painting was a little creepy.

Iris was eccentric enough to take that as a compliment and immediately hung it above her bed.

Somewhere deep down, she even hoped that one day her mother would walk into her room again, look at the painting, and finally realize how wrong she’d been.

Iris sighed again and set her phone aside.

She lay back on the bed, pulled the blanket over herself, and murmured,

“Well… let’s give it a try.”

She closed her eyes.

“Just breathe and imagine.”

To her surprise, sleep began to take hold of her almost immediately. After three days of barely sleeping, finally drifting off felt almost triumphant. She simply hadn’t been able to get any rest because the ideas for her sketch refused to come.

She never noticed the faint white flashes beginning to appear on the painting above her bed, the one with the moon and sun.

They looked like tiny bolts of lightning.

At first, they were so faint they could have been reflections of light.

Then one ran across a painted star.

Another flashed beside it.

Then another.

As Iris’s breathing grew steady, the white bolts appeared more and more frequently.

They traveled along the stars she’d painted, connecting with one another.

Soon, the tiny bolts converged at the center of the painting.

Then they vanished.

Somewhere in the room came a quiet, sharp mechanical sound.

Iris heard nothing.

She was already asleep.

The sound continued to build, vibrating through the silence.

Iris slipped into a deep sleep.

⸻

She opened her eyes and immediately covered them with one hand. A bright, pure white light flooded her vision.

Her first thought was that she’d somehow woken up in her bedroom and someone had come in and turned on the light without warning.

But something was wrong.

Iris slowly lowered her hand and looked around.

There was nothing around her.

No walls.

No ceiling.

No floor.

Only an endless white space filled with soft light.

“Um…?”

She turned.

And saw him.

A man stood in front of her with his back turned, completely unaware that someone was standing behind him.

His crimson hair stood out sharply against a cloak black as night, decorated with strange patterns. A parchment map was held in his hands.

Iris stared at him for several seconds without saying a word.

Then she shook her head skeptically.

Of course.

A dream.

What else could it be?

And yet…

It had actually worked.

She looked around the endless white space, then, amused by the absurdity of the situation, said,

“Oh my God… do I really need a man that badly to keep myself from going insane?”

The man spun around.

His emerald eyes widened.

The map slipped from his hands as he took a wary step backward, his expression caught somewhere between hostility and confusion.

“Who are you?” Rain demanded, looking her up and down.

Iris didn’t answer.

She was still studying the space around her, wondering why her mind had chosen this particular place.

Rain frowned.

“How did you get into the rift?”

Irritation had begun creeping into his voice, along with a hint of unease toward the unfamiliar long-haired figure standing before him.

Iris finally looked directly at him.

This time, she saw his entire face.

Her eyes lit up.

“Wow.”

She smiled.

“My brain is really talented if it managed to create someone like you, even with such a crazy, abstract background.”

Rain blinked, completely lost as he tried to understand what was happening.

Iris took a step toward him.

He instinctively stepped back.

She took another.

He backed away again, but then his gaze dropped to the map.

He remembered the enormous gear at headquarters and the arrangement of the sectors. That was when he realized that the Fourth Dimension he’d come to in order to eliminate the rift was, if he remembered correctly, the human world.

“Wait…”

Rain narrowed his eyes as he processed the information, then looked back at the stranger.

“You’re human?”

“Yes,” Iris answered calmly.

She didn’t understand the question, but she was completely captivated by his voice.

She kept moving closer.

“So?”

Her gaze drifted over his crimson hair.

“And, by the way, I like your hair.”

Rain went still.

The Keepers of the Dimensions didn’t have the multitude of languages humans did. They spoke a single universal language, one that adapted instinctively to whoever they were speaking to. They understood human languages through the meaning behind the words, as though the words themselves were secondary.

But hearing the stranger compliment his hair left him genuinely stunned.

“What…?”

For a moment, he seemed to lose his train of thought.

Iris only smiled, convinced she’d created some kind of fairy-tale character in her own mind.

“Pink is my favorite color.”

She giggled softly, inspecting her creation as she continued toward him.

“Thanks, brain. At least you tried this time.”

Rain blurted out, his guarded expression finally cracking.

“They’re not pink!”

Then he immediately returned to his wary composure, once again confronted by the impossibility of the situation.

Iris didn’t answer.

She simply kept walking toward him with a satisfied smile, eager to touch this incredibly real-looking man she’d created. She even felt a strange sense of pride and dominance, thinking of it as some kind of role-playing fantasy.

Rain kept backing away, but the white space seemed endless. There was plenty of space for him to retreat into, but that only made the whole situation more absurd.

Finally, Iris stopped less than half a meter away.

She raised her hands and, without the slightest hesitation, placed her palms against his chest.

Rain let out a heavy, irritated breath as he felt her warm, delicate hands through his clothes.

“If you don’t stop right now, I swear…”

He didn’t get to finish.

Iris suddenly rose onto her toes and pressed her lips to his.

It was almost childlike, nearly innocent, but there was unmistakable pleasure in it.

Rain froze.

The moment was over before he could even process it.

For several seconds, he stood completely still, as though his mind couldn’t find an explanation for what was happening.

He had never felt anything like this.

He knew almost nothing about human emotions.

About closeness.

About touch.

Rain only knew that Kain had spent time observing the human world, and that if Rain hadn’t always considered such things a waste of time, if he’d actually learned something about humans, it might have helped him now.

Iris continued kissing him gently, waiting for him to respond.

Then, as if obeying something completely unfamiliar, he leaned toward her.

He returned the kiss.

Tentatively.

Awkwardly.

As though he were trying to figure out what he was supposed to do.

But Iris didn’t pull away.

She simply kept kissing him, already convinced for perhaps the hundredth time that Mei’s idea about lucid dreams had been absolutely brilliant.

Rain closed his eyes.

His arms still hung motionless at his sides. He had no idea where to put them or what he was supposed to do in a situation like this.

Iris, on the other hand, wasn’t embarrassed in the slightest.

Her hands slid over his chest, then moved higher.

For a moment, time seemed to stop.

Then, without either of them noticing, Iris’s long red hair began to come apart.

The fiery strands broke into dust that immediately vanished.

Rain opened his eyes, trying to understand what was happening.

And froze.

The stranger’s skin began dissolving into the tiniest particles, blending together before disappearing.

Rain stood motionless.

Nothing like this had ever happened to him.

He could only watch, unable to find a single explanation for what he was seeing.

The next second, Iris disappeared completely.

The colored dust dissolved with her, taking every trace of her with it: her blue pajamas, her red hair, her pale ivory skin, and her bright blue, almost deep-blue eyes.

Rain was alone.

He looked down to where the map had been only moments earlier, the map Kain had worked so carefully to make for him.

It was gone.

There wasn’t even a trace of the parchment, as though it had vanished along with the girl.

Rain slowly raised his head.

The endless white space stretched out before him, as familiar to him as ever. Entering rifts and destroying them was simply part of his routine.

And yet, after all this time, he had no idea what had just happened.

It didn’t fit his calculations.

It didn’t fit anything he knew.

For the first time, the white space he had always known felt inexplicable.

And strangely lonely.

Fourth Dimension. Human World.

Iris opened her eyes and drew in a sharp breath, waking up in her own bed.

Morning had come.

It looked like any other morning.

She sat up and stayed there for a few seconds, letting herself fully wake.

Her long red hair was a complete mess, as usual. Only her back ached a little; she must have slept in one position all night.

Then Iris narrowed her eyes at her hands.

Was something supposed to have changed?

What a ridiculous thought.

Her fingers were still there.

Her skin looked perfectly normal.

⸻

Iris got up and, still in her pajamas, moved to the vanity beside her bed.

She had chosen that spot for it herself.

She liked sitting there because the mirror gave her a clear view of the opposite wall, and most importantly, the painting above her bed.

Iris ran a finger over her lower lip.

A smile appeared on her face.

She giggled softly.

“What a wonderful dream…”

She stared at her reflection for a few more seconds.

“I’ll have to thank Mei.”

She reached for the comb resting on the vanity.

Then her eyes drifted to the side.

Iris froze.

In the mirror, she could see the space above her bed.

Where her large painting of the moon, sun, and stars should have been, there were now only ordinary sketches.

Studies of people. A few quick drawings. Sheets of paper pinned to the wall, basically everything that usually ended up crammed into her drawers.

But the painting was gone.

Iris slowly lowered her hand.

Her smile disappeared.

For several seconds, she stared at the reflection, hoping her eyes were playing tricks on her, or that she simply hadn’t woken up yet.

Then she slowly rose from the chair and stepped closer to the bed.

She whispered, “Where is my painting?”