It started, as most strange things do, with a wrong turn.

Elliot had taken the hiking trail behind his grandmother’s old house, the one she always said led to nowhere worth going. She’d called it “the forget path,” as if naming it made it safer, like how you might name a storm to pretend it’s something you can predict.

But that morning, everything felt different.

The sky was too still. No birdsong. No rustling. Just the soft crunch of his boots on dried pine needles and the distant creak of something… metallic?

Then he saw it.

At the bottom of a shallow ravine stood a gate, made not of wood but wrought iron, surrounded by what appeared to be twisted branches of juniper; blackened, glossy, and laced with flickers of light that pulsed like embers in a dying fire.

It wasn’t there the last time he’d hiked this trail. He was sure of it.

There was no fence. Just the gate. Freestanding. Silent.

And unlocked.

Elliot should’ve turned back. Should’ve laughed it off as an art installation or some prank played by kids from town.

But the air smelled like oranges and thunder. And deep inside, something in him leaned forward.

He touched the gate.

The world flipped.

He woke up on a hill under twin suns.

The sky was bruised red and purple, and restless clouds shifted in ways clouds had no business shifting. In the valley below, an enormous city glowed—towers of glass and copper, trees the size of cathedrals winding through it like vines through a ruin. Birds with iridescent wings looped through the air, singing in chords rather than notes.

And behind him, the gate stood, identical, humming softly.

He wasn’t dreaming. The cut on his finger from earlier still throbbed. The ground beneath him smelled of wet sage. The wind whispered in a language just shy of familiar.

Elliot staggered to his feet. He heard someone call his name.

“Elliot. You came.”

He turned.

A man stood at the edge of the hill. Young. At least, younger than the world around him. Dressed in layered linen robes, face half-shadowed by hair the color of smoke. He looked like someone Elliot might have seen in a painting once, or a dream he’d forgotten too quickly.

“You know me?” Elliot asked.

“In this world, we do. We’ve been waiting.”

“For me?”

The man nodded. “You’re a walker. One of the rare ones who can cross between. The gate called you.”

Elliot stepped back. “This is insane.”

“Only on your side,” the man said. “Here, it’s prophecy.”

Days passed, or what counted for days in a world with two suns and moonlight that tasted faintly of mint.

Elliot learned. The city was called Vireya. The gate he passed through was one of seven, ancient and mysterious, scattered across universes. Most had been lost. Locked. Guarded.

But some were opening again.

And the people of Vireya were preparing.

“Something’s coming,” the man, his name was Kael, told him one night by firelight. “A ripple. A collapse. We need someone from your side. Someone tethered to both realities.”

“Why me?” Elliot asked.

Kael hesitated. “Because you’re not fully rooted in your world. You’ve always sensed there was more. You don’t belong anywhere completely, which means you belong everywhere just enough.”

Elliot thought of the sleepless nights. The moments when people spoke to him and their words felt off by a beat. The way mirrors sometimes didn’t reflect what he expected.

Maybe he had been waiting for such a door.

But portals go both ways.

And one evening, when Elliot returned to the hilltop, the juniper gate buzzed louder than before. Sparks leapt between its branches. On the other side, dimly, he saw the woods behind his grandmother’s house. The sky was gray. Storm clouds brewed.

A shadow passed across the threshold. Something huge. Crawling.

Kael grabbed his arm. “Something’s breached. From your side.”

Elliot stared into the shimmer. “What do I do?”

“Only you can close it,” Kael said. “But if you do, the gate might seal for good.”

“And I can’t come back.”

Kael didn’t speak.

“I finally found somewhere I belong,” Elliot whispered.

Kael touched his hand. “Then protect it.”

Elliot stepped into the gate one last time.

The storm met him.

He stood defiantly.

Back in the woods, no one ever saw Elliot again.

But sometimes, hikers say they hear music through the trees; chords sung by birds that never show themselves.

And once in a while, at twilight, a freestanding gate appears in the ravine, made of wrought iron and surrounded by blackened juniper and faint blue sparks.

It hums.

Waiting.

And, you just know I can’t neglect the obligatory shameless self-promotion. New Yesterdays is available through the following links: Books-A-Million, Barnes & Noble, and Amazon as well as your favorite bookshops. The Audiobook is available from Libro.fm, as well as Amazon.