The old man stood up and began to walk toward a jagged line of purple mountains. As he moved, his silhouette seemed to flicker, stretching into something long and predatory before snapping back to human form.

Back in Seattle, an apartment sat empty. On a glowing computer screen, the cursor blinked at the very end of a 2,400-page document. The last page was blank, save for a single line of text that hadn't been there before: He left the desk to find the path with a heart.

"I am a series of descriptions," the old man said, echoing a line Elias had read only moments before. "And you are a man who thinks he can find the 'crack between the worlds' in a PDF file. You think power is something you download?"

Elias looked down at his feet. They were bare, calloused, and covered in fine red dust. He reached into the air where his mouse should be, but his fingers met only the scent of sage and ancient rain. He realized then that the PDF hadn't been a book at all; it was a map that had finally been folded the right way.

He stood up, took a breath of air that tasted of ozone and infinity, and began to follow.