Brussels, Earth – 06:32 CET
Chancellor Lira Voss was mid-sentence in a debate about agricultural subsidies when the lights died. Not just the parliamentary chamber's chandeliers—*all* lights. The hum of Brussels faded into a silence so absolute it felt like the world had been plunged into cotton. Outside the Gothic Revival windows, the sky cracked open.
A jagged seam of violet light split the heavens, throbbing like a heartbeat. Phones buzzed with emergency alerts, then sparked and died. The air itself vibrated, a subsonic growl that rattled teeth and shattered wine glasses in the cafeteria three floors below. Lira gripped the podium, her knuckles white. "Evacuate the building—*now*!"
But it was too late.
The last thing she saw was the EU flag above her desk unraveling thread by thread, its gold stars dissolving into motes of light.
Eldryth – The Skyfire Wastes
High Magister Kaelan Thorne was knee-deep in wyvern entrails when the ground screamed.
The beast he'd been ritualistically dissecting—a juvenile skywyrm, its scales still soft as opal—*twitched*. Its severed head rolled toward the horizon, milky eyes reflecting a sudden bloom of unnatural light. Kaelan straightened, wiping gore from his silver-trimed robes. Above the floating continent of Varys, where the Eternal Dusk should have reigned, a colossal landmass materialized.
It was angular. Monstrous. A sprawl of glass spires, concrete valleys, and metallic arteries that pulsed with no mana he could sense. The air reeked of ozone and something sharper—*desperation*.
"By the Six Thrones," breathed his apprentice, Lyria, her taloned hand clutching her scrying orb. "What *is* that?"
Kaelan's lip curled. "Trouble."
Somewhere in Between
The transmigration took 8.7 seconds.
One moment, the European Union existed on Earth. The next, it hovered above Eldryth's fractured sky, its borders shimmering with unstable dimensional energy. Cars plunged from motorways into cloudbanks. Sheep grazed obliviously on Alpine slopes now ringed by floating islands. A Eurocorps rapid-response team in Lithuania found themselves aiming rifles at a flock of crystalline birds the size of helicopters.
And in Strasbourg, a harried junior diplomat named Étienne Moreau became the first human to make contact.
Strasbourg, EU Provisional Camp – 19:14 Local Time (Probably)
Étienne had been hiding in a supply closet, praying the floor wouldn't collapse again, when the *thing* slithered in.
It looked like a cross between an eel and a chandelier—bioluminescent tendrils, too many teeth, and a faint smell of burnt rosemary. He froze, clutching a fire extinguisher. The creature trilled, its body flickering through colors like a malfunctioning hologram.
"*Um… bonjour?*"
The creature recoiled. Then, to his horror, it *spoke*.
"Fleshlings," it hissed, the words forming directly in his skull. "You stink of dead realms."
Étienne's training kicked in. He bowed, as one did when meeting Luxembourg's finance minister. "The European Union wishes to… uh… open diplomatic channels?"
The creature lunged.
Berlin Emergency Command Bunker – Two Hours Post-Transmigration
"—repeat, the Italian PM is demanding a no-fly zone over Tuscany, but whatever those *things* are, they're jamming radar—"
"—Hungary's PM just threatened to 'drain the magic swamp' himself—"
"—Madame Chancellor, the Belgians found *dragons* in Antwerp—"
Lira Voss silenced the room with a raised hand. The bunker's screens flickered with live feeds: Spanish farmers herding sheep away from portals oozing molten amber, French Mirage jets circling a levitating mountain adorned with glowing runes. Her chief scientist, Dr. Elio Costa, pointed to a seismic map now overlaid with swirling mana signatures.
"We're not just *in* this world," he said. "We're *replacing* part of it. The energy required—it's tearing reality apart. If we don't stabilize the dimensional overlap within six months, both our people and theirs will…"
"Die horribly?" offered the Polish defense minister.
"Vaporize*," Costa corrected.
Lira stared at the hologram of Eldryth rotating above the table. "Options."
"Short term? Establish contact with local powers. Long term?" Costa shrugged. "Either we learn to harness magic, or they learn to love bureaucracy."
A aide rushed in, holding a tablet. "Chancellor! Strasbourg's team—they're alive! They've made contact with a… a…"
"A sentient lamprey?" Lira guessed.
"An elf, ma'am. A very angry elf."
Varys Skydocks – Eldryth Side
Kaelan Thorne hated the smell of desperation.
The fleshlings' envoys reeked of it. They stood on his skydock in ill-fitting "hazard suits," clutching strange metal wands they called "geiger counters." Their leader—a spindly mortal with glasses—bowed too deeply.
"High Magister," the man said in mangled Eldrythian, "we seek an alliance. Our scientists believe your ley lines could stabilize our… uh… *dimensional annexation*."
Kaelan smirked. "And why would the Varys Conclave aid interlopers?"
"Because we're sitting on enough uranium to turn your floating continent into a smoking crater," said a new voice.
The mortal delegation parted. Chancellor Lira Voss strode forward, her charcoal pantsuit clashing violently with Eldryth's jewel-toned sky. She held up a tablet playing footage of a German Panzer division firing on a bone golem. "We've got problems you can't incinerate, Magister. And I'm guessing you've got ones we can't legislate away."
Kaelan's amusement faded. Behind Lira, half-hidden in the shadows, a junior mage flashed a hand sign: *Sunderborn sigil spotted in the Dead Wastes*.
"Very well, Chancellor," he purred. "Let's discuss… terms."
Epigraph Fragment – Sunderborn Prophecy
"When the soulless city ascends,*
Feast on the rift, 'til world meets end."
End of Chapter 1