Dear Mom,

  It’s hard to believe it’s been nearly a year and a half since Jack banished the Demon God and cracked the sky wide open, unleashing the old magic back onto Earth. Two years since everything changed, for us, for Aerothane, for everyone who got pulled into this world, whether they wanted to be here or not.

  It feels like a lifetime ago that we walked into that office, thinking we were beta-testing some new immersive VR MMORPG. I was practically vibrating with excitement. Real-time magic casting, full-sensory feedback, adaptive world scaling, every buzzword I’d ever dreamed of.

  And then we got here.

  When Jack found me, we both thought we were still logged in. It was just a really convincing simulation. The air even smelled coded, like some next-gen rendering engine was simulating damp moss and distant rain.

  But after about a day, probably closer to two, we should’ve realized: this wasn’t a game. It was real. The magic, the pain, the people, it was all real.

  Only... we didn’t. Not at first.

  There was some kind of subtle spell on us, a mental haze. Not mind control, more like a fog of belief. We still don’t know who or what cast it. Jack thinks it may have been one of Aerothane’s old gods. I think it was something older. Something that didn’t want us to know how powerful we actually were. Either way, it blocked our journals, masked our real levels, and dulled our perception just enough to keep us docile.

  Didn’t last long.

  Once we started tapping into the local magical current, whatever’s left of the old source, the chaotic runoff from the Shadow Realm, and the surge that came pouring in when Earth’s barriers collapsed, we began to break through. Turns out, the six of us landed right in the eye of a magical storm. With so much arcane flux flying around, we found loopholes. Exploits. Ways to level up faster than the world could keep up with.

  Honestly? We got OP fast. Especially Jack. He didn’t just level up, he evolved. Ascended to the next tier entirely.

  Which was good. Because the creatures around us were just as jacked up as we were. Everything, from goblins to orcs, had been feeding on that same unstable mana cocktail. It was like living inside a world that had just eaten a magical nuke and didn’t know what to do with the energy.

  But things have finally started to calm down.

  The Demon God is gone. The Shadow Realm gates are sealed. The old magic has been purged, and with the influx of thousands of new arrivals from Earth, the so-called “Outworlders”, Aerothane has begun to stabilize. The ambient source feels... cleaner now. Calmer. Like the world finally stopped holding its breath.

  We’re not storming fortresses or slaying monsters every day anymore, but make no mistake: we’re still at war. Only now, it’s the war of rebuilding. Of training. Of helping the sea of confused, displaced newcomers adjust to this world before it consumes them.

  They didn’t come through portals. They were flung here, scattered across the continent like seeds in a gale. Thousands of them. Maybe more.

  We’ve started calling that moment Year Zero. The day everything changed. The day Earth stopped being the center of our story.

  Jack, Asil, Abby, and I have spent the past year helping newcomers find their footing. A new world, new rules, a new reality. Some adapted quickly: gamers, dreamers, those already living with one foot in fantasy. Others… didn’t. Some came through broken. Some never made it out of The Inbetween the same.

  Asil, though, gods, Asil was a force.

  Turns out she’s a natural at organizing chaos. We always knew she could fight, but this? This was leadership. She took one look at the scattered mess of tents and half-finished structures and started turning it into a home.

  We left the younger arrivals, mostly Earth-born gamers and streamers who took to this place like ducks to water, with Loren at Fort Hajill. He’s been training them, mentoring them, helping turn twitch reflexes and PvP instincts into something that keeps people alive. Meanwhile, Asil took a contingent south and claimed Fort Anjelica, a day's march from Hajill, as our second major settlement.

  With the Demon God gone, the shadow gates that once bled corruption into Anjelica and Warren collapsed. The darkness retreated. We explored the ruins and found something unexpected: in the heart of each fort, black cornerstones inscribed with glowing runes, not just ornamental, but anchor points. Whoever touched them first became the rightful claimant of the structure and the surrounding lands.

  Loren and Asil both agreed: Jack had to be the one to claim them. He’s the most powerful among us, no contest. But of course, Jack, being Jack, passed the leadership title right over to Asil. "Mayor," he called her. Of Hajill, Warren, and Anjelica. He leads with power. She leads with heart. Together, they became the spine holding this fragile new world upright.

  We’ve counted close to three thousand Outworlders now, Earth-born, magic-touched, scattered across the region. Each of them changed. Each of them is gifted.

  This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

  Most remember the same strange place before arriving: a space between moments. The Inbetween. A liminal realm suspended in nothing and everything. They say that’s where they met Lucien, the god of stories.

  Lucien greeted them with that strange, steady calm of his. Gave each newcomer a journal, a pouch, and a choice: class, race, path, power. They were offered a brief tutorial, just enough to get by, and then…bam.

  Welcome to Aerothane.

  But not all of them landed near us.

  Some appeared in clusters. Some woke up alone in the wilds. We keep finding new people every week who are confused, scared, and unprepared. And we know there are more out there. Hundreds. Maybe thousands. No one knows where they ended up. Just fragmented reports, rumors, and stories that drift in like smoke.

  And if I’m being honest?

  We’re not afraid of what’s coming to us.

  We’re afraid of what’s already out there.

  Fort Warren sits a day’s journey north of Hajill. Some of our people have moved up there, clearing out the ruins and prepping it for future waves of newcomers. Cressa and Gideon are leading that effort, steady hands, solid hearts, and the kind of quiet resilience you need when rebuilding a world from rubble.

  The rest of us? We’ve made our home at Fort Anjelica. And you wouldn’t recognize it now.

  We started with nothing but tents huddled around the crumbling walls, little more than a makeshift encampment. But among the outworlders were newcomers, including individuals with chosen class skills such as builders, carpenters, masons, and blacksmiths, who could transform raw earth and timber into shelter. Even in a world crawling with monsters, they began to create something real. Something that might actually last.

  Now? We have homes. Schools. Multi-family lodges. Storage bunkers. A proper village is rising around the fort, and for the first time since we arrived, it’s starting to feel like… home.

  Naturally, Asil took the entire fort and turned it into a school. An actual, structured, curriculum-based school. We’re still debating the name. My pitch for “New Hogwarts” was immediately voted down. Apparently, “dead author humor” doesn’t inspire much confidence in magical academia. Who knew?

  The school has two main goals: First, to help people understand and control their gifts. And second, to establish a leveling framework, a system to measure growth, power, and advancement. It gives structure to a world that desperately needs it. We’ve been organizing guided parties to deal with lingering goblin clans and twisted beasts, remnants of the chaos stirred by the old magic.

  Yes, real monsters. It wasn’t just humans who came over from Earth; animals crossed over, too. But this world’s wild magic… it changed them. Warped them. It infused them with something primal and strange. Now we’ve got creatures that are dangerous, unpredictable, and, sometimes, hauntingly beautiful.

  We track them, study them, sometimes fight them. If we don’t, they’ll overrun us.

  Still, it’s not all threat and survival. I made a real friend this past year. His name’s Eamon, a fellow scholar with a dry wit sharp enough to cut steel. He’s an Inscriber, someone who specializes in magical runes, seals, and glyphs. I still don’t understand how he writes arcane scripts in ink without lighting the parchment on fire, but he insists it’s all about “arcane geometry” and “mana harmonics.” I just nod and take notes.

  Together, we co-teach Magical Theory at the school. I thought it’d be the least popular class, too abstract, too dense, but it’s surprisingly full. People don’t just want to survive here. They want to understand what’s happening to them. They want answers.

  And speaking of understanding… I’ve been thinking about you and Dad more than ever.

  We still don’t know what kind of impact Aerothane’s old magic had on Earth. When Jack sealed the Shadow Realm and flushed away the old source, a surge of wild magic was released. It stabilized this world, but that power had to echo back. There’s no way Earth was left untouched.

  We’ve started experimenting with portal magic. Some newcomers arrived with teleportation or riftwalking abilities. Between their raw power and Eamon’s ingenuity, we’re finally researching a stable portal network.

  Jack is out now, tracking the rare materials needed to craft a new Anchor and Key, the two magical components that form a portal link. This new pair will connect Fort Anjelica to Hajill, and we hope, one day, to bridge the gap between Aerothane and Earth. I mean… we got here somehow, right? There has to be a way back.

  For now, we have one functional portal, linking Anjelica to Pendle, now the capital of Aerothane. Pendle’s in good hands. Henry the blacksmith and Raven have taken up protection and leadership there. The portal tech itself came from an orc warlord we defeated during the campaign to banish the Demon God. He had captured Pendle by anchoring a portal between the Shadow Realm and Aerothane, and worse, he’d used a mana battery amplifier to enlarge the portal from door-sized to a full-blown gate, wide enough to funnel an army through.

  That device changed everything.

  The portal system itself relies on two key components: an Anchor, which is embedded in a fixed location, and a Key, which activates the connection from afar. The Anchor is now embedded in a massive, rune-etched stone slab in Pendle’s town square. The Key is housed here at Fort Anjelica, locked away in a reinforced vault. We open the portal regularly, mostly for trade, messages, supply runs, and the occasional bard who forgets which fort they started in.

  Eamon and I have spent the better part of a year reverse-engineering the system. We’ve deciphered the binding rituals, replicated the enchanted crystals, and gathered most of the ingredients. But that final step, the binding, is... delicate. Dangerous. And maybe the most breathtaking act of magic I’ve ever witnessed.

  We’re almost ready. The new portal will link Anjelica to Hajill. Jack insisted on retrieving the final reagent himself. Of course he did. He’s the only one of us who’s hit C-Tier. His growth now depends on elite monsters and high-tier dungeons, places most of us wouldn’t survive five minutes in.

  Everyone else starts at D-Tier, Level 1. Jack’s in a league of his own now. And he bears that weight like he always does, silently, and without complaint.

  Abby, Asil, and I are close to C-Tier now. We have a few companions who are native to Aerothane, not far behind, including my new friend Eamon, his sister Cressa, and Gideon, the only elf born that we know.

  That’s all for now, Mom.

  I don’t know if these words will ever find you. I don’t even know if Earth is still the same place we left behind. But I’ll keep writing. Keep hoping.

  Because some part of me still believes… Stories find their way home. Even if we never do.

  Love always,

  Petros