Chapter 6: The First Window

I don’t remember how long I sat on my son’s bedroom floor, clutching the cold silver pendant in my hand.

Time felt like it had slipped out of the world. No car horns, no birds, not even the ticking of the wall clock. Just the sound of my own heavy breathing—and the faint light still glowing from the dragon-shaped charm in my palm.

I stood up.

Though panic still gripped my chest, a strange calm had settled over me. Deep down, I no longer expected to find Long by searching the usual places. Instead, I walked straight to my study—where the old trunk and the metal model left by my father still waited.

I laid the pendant on the desk, right next to the astronomical-looking device.

Two objects, separated by time and logic—one from the past, the other from a place unknown. And yet, when they touched… something began to happen.

A soft blue thread of light stretched out, connecting the spiral core of the model to the engraved eye of the silver dragon. Both began to glow—not brightly, but in harmony, like two instruments tuning to the same pitch.

I turned off the desk lamp.

In the dark, the light grew clearer—forming a thin, trembling slit in the air, like a crack in the fabric of space. The temperature dropped.

Then, the slit opened.

There was no sound. No blast of force. But I could feel a presence—like a soft pull, not dragging me, but waiting.

I glanced at the pendant again. It no longer glowed. But within the dragon’s eye, a tiny orb shimmered, looking… outward.

“My son passed through here,” I whispered, somehow sure of it.

I took a deep breath and stepped forward.

When my hand touched the edge of the light, there was no pain. Just a sensation that my body had stopped being separate from the space around me. Memories flickered—part dream, part now, all rushing in like a silent flood. And then…

I fell.

Not downward—but inward.

Into a void with no direction. No names. No sounds. But something was there—something alive, something pulsing. Not my heart, but… the slow breath of a planet.

Light bloomed again—not the calm blue, but a reddish hue, like dusk settling over a frozen field.

I landed on something firm. Got to my feet. Looked around.

No Long. No Gatekeeper. Just a cracked, scorched plain stretching toward the horizon—and in the far distance, a massive circular form, floating in the air like a door left half open.

The First Window… had truly opened.