The hidden world on Earth, the one buried beneath ordinary human life and invisible to almost everyone, had been completely overturned.
Yet the surface world continued as if nothing had changed.
A few people occasionally felt it. A faint unease, a pressure in the air that could not quite be explained, like the world itself was holding its breath. But those sensations were easy to ignore. Bills still needed paying, alarms still rang in the morning, traffic still clogged the streets. Most people followed the same routine they always had, working through the day and entering Ethereal at night.
It had already been more than two years.
Logging into Ethereal each evening had become as natural as eating dinner or checking messages. Families planned their schedules around it. Students rushed home for it. Office workers counted down the hours until immersion.
