By midday, the mountains were visibly closer — the hazy blue line from his survey was resolving into individual peaks, grey and white and massive against the eastern sky.
By late afternoon, they dominated the horizon. And they were big.
He'd assumed, from ten kilometres up, that they were a normal mountain range. Tall, sure. Snow-capped. But normal. The kind of thing you'd see in the Alps or the Rockies.
He was wrong.
As the distance closed, the scale became apparent. These mountains didn't just rise above the forest — they towered. The foothills alone were taller than most peaks he'd seen in photos of Earth's ranges. The main ridge climbed so high that the upper slopes vanished into a layer of thin cloud, and the peaks above that were white with permanent snow and ice.
Those are... those are really big mountains.
He flew until dusk. The mountains were close but not reached — the foothills were still an hour's flight ahead. The forest below was darkening, the canopy turning black as the sun dropped behind him.
Time to go home.
He marked his position — memorising the spatial coordinates with the same technique he used for teleportation anchors. Then he tore a hole in space, stepped through, and was standing in his kitchen.
Bath. Dragon steak. Bed. The garden rustled outside his window.
Day one. Done.
Day two. He teleported back to his marker at dawn and continued east.
The foothills arrived within the first hour. The forest thinned as the elevation climbed — massive trees giving way to smaller, hardier species, then to scrub, then to bare rock and alpine grass. The mountains rose above him like walls, their slopes scarred with ravines and rockfalls. Snow appeared at the higher elevations, patchy at first, then continuous.
He flew through passes and over ridges, weaving between peaks. The range was deep — not a single line of mountains but a complex system of parallel ridges, valleys, and high plateaus. He crossed one ridge only to find another behind it, taller than the first.
By evening, he was deep in the range but nowhere near through it. He marked his position and went home.
Bath. Dinner. Bed.
Day three. Back to the mountains at dawn. More ridges, more valleys, more climbing. The peaks were getting taller. The air was getting thinner. His pressurised bubble was back, warm oxygen-rich air wrapped around him while the temperature outside plummeted.
By midday on day three, something began to bother him.
He'd been flying for three days. Three full days of sustained, high-speed, high-altitude flight. On Earth, a commercial aircraft could circumnavigate the planet in roughly forty hours. He'd been flying for longer than that — at speeds comparable to or exceeding a jet — and he hadn't even crossed a single mountain range.
How big is this planet?
The question had been lurking in the back of his mind since the aerial survey. The endless forest. The continental scale. Mountains that made the Himalayas look modest. Everything about this world's geography suggested a landmass — and possibly a planet — significantly larger than Earth.
Three days of flight at jet speed and I'm still in the mountains. On Earth, I could have circled the globe three times by now.
The number sat in his stomach like ice. This world wasn't just big. It was massive. The scales he'd been using — kilometres, days of travel, the size of nations — were Earth scales. They didn't apply here. He might as well be measuring the ocean with a teaspoon.
No wonder the forest was endless. It might actually be the size of a continent. A large continent. On a planet that dwarfs Earth.
He filed the thought away. Kept flying.
Late afternoon on day three. He was high — ten kilometres, maybe higher — threading between peaks that rose above him even at this altitude.
The mountain range was still taller.
He looked up at the nearest summit. It punched through the thin atmosphere like a fist, its peak lost in a haze of ice crystals and ultraviolet glare. From ten kilometres up — the altitude where commercial jets flew on Earth — he was looking up at this mountain.
This thing dwarfs Everest.
Everest was just under nine kilometres. These peaks were well above ten. Fifteen? Twenty? He couldn't tell — the upper slopes were lost in a brightness that hurt to look at.
On impulse, he dismissed his pressurised bubble. Let it dissolve. Felt the thin, freezing air hit his face and flood his lungs.
He breathed in.
He breathed out.
Fine. No dizziness. No gasping. No oxygen deprivation. His lungs worked normally. His vision stayed clear. His body processed the thin air as easily as it processed the thick, warm air at sea level.
I don't need the bubble.
Good to confirm. He reformed it anyway for warmth.
He landed on the mountainside, looked up at the peak towering above him, and went full power. Spatial displacement cranked to maximum. The mountainside dropped away. The sky shifted from blue to indigo.
He cleared the summit and looked down.
Different world.
Forest — but lighter, more spaced out. And beyond it, stretching to the eastern horizon — grassland. Vast, golden-green, treeless. Dark rivers winding across the plain.
After months of nothing but dense forest, the open space hit him like a physical force.
He descended fast. Everything on this side was different. Shorter trees, pale bark, cooler air. The wind smelled like grass and open water instead of humid canopy. Even the creatures were wrong — six-legged shaggy grazers that didn't run from him, four-winged birds, deer-like things with scaled legs.
The mountain range is a dividing line. Different world on each side.
He flew through the rest of day three and into day four, the eastern forest thinning until it gave way entirely.
The grassland opened up and he dropped low. After months of canopy, seeing to the horizon felt intoxicating. Rivers. Massive lone trees. Herds moving through tall grass.
Another full day. Home at night, back at dawn.
Then, late on day five, he saw it.
A line. Faint against the golden grass. Too straight to be natural.
He descended.
Packed earth. Wagon ruts. Hoofprints — dozens, layered, some fresh.
A road.
Yuki landed beside it and stood there staring at the wheel ruts. Someone had passed through here yesterday.
Something cracked open in his chest that he'd been holding shut for months.
People were real. Civilisation existed. Somewhere along this road.
He looked north. Looked south. Picked south — the hoofprints seemed heavier that way. And he walked. Not flew. Walked. Like a normal traveller.
Because the next person he met was going to see a guy on foot, not a sorcerer descending from the sky.
First impressions mattered. Even in another world.