4338.209 · July 28, 2018 AD
Two Sides of the Threshold
The portal explodes into colour and Kain reaches for home — only to be knocked flat by Luke's newest recruit. A fence builder, taken for his useful skills. On the other side of the collision, a man named Nial fights to understand why the sky is wrong, why his ute just emerged through impossible light, and why a stranger is welcoming him to a place he never asked to find.
Kain has been sorting supplies at the portal's base when the colours erupt. Home is right there — shimmering, reachable, close enough to touch. His hand rises toward the barrier, fingers trembling with desperate hope.
Then something slams into him.
A man tumbles through the portal in the same graceless arrival Kain remembers from his own crossing. Dark hair, work clothes, the stunned expression of someone whose world has just dissolved around him. Nial owns a fence construction business, Luke explains later — useful skills for a settlement that learned last night how badly it needs protection.
But Nial isn't thinking about fences. He's thinking about Jenny, his wife, expecting him home in hours. About Sammy, his little boy, secure in the certainty that Daddy always comes back. About a green ute with his business name on the side that shouldn't be pushing through an impossible barrier but somehow is.
Kain remembers this terror. Was living it three days ago, though three days feels like three lifetimes now. He extends his hand, offers a name, delivers the words someone once said to him: "Welcome to Clivilius."
The greeting sounds like a curse even as he says it.
Luke arrives long enough to collect Nial's keys before vanishing again, leaving Kain's bleeding leg unaddressed, his plea for crutches unheard. Paul suggests the one cure Kain dreads most — the lagoon, with its healing waters and its hungry demands.
Two men stand at the threshold. One just crossed it. One has been trying to cross back ever since he arrived.
Neither of them is going home.
