A school bell rings out over an empty corridor, as doors open and students of all ages flood it. They grab bags, coats, books, and school supplies before meeting up with their friend groups. It's about half past twelve in a local high school and the students are heading out to their lunch break. A boy with brown hair, around the age of 16 years old, is leaning against the wall. He is wearing a school uniform, a white shirt with an orange tie and a black blazer, but the shirt is untucked, and the tie is loose. A second boy walks up to him, this one prim and proper, wearing the uniform as it was intended. The first boy greets him with a wave. "Hey Gerald, how you doing?"

Gerald goes into a small locker attached to the wall and grabs a backpack from it, slinging it over his shoulder. "I'm fine, but what about you Jason, I haven't seen you all morning."

Jason stretches as he picks his own bag up off of the floor. "I overslept. It's fine though, I spoke to the teachers, and I didn't miss too much."

"Please don't tell me that you stayed up all night looking for the Shade again."

Jason gives him a half smirk, the kind you give when you have been caught out doing something that you kind of hoped no one would catch you doing. "I'm telling you I saw her; she came to me. I checked, no one has ever written about her acting in the way she did in that dream, it felt so real. I need to know more."

Gerald face palms and rolls his eyes, giving Jason a look of sympathy, the kind you would give to a dog chasing its tail before it falls to the floor with exhaustion. "My guy, the Shade is just a fairy tale, a story parents tell their kids to get them to behave. You shouldn't still believe in it at your age."

"I know, but I just want to believe I'm at least a little special you know. This place turns everyone into a drone, even the future they prepare you for is one where you slot into a wall like a brick."

Gerald places an arm around Jason's shoulder in a comforting manner. "Hey, it's not that bad, at least the food here's pretty good.

Jason chuckles. "Yeah, you're right." He looks down the corridor, and his face becomes puzzled. Shade is poking her head around the corner, observing him from a far. No one else seems to be reacting to her presence, making small adjustments to avoid her but not questioning the girl not wearing a school uniform staring intently down the corridor. Jason looks at her, trying to take in what he is seeing, Shade currently unaware that he has noticed her. "Hey Gerald, who is that hanging to that corner, she looks kind of like...?"

Jason is cut off by Gerald as he follows Jason's gaze down the hall, aiming it at the same spot. "Who?"

"What do you mean who she's right there, staring at me."

"I don't see anyone aside from the regular students here, no one you wouldn't recognise."

"Hang on a second." Jason takes Gerald's arm off of his shoulder and starts to walk towards the corner. "I'm just going to check something out." He takes a few steps closer to Shade, who realises something is up. Her target is walking towards her as if he can see her.

Gerald yells after Jason as he walks away. "I swear to god you better not be ditching me for some invisible woman. Your imagination is going too far this time."

Jason turns around, still heading towards the corner but with his back to it, taking skip like backwards steps. "I just need to check something out." Gerald face palms again as Jason turns back towards where Shade was standing, just in time to catch a glimpse of Shade dash away from the corner and down the connecting corridor. Jason hitches up his backpack and launches down the corridor after her. "Wait up," he shouts, chasing her down the halls. "I just wanna ask you something."

Jason continues to dart down the corridor after shade, never seeing her fully but always catching a short glimpse of her as she runs through a pair of doors or around a corner. People milling around the halls give him strange looks as he darts past, but he is determined, not slowing down and not stopping. He rounds a corner and appears at a dead end. In front of him is a door to a supply room, usually used by the janitor to store the cleaning supplies. He takes a few steps towards it and hears the gentle shattering of something glass like. Suddenly a purple light bursts forth from under the door, illuminating the door frame from the inside. Jason throws open the door and sees Shade kneeling on the floor, fists clenched with purple light pulsing around her. She backs off towards the back wall of the room. Jason gets a good look at the person he was chasing for the first time; it was unmistakable that it was indeed Shade before him. She backs further into the room until her back is against the wall. "You shouldn't be able to see me, how is it you can see me?"

Jason steps forward, "please I just want some..."

"Don't come closer. I don't know what would happen if you did."

Jason steps forward again. "Please..."

Shade puts a hand out, in an attempt to force him to back off, but accidently places it on his chest, just as the pulsing culminates in a loud crash. A bright purple light, too bright to see through, shines out of the supply room. Jason and Shade both close their eyes to shield themselves from the blinding light.

Shade opens her eyes to a familiar sky and ground. Ahead of her is a large purple stone, tall as a person, which she assumes is the anchor stone that Sylas told her about. She breathes a sigh of relief, the crystal worked, and she made it home. She takes a second to regain her breath before coming to a realisation, she failed her mission. The Fermie isn't dead, and her power isn't back. She closes her eyes to try and enter the realm of smoke, but the bright light still prevents her. "It's ok though," Shade thinks to herself, "it will surely take longer than a week for him to sever the connection between our world and the Realm of Smoke, and after that he will still need to sever the connection for the other two realms. Sylas will have a new plan when she gets back to the sanctuary."

Shade is suddenly awoken from her thinking by the sound of coughing from behind her. She turns around, expecting a Circle of Grulm guard to be on top of her. Instead, as she turns around, she sees Jason attempting to stable himself against a rock. He is disorientated, swaying slightly as he tries to get up. His clothes have had holes torn in them by the rocky floor and his regularly bright brown hair is caked in mud. The trip between worlds was not kind to him.

Shade quickly darts behind a nearby wall, mainly rubble but some parts still standing. She attempts to hide while watching Jason attempt to gain his bearings, showing as little of herself to him as possible so as to retain a level of stealth. Him being here adds a level of complication to this, but also means she has not failed yet. Shade's power is too weak to help her right now, and the multiple trips between worlds has weakened her power more, at least for the time being. She hides herself fully behind the wall to think of how to handle the situation.

Meanwhile, Jason shivers slightly as he takes in his surroundings, still disorientated by what happened. The ground bellow him is a brown grass, but does not feel dead to the touch, like brown is its natural colour. The sky is a miraculous split of green, blue, and purple, separated by clean cracks that streak across the skyline. The sun is a bright red that beats down a burning heat, but the wind is cool and refreshing. The reality he finds himself in is nothing like the earth he was in a few minutes ago, he is scared but also enthralled. He turns slowly, searching for any sign of life. "Hello," he calls out, seeing if anyone is around. He calls out again, louder this time "HELLO!"

Suddenly, Shade launches herself out from behind the wall she was hiding behind, covering the distance between them in no time at all, she needs to shut him up. She tackles Jason to the ground and forces a hand over his mouth. "Are you insane, keep yelling like that and the Circle of Grulm will be on us in seconds."

Jason pulls the hand away. "It really is you, you're the Shade."

"How is it you can see me. The mind of a Fermie should not be able to comprehend what I am, I should be nothing more than a shadow in the corner of your eye. Unless..." Shade notices that her hand has been cut by one of the jagged stones on the floor. She holds her breath to counter the pain and uses the blood dripping from her hand to summon a small tendril of smoke. She allows it to snake up her arm before trying to move the hand closer to Jason's face once again. As the smoke gets closer to him, it cannot reach him before an explosion of white light sends Shade flying across the ground away from Jason. She lands heavily on her back as a spurt of blood comes flying out of her mouth. She stands, slowly, and spits any residual blood onto the brown grass below. "The power from the three realms must have strengthen your mind, you're more powerful than I realised."

Jason gets up off the floor, his face showing a mix of confusion of his situation and concern for the girl bleeding an awful lot across the floor from him, but mainly anger formed from a million unanswered questions. He starts to walk towards Shade, his anger almost creating more heat than the sun above them. "I am so done with this. I want answers. Firstly, where in the nine hells are we? Secondly, why did you just call me a Fermie?" And thirdly," Jason is face to face with Shade now, close enough to feel his breath on her skin, "what was that explosion that just happened? Are you trying to kill me because it doesn't seem to be working for you?"

Shade takes a deep breath, there is no use hiding too much from him, and if she is at least a bit truthful he may trust her enough that she can escape the Grulm territory alive, him being alive being optional. "Alright listen, you are in a world called Zilla, it's mine and many other people's home world. When we touched, I was using a crystal to travel back here from your world, and I guess because we were touching it brought us both."

"And what about the Fermie thing? Also, who are the Grulm, you seemed pretty scared of them."

"A Fermie is what you are. You are a member of the dominant race of Ferma, which makes you a Fermie."

Jason looked puzzled, "wait, do you mean a human? And I am not from Ferma, I'm from Earth."

"I think that's what you call yourself yeah. I'm not particularly versed on your culture, so I'm not sure, it's just what the inhabitants of Zilla call your species."

"And, about the Grulm?"

"The Circle of Grulm are a group of knights who work for and worship a guy named Grulm. They are not native here, they arrived about 10 millennia ago when our world collided with yours and proceeded to take over almost everywhere. There are only a few places they can't or won't reach."

Jason claps his hands together nervously, looking over his shoulder and then back to Shade. "Alright, well, this is enough excitement for one day. If you'll hand me over one of those crystal things you were using to get to Earth, or Ferma as you call it, I will be on my way."

"Ahhh, see there's the problem, I don't have any more."

"What do you mean you don't have any more?"

"Sylas only gave me two, one to get in and one to get out. We didn't expect a third trip." Suddenly a twig cracks behind Jason. Shade looks over his shoulder and sees the unmistakable glint of Grulm armour in amongst the trees of the forest nearby. "Duck," she whispers as she tackles him once again and pulls him behind a rock.

A pair of Grulm soldiers enter the clearing, looking around intently. One goes over and inspects the anchor crystal. "The World Anchor has definitely been used recently, it's still warm." He places a hand over the crystal, and it lights up slightly, the light emanating from his palm. "The feeling is weak but unmistakable, it was the escapee that used it. Shade must be nearby."

"Ok then," the second guard says. "She's taken two trips between worlds in under a month, she must be weakened. I'll report her return to Grulm, you see if you can find her trail."

The two guards split off from each other, one heading back into the trees and the other heading in the opposite direction. Shade breathes a sigh of relief. "Ok its safe now, they're gone."

Jason pokes his head over the rock. "How long were you stalking me? You were gone nearly a month?"

"Time moves differently here than in your world. A few hours for you are days for us. Due to my, ahem," she gestures quotation marks "composition shall we say, I age a lot slower than a normal inhabitant here, more or less the same speed as you Fermie."

"Please don't call me Fermie, call me Jason." He puts his hand out for Shade to shake it. She does not.

"I'm Shade, but I guess you know that already, you Fermies did give me the name after all."

"Alright Shade, what's the plan for getting me home?"

"We need to get back to Sylas, he'll have a plan. I don't want to go back there but if we have to, I'll bare it. The sanctuary is a week's hike in that direction," she gestures to the direction the guards came from, "but that is also straight through Grulm territory. We'll have to be sneaky about it."

"Alright then Shade, lead the way."

Shade walks towards the forest, Jason following close behind. She starts to think to herself again. "He obviously doesn't know what power he has. I may be too weak to kill him, but Sylas won't be. Once we get to the Sanctuary, we'll eliminate him and save Zilla." Shade smiles to herself, having devised her plan, as the pair head off together into the forest.