Collide: The Ancestral Awakening Chapter 1

“End of the line!”

The man stood over me, hands gripping the cliff edge, knuckles white. The notebook I’d pulled from the pod was still tucked safely inside my jacket, and he was counting on the fall to finish me off. He lifted his boot.

He kicked. And I fell.

Now seems like a good time to back up. Because honestly? I don’t know what the hell is going on.

Let me start from the beginning. My name is Mike Mike Ronovence. I took my mother’s Kingslair surname. I’m twenty-three, a recent college graduate, and I’d just arrived for what was supposed to be a quiet summer holiday. My grandfather, a mage from the continental dimension of Kingslair had sent word that he was “quite ill” and needed assistance. I’d already planned to visit, so it felt like perfect timing. The only difference this trip: I was bringing modern medicine.

I crossed into Kingslair territory at Dimensional Border KSL‑45. An officer stepped out to check my papers, a sentient, steam-powered robot, one of the “Steamers” from the machine-dominated dimensions. He had big circular blue sensors for eyes, a hard triangular jaw, and a body pitted with rust.

“Good day, mate!” he said in a booming Australian accent. “Just need to verify your Order DP your Dimension Port if you don’t mind.”

“One sec,” I said, digging around in the glove compartment. “Got it right here.”

“Cheers, sir.” He took the card from my hand. “Might take a minute. Pull up and wait a bit.”

While he went inside the checkpoint booth to run the verification, I checked my reflection in the rearview mirror. Dark denim vest over a plain red T-shirt, blue jeans. My hair, black streaked with red combed back neatly. Pale skin, the unmistakable pallor of Kingslair heritage. I looked like I belonged here, even if I didn’t always feel like it.

The Steamer returned and handed back my card. “All clear. Safe travels.”

I drove forward. The smooth concrete of the border road gave way to packed dirt winding through lush, impossibly green countryside. I switched my car into off-road mode and kept going. Every so often, a modern road sign stood awkwardly beside ancient stone markers, misplaced, out of place, but helpful enough. One pointed toward Devtopia, the city where my grandfather lived, telling me to turn left… somewhere.

Twenty minutes later, I reached the edge of Devtopia. Tall stone towers rose against the sky and piercing right through them, glowing and entirely out of place, stood a sleek neon skyscraper, ripped from some other reality. Buildings and structures from other dimensions appearing out of thin air had become so common here that nobody even blinked anymore. The Centre’s instability, they said. When I was a kid, this would have terrified me. Now? Just another Tuesday.

I pulled up beside my grandfather’s tower a sturdy, weathered stone structure that had once been a beacon for travellers, its brilliant light guiding people from miles around. Now it was a little more than a tourist attraction. Business-savvy merchants from my dimension had set up stalls and shops around its base, striking a deal with my grandfather: they could operate there, so long as he received half their earnings. He’d grumbled about the crowds, but accepted it on one non-negotiable condition: nobody nobody was allowed into his study. That room was his sanctuary. Always.

I parked, climbed the stone steps, and walked into the tower’s main chamber now a museum of sorts, lined with sketches, schematics, and plaques explaining the tower’s history and purpose. I passed through the exhibit hall, climbed the winding stairs to the balcony, and kept going until I reached the uppermost door. A sign was nailed to it in bold, uneven letters:

NO ENTRY FOR TOURISTS

I knocked. “Grandpa Renston? It’s Mike. You there?”

A familiar, gruff voice called back through the wood. “Mike!” followed immediately by a fit of coughing.

I turned the handle. The door wasn’t locked. Inside, my grandfather lay in his bed, looking smaller and frailer than I remembered. Beside him, on tables and shelves, were vials, dried herbs, smoking cauldrons, half-finished attempts to brew some kind of healing elixir.

I held up the plastic bag in my hand. “I brought what you asked for.”

He scoffed, waving a hand dismissively. “Bah! I don’t need those fancy ‘medicines’ your mother’s always going on about.”

“Well you do now.” I pulled a chair to his bedside, filled a cup with water from the wooden barrel in the corner, and sat down. I shook one antibiotic pill from the bottle and placed it in his palm, along with the cup. “Take this with water. And this ” I poured a measured dose of flu medicine into a small cup and set it on the nightstand '' drink that too. Fair warning: it tastes terrible.”

He grumbled, rolled his eyes, and did exactly as I told him. Pill, water, medicine all gone in three swallows. He glared at me, muttered something about “pointless modern inventions,” and within three minutes, was fast asleep and snoring softly.

I stood there for a moment, watching him breathe easier already. Then I turned, walked down the stairs, and decided to make myself some lunch.

That was when I stepped out onto the balcony, looked up, and saw the blue comet streak across the sky.