Overlapping Worlds

Space has never been flat.

For years, humanity had gazed through telescopes at Kepler-52b, a super-Earth shrouded in dense clouds, distant and silent, existing only in astronomical reports and stories of fantasy. Everyone thought that the two worlds were separated by several light-years of cold emptiness and would never meet.

Until the folds appeared.

There was no earth-shattering cosmic explosion, no blaze from a meteorite impact. The first anomalies observed appeared at scattered coordinates around the globe.

The world tore apart.

It was not the ground that split. It was as if an invisible hand had crumpled the view. The shops, trees, and road on the right side of the street slowly faded beneath a layer of translucent frosted glass. In their place stood towering ancient trees, their trunks glowing faintly blue-green. Vines writhed like living creatures, fragments of rock floated silently in midair, and a faint purple mist spread through the air.

Two utterly different landscapes had been crudely stitched together on the same stretch of land. On one side were neon lights and steel and concrete; on the other, a magical wasteland. The boundary shuddered faintly without pause, like two bodies of water meeting. Wind passed through it, sending rings of purple magical ripples outward.

A piercing scream rang out. Cars lost control and crashed into one another. People fell to the ground, staring in terror at a world that did not belong on Earth.