f all the people who had an influence on my fate, Natalie Poole was arguably the most impactful. And I had never even met her.

Natalie lived in my dreamscape in a world called Earth. I had been dreaming about her for a long time, but it was only recently that I’d discovered that these scenes I witnessed while I slept were actually visions of the future.

Tonight, my dreams opened on the maple-haired young woman sitting in a classroom. All the kids looked about fifteen. The chalkboard behind the teacher had the words “Art History” written on it. Natalie had her nose buried in a textbook as kids piled in and took their seats. A boy with gray-blue eyes and dark curly hair was among them. When he walked in, Natalie raised her eyes ever so slightly. He gave her a smile that would’ve made any girl’s heart melt. Then he sat down next to her.

“Hey,” he said, sliding his backpack off his shoulder.

“Hey, Ryan,” she replied, closing her book. She glanced toward the back of the room at the other boys he’d come in with. “You’re not going to sit with your friends?”

“I thought I already was.”

The pair of them dissolved into a dark blur as the scene faded. My dream was changing. My subconscious took on a physical form and I began to migrate through the haze. I was not surprised by the change. Sometimes I was an observer in my dreams, like I had been with Natalie a minute ago. Other times I walked through my dreamscape like an explorer or even a player.

As I moved, I saw silhouettes of pillars and archways. I started to feel warm. The heat was increasing and it felt like the air was getting thicker. I clutched at my throat. It was becoming difficult to breathe. Clouds of smoke and flashes of orange began to appear in the blackness. Wherever I was, it was on fire.

I was moving through a maze of debris—fallen pillars, shattered roof tiles, collapsed walls made of glass and metal. The heat and smoke escalated. A beam came crashing down. I barely saw it in my peripheral vision and flung myself to the ash-laden floor to avoid it. I started to get up but stopped short when I saw something familiar lying beneath a pile of rubble.

In a panic, I grabbed the object and held it up. It was a flag, or at least a portion of it anyway. My kingdom’s flag.

I had grown up seeing these flags all over my home kingdom of Midveil. There was no mistaking it for what it was. It was powder blue with a gold crest and a sleeping lion at the center. The words “Aut viam inveniam aut faciam” were written around the image like a border.

Looking about frantically, I tried to figure out where I was. Most of the architecture in Midveil was composed of metal and glass. And since most of my kingdom’s commercial buildings had flags on display, I couldn’t narrow down the location. I could be anywhere in Midveil.

Suddenly I heard a distinct cracking; the ceiling was giving way. I looked up and leapt aside to dodge a falling column. It smashed into the floor next to me. I tried to get up again, but it felt like I was being held down.

The smoke and heat were becoming unbearable. The room was quaking. I knew the section of roof above my head was probably going to give out soon and I’d be squashed like a bug.

I was scared, not just of the imminent doom, but of how I felt. For reasons I could not explain, my entire core burned with heartache. It flared inside me—a combination of rage and sadness so powerful I had no past experiences to compare it to.

I was on my feet then. My vision was going in and out. Black to flame; debris to ash; columns to glass. The ceiling exploded. The whole room shook and the fury of the quake caused an enormous nearby mirror to shatter. Shards scattered everywhere.

Then I was abruptly thrust against a wall. Not as a result of the explosion, but because someone slammed me there. My eyes darted up to see Parker and the glint of his dagger heading toward my throat.

My hand jutted out to block him. It was successful, but he kept coming at me. I perceived that I was fighting back, but our struggle only came in curt flashes as the world grew hazier. I didn’t believe we were in the same setting as before. There was no glass or crumbling columns or mirrors. However, I still felt the heat of fire against my cheeks and smoke clogging my lungs.

Parker grabbed my hair and yanked it back, exposing my throat. Our arms were entangled. I pushed whatever leverage I had to keep his blade away from me, but he was stronger than I was. I had no wand. I had no weapon. I had no backup of any kind. All I had was my fleeting strength and the haunting look of Parker’s eyes staring into mine as his dagger inched closer.

Then, as briskly as the torment began, the smoke, fire, and magic hunter were swept away as if by a powerful wind. I found myself looking up at a maroon and purple canopy. I was awake again.

I exhaled deeply, as if the smoke in my nightmares had somehow manifested into my real-life lungs. I lay with my eyes closed for a few moments. Then I rolled to the edge of my bed, sat up, and picked up a journal and quill from my mahogany nightstand. With another deep breath, I began to scribble down the details of the dreams I’d woken from.

I’d suffered the wrath of vivid nightmares for years. Sometimes they featured people I knew, sometimes they didn’t. No matter what they were about, I now knew that my dreams would all inevitably come true. Just like Liza’s.

Pure Magic. The gift that keeps on giving.

Usually my dreams of the future took place in Book, but I also dreamt about Earth once in a while, specifically about Natalie Poole.

While all my visions were of keen interest to me, my dreams about Natalie tended to occupy my attention a lot more than the others. She had been a recurring presence in my subconscious for as long as I could remember. As my visions about her had gotten stronger, so had my understanding of her situation.

Natalie Poole wasn’t just a normal girl. According to the prologue prophecy Liza had written about her, she had a destiny that intertwined our realms. Among other things, she was fated to open something called “The Eternity Gate,” which would give Nadia, Arian, and all of the antagonists in Alderon the magical edge they’d need in order to vanquish the protagonists and overthrow Book.

Eternity was a mystical place between worlds that was responsible for controlling the balance of all realms. If any realm’s good-to-dark magic ratio ever fell out of balance, Eternity’s guardians would open an entrance to that realm (its Eternity Gate) to judge whether or not the world was worth saving or if it should be eliminated from the universe before it infected other realms.

During this judgment period ordinary magic across all realms was supposed to shut down. Thus, if Natalie opened the Eternity Gate, even if she was on Earth, the In and Out Spell around Alderon would evaporate, freeing the antagonists. Worse still? The Fairy Godmothers wouldn’t have the magic to stop them. The only magic that would not be affected during that time would be Pure Magic, and aside from me and Liza, the only people with Pure Magic were all evil and presently locked up in Alderon.

Cue Natalie’s importance.

My foes intended to trigger the opening of the Eternity Gate by destroying Natalie’s life and tipping her aural magic (Earth’s version of magic) in the direction of darkness. The more dreams I had of Natalie, the more I understood the details involved with this plot. For example, I’d learned that a girl who worked for Arian named Tara was on Earth making Natalie miserable. I also knew that the antagonists planned to ultimately destroy Natalie by killing her one true love, Ryan Jackson, on her twenty-first birthday.

Because of this, I didn’t have long to save Natalie. There was a big time difference between Earth and Book. A month here was equal to over a year and a half there. So I really only had about one Book year to help her and stop the antagonists. Hence my accelerated magic training with Liza.

In addition to wanting to keep my Pure Magic from corrupting me, my hope was that if I gained enough control over my powers I would be able to communicate with Natalie through my dreams and warn her of what was coming.

Liza had been able to perform this type of communication with me before because she had vast control over her powers and dreamt about me frequently, making our connection strong enough for her Pure Magic to allow it. Since I dreamed about Natalie constantly, with enough training I hoped I would be able to do the same with her.

Noting down the last details in my dream journal, I closed the book and placed it on my nightstand.

I glanced over at my friends. They were both sound asleep. SJ lay perfectly undisturbed on her back as she breathed slowly and gracefully—her smooth sheets and perfectly braided black hair suggesting that she hadn’t moved an inch since falling asleep. Blue, meanwhile, was buried beneath a mound of comforter. The only parts of her that were visible were a few dark blonde waves and her left arm, which was hanging off the mattress.

I envied them. While their states of sleeping may have been quite different, the one thing they shared was the one thing that would forever elude me—they both were at rest.

Deciding not to wake them, I slipped out of bed and out the doors to our balcony. They were always kept open, so I stepped through without making any noise.

The outside air was crisp and the sun rising over the forest was bright and cheerful. I stared at the distant, snow-encrusted pines. I wondered how many magic hunters were out there waiting for me. And I wondered how long I had before they got tired of waiting and came up with a Plan B. I knew it would happen eventually. My vision of Parker just now had verified this in a way that was beyond argument. He was coming for me. I didn’t know when or where or how. But he was.

For the meantime, I was safe behind the protective shield of the In and Out Spell—so long as I didn’t get too close to the outer parts of the campus and the hunters didn’t have lucky timing and grappling hooks like Blue suggested. But this notion of safety filled me with as much comfort as it did resentment. I hated hiding and loathed the idea of cowering in fear. It would give me a great sense of satisfaction to go charging through the forest with the full force of my Pure Magic as I weeded out the hunters who had followed me here. This was my home and they were invading it.

Sadly, I’d been forced to conceal these impulses yesterday from SJ, Blue, Jason, and Daniel. If I let my true feelings on the matter show, my friends would go charging out there with me. And while I welcomed their help because I trusted them completely, I didn’t want them diving into that forest when there were so many unknown variables at play. The five of us already lived in a world full of risk and danger. I didn’t want to court more if I could help it.

In the silence and solitude I sighed. And for a moment, I let my brave face go.

I was scared. Not of anything specific, but of the general threats following me like a cursed mosquito. Much more than that, I was scared for what this meant for the people closest to me. Strong and capable as they were, I could never let go of the possibility that the trouble the universe kept sending my way might hurt my friends. This concern plagued the back of my mind constantly, but I was intent on keeping it hidden from everyone except myself, and maybe Daniel.

He was the only person I didn’t have to conceal my true worries from. He already knew so much about me that there was no point in hiding anything from him. Everyone needed a sounding board, and he’d accidentally become mine. I hadn’t really tested this out since we’d returned from our Author quest, but I hoped that if my worries ever got too big, I could still turn to him for support.