The portal didn’t feel like a door. It felt like stepping through a wall of icy blue slush—biting cold, thick as wet snow, and humming with static charge that set every hair on Evan’s arms on end.

Thirteen-year-old Evan Cutes hit the turf on the other side first, his boots skidding across grass that felt unnaturally soft, almost like crushed velvet. He gasped for air, cold mist curling from his lips as he aggressively brushed glowing droplets of blue plasma off the sleeves of his denim jacket. Behind him, a sharp zap echoed through the air as nine-year-old Jax tumbled out, losing his footing and landing hands-first in the vibrant turf.

Rather than groaning, Jax burst into a wild, breathless laugh. He scrambled right back to his feet, ignoring the glowing slush on his knees, and leaned close to inspect the shimmering, arching edge of the portal frame. His fingers hovered an inch from the crackling energy, analyzing the static hum with the sharp curiosity of a young coder examining a bug in a game script.

"I didn't get sick!" Jax cheered, wiping a smudge of blue light onto his jeans. "O-Davinji warned us crossing interdimensional windows might make us puke, but I held it in!"

"Look up..." whispered twelve-year-old Olivia. She stepped out behind them, her voice barely louder than the breeze as her writer’s imagination absorbed the view.

Evan raised his head—and forgot how to breathe.

The sky wasn't blue. It was a shimmering, pearlescent emerald green, stretching endlessly overhead like the polished interior of a colossal seashell. Suspended in that alien atmosphere hung two massive, impossible moons. The closer one, Violaceum, loomed so close Evan felt a sudden urge to duck—a towering violet sphere wrapped in swirling white clouds, its surface dotted with the faint, geometric grid-glow of distant cities. Beside it drifted Indicum, smaller, indigo-hued, and shrouded in a gentle veil of glowing fog.

"Whoa," Evan breathed, his pulse thumping in his ears. "We're really not in Alberta anymore."