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There’s no other way to describe it. Reality folded in on itself, compressing around me with crushing force. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t scream, couldn’t think. My entire being was squeezedthrough a space too small to contain it, every molecule of my body screaming in protest.

Colors I’d never seen before—colors that couldn’t exist—flashed behind my eyelids. My ears popped painfully, pressure building and releasing in waves. My skin felt like it was being simultaneously frozen and burned, nerve endings firing in confused panic.

And then—WHUMP.

I hit the ground hard, the impact driving whatever air remained in my lungs out in one painful burst. For several seconds, all I could do was lie there, stunned, my brain struggling to process what had just happened.

Gradually, sensation returned. Damp soil beneath my palms. Humid air filling my lungs. The distant sound of …something …chirping? No, not chirping. Nothing so familiar. This was a higher pitch, more mechanical, like metal scraping against metal but somehow organic.

I forced my eyes open.

The beach was gone. The resort was gone. Earth was gone.

I pushed myself up onto my elbows, my hands sinking into ground that felt wrong—spongier than soil should be, with a strange elasticity that made my skin crawl. Between my splayed fingers, tiny filaments pulsed with bioluminescent light, a network of glowing veins running through the ground like a living circuit board.

“No,” I whispered, the word catching in my throat. “No, no, no.”

I scrambled to my feet, swaying as my equilibrium struggled to adjust. Above me, massive trees stretched toward a sky that was absolutely, undeniably not the sky I knew. It was darker, tinged with violet hues, yet still somehow daylight. Stars—or what I assumed were stars—were visible despite the light, pinpricks of blue and green rather than white.

The trees themselves were wrong. Their trunks twisted in impossible geometries, bark rippling with slow, deliberate movement like breathing. The leaves—if you could call them leaves—were deep purple, almost black at the edges, and they hung in clusters that seemed to track my movement, turning slightly as I staggered backward.

My heart hammered against my ribs, each beat so forceful it felt like it might crack bone. Sweat broke out across my forehead, down my back, my body’s panic response kicking into overdrive.

This isn’t happening. This isn’t real. I’m dreaming. I passed out from the heat. Food poisoning. Something.

But the ground beneath my feet felt too solid. The air I gulped down was too thick, too sweet, coating my tongue with a flavor like overripe fruit. And the sounds—the alien cacophony of life forms I couldn’t begin to comprehend—were too varied, too complex to be products of my imagination.

I turned in a slow circle, searching desperately for the shimmer, the ripple, the way back. Nothing. Just more jungle in every direction, vegetation that defied categorization, colors that hurt to look at.

BZZZZZZZZT.

I froze, the sound cutting through my panic like a blade. It came from behind me, close enough that I could feel the vibration in my teeth, a frequency that set my nerves on edge.

Slowly—so, so slowly—I turned.

And found myself face-to-face with an insect.

No, not an insect. Insects weren’t the size of dinner plates. Insects didn’t have crystalline wings that refracted light into impossible spectra. Insects didn’t have what appeared to be fucking eyestalks that tracked independently of each other, focusing and unfocusing as they examined me.

We stared at each other, the creature and I, in a moment of mutual assessment. Its mandibles—six of them, arranged in a circular pattern—clicked together in what might have been curiosity or hunger or aggression.

I swallowed hard.

The creature’s wings twitched, vibrating faster.

And then it lunged.

I screamed, a primal sound torn from deep in my chest, and flung myself backward. My arms pinwheeled wildly, smacking at the air as if I could somehow beat back this nightmare with bare hands. The creature dodged easily, its movements fluid and precise, clearly evolved for aerial combat.

I spun around, desperate to put distance between us, and promptly tripped over an exposed root—except it wasn’t a root. It moved, curling away from my foot like a tentacle, and I crashed headlong into what I thought was a tree.

The tree moved.

I screamed again as the trunk—no, the limb—shifted beneath my hands, bark sliding against bark with a sound like grinding stones. Something slithered down from above, a sinuous appendage that might have been a branch or a vine or something else entirely, reaching for me with deliberate purpose.

Pure instinct took over. I ran.

I crashed through the alien undergrowth, branches—or what I hoped were branches—whipping past my face. Ferns twice my height unfurled as I approached, their fronds curling away to reveal pulsing centers that emitted clouds of iridescent spores. I held my breath as I plunged through, praying whatever they released wasn’t toxic to human lungs.

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