As Kyle awoke to an obscured figure hovering over him, inwardly he sighed in annoyance. Can't I just wake up without something trying to kill, eat, or scare me?

"Ah, you're awake. How do you feel?" The voice was old, uneven. To Kyle, it sounded familiar, but the memory swam and dissolved.

"Who–"

"Shhh..." she said, gently tapping his lips with her index finger. "You probably won't remember me. I shouldn't even be here, but there are things you need to know." His bed creaked as the springs relaxed; she'd gotten up.

Boards groaned as she paced toward the door to his room, lacking the usual sliver of light from the hallway. Kyle's eyes had since adjusted to the faint moonlight filtering through his window, and he looked upon her stooped silhouette while countless questions numbed his tongue.

"Uh... Who... What are you doing here?" he managed lamely. "I mean, my parents..." It should have been self-evident. What are you doing here, and where are my parents? Still too groggy to think, Kyle shrugged and hoped she understood what he meant to say.

A quiet, dry laugh escaped her lips. "Kyle, your parents are the least of this, now. They'd just get in the way. It doesn't matter, in any case." She turned around then, walking again to stand adjacent to Kyle's twin bed to look him in the eyes. "What if I told you magic was real?" Set the hook, old girl.

He eyed her warily, raising his left eyebrow and tilting his head right. Somehow he'd learned the gesture from Samson when the dog was plainly confused, and it seemed appropriate. "Magic? Card magic? Rabbit magic? Saw people in half, magic? Pixie magic? Peter Pan magic? Magic of–"

The old woman had closed her eyes and convulsed, uttering a high-pitched whine with every shift of her shoulders. She was laughing, almost uncontrollably. "Kyle," she said between suppressed gales, "you have no idea." She held out her right hand, as if offering to shake his hand; a new friend and home-invader in a tiny, ancient package.

Well, she'd gotten in, and hadn't killed him in his sleep—why not? He clasped her arm just past the wrist, not convinced her crooked hand could withstand his twitchy youthful grip. At least, that's what he told himself; really it was too dark, and he'd missed her hand and barely salvaged the operation by latching onto the nearest oblong appendage near her torso.

Close enough. Sal closed her eyes and concentrated, seeing the main entryway for The End, that refuge she and the others constructed for those with The Gift.

Kyle watched her close her eyes drift to oblivion and wondered at her silence. Deep down, he recognized the expression as nearly identical to that which he wore during his escape from the deranged future—or was that just a dream?

When the vertigo struck, Kyle steeled himself against every lurch his stomach threatened, the painful hum churning his bones and rending his skin with vibration. It was weaker though, less pronounced. Either the old woman knew her craft, or The Gift faded with age; Kyle felt implicitly that his power was far stronger. He'd consider that later, perhaps.

When the feeling passed, he knew he no longer sat atop his bed, but on a hard, cold floor—marble? The old woman stooped low and offered her other hand, giving him purchase. Kyle took it, but shifted his weight entirely to his legs, those veterans of several years' walking experience, and stood. Maybe he provided the illusion she'd assisted him with her gaunt old-woman arms, but in reality, it was pride. No old bat's going to help me up.

When Kyle brushed himself off and surveyed his surroundings, he realized it was marble below his feet. White marble, black marble, erie forest-green marble, flecked with slivers of gold and long veins of white. When Kyle was thirteen, Frank taught him how to fake marble with two colors of paint, and a feather. "Make a base coat," the old man advised, "and brush with a loose wrist. Swirl it and make the branching veins. It feels great, and looks better!" Kyle tried that technique once or twice, and the result did resemble marble, but this... this defied his experience.

These were not tiles, or some artistic collage of hewn stone, but a seamless sea of merged colors and thick arteries, fading from stark black to impossible shades of fuchsia, and soothing tones of evergreen and ivory.

In the distance ahead, he had to squint and see the tiny row of equally commanding arches, dynamic in their ancient inspired flow, but graceful and artistic beyond anything Greek mythology might suggest. What is this place? It's like heaven for artists. Painters would weep if confronted by this beauty.

Sal watched Kyle's reaction with a detached sense of mirth—it was the same with all the others, when she first brought them. "Come, Kyle. You'll have plenty of time to look around. Besides, this is just the lobby."

So he followed her toward the resplendent arches that seemed miles away, hours removed from the "lobby." Kyle knew it was a trick of perspective, but after several minutes of walking, nothing loomed larger. Those columns must be huge! After over an hour had passed, by his estimation, the distant shapes were only a fraction larger, though he didn't feel fatigue; he was mostly just bored.

Sal had escorted enough recruits to expect the sigh Kyle finally released. "If you counted the hours, it would take nearly a week to walk all the way there," she warned. "But it's necessary." Understatement of the year. In truth, this dead-zone was a proving-ground. One candidate had unfortunately annihilated himself and several miles of marble when he attempted to skip to the entrance. Since then, Sal made sure even the most powerful couldn't accidentally threaten their refuge. Having met Kyle, she wondered if the buffer—several days worth—was large enough. "Time is... different here. Soon enough, you won't believe you walked at all."

Kyle harrumphed. Kyle knew walking—lived it. But a week? This old lady is nuts. His mind knew the truth, though: it's a dream. Just like everything else. Humor her—you've got nothing to lose. Good advice.

So he swallowed his teenage tendency to complain, and walked. He never denied the uncanny weirdness of dreams, so he simply enjoyed the scenery: the marble that could never exist in reality, and the entry arches which grew imperceptibly in the misleading leagues they'd yet to travel.