Kane gulped in breath after breath. Every inhale clung in his throat like syrup. He kept his eyes on the door. Ursula had torn through a metal fence. Could a door hold her?

Somehow it did and Kane was safe. For now.

He finally let himself cry.

To some, the sudden onset of magic might be shocking, but to Kane it was owed. Ever since he was little, and ever since he knew he was different, he had woven the hope for magic into every one of the world’s disappointments. Every sneer, every snuck glance, every birthday spent alone with Sophia as his only guest. Each felt like a debt.

Prove to me that it’s all been worth it, he used to tell the universe. Let me have power that they can’t take from me.

Like the X-Men. Like Sailor Moon. Like Avatar Korra. He thought that if he suffered enough, magic might find him in a moment of insurmountable peril. Telekinesis, like Carrie. Or control of water, like Sailor Mercury.

Kane had not, in any of these imaginings, envisioned his hands erupting into projectile rainbows.

But that’s what had happened. He sniffed as he inspected his hands. Surprisingly, there were no burns. All that covered his skin was a layer of grime from his fall. In fact, he was covered with mud everywhere. A mixture of clay, sweat, and something both sticky and pungent.

Blood.

Kane flew into a frenzy feeling for wounds, but instead found that his cotton T-shirt was suddenly made of coarse twill. And his shorts were gone, as were his roper boots. He wore badly torn cargo pants and a pair of brown loafers that crunched on the uneven stone floor of the tunnel he now stood within, which was lit by torchlight.

Torchlight?

Cargo pants?

Kane was not in the locker rooms anymore. He wasn’t even sure he was awake. A crude tunnel curved into the darkness behind him. Veins of scarlet crystals webbed through the stone, their pulsing glow dyeing the passageway a ghastly crimson. A single torch jutted from a mount where the locker room light switch had been.

Kane ran to the walls to feel if they were real. They were. His hand drifted toward the torch to see if it was hot. It was. What was happening? Where on earth did the locker room door actually lead?

In a daze, he turned back to the door in time to see its metal melt into a cobbled mosaic. Still a door, but one that matched this new world. The mosaic depicted a scene of figures bowing before their god, a gigantic, pincered thing inlaid with rubies and black-red garnets.

“Glowing lobster,” Kane whispered.

This is what the Others were talking about. This was the reverie. The realization inspired more questions than it answered, but Kane forced himself to stay focused. He was done crying. For now, at least.