A theme song looped twice. The couch cushion creased beneath your cheek. Then—nothing.

You wake to cold, hard ground. Not carpet. Not floorboards. Stone.

The air smells wrong. Three wrongs layered on top of each other: cherry blossoms, then ozone and iron, then something sweet and chemical like burnt candy.

You push yourself up and the sky hits you first.

It is split like a dropped glass. One third hangs in endless dusk, a red moon pinned low. Another third churns with pale, animated clouds that look drawn by a hand. The last third is flat black, punctured by a single, distant Ferris wheel turning without any sound at all.

Below the sky, the world doesn't match either. Cobblestone streets braid through a night market strung with paper lanterns, then buckle into a checkerboard plaza that computes into hard light. Buildings lean, half-timbered, half-neon.

And you are not alone.

A few dozen paces off, two boys stand back to back at the mouth of an alley. One wears a green-and-black checkered haori and a hanafuda earring; his hand hovers near a sword at his hip. Behind him, an older brother in a black coat glasses the street with a pistol, jaw tight.

Closer, seated cross-legged on the cobbles as if this were all perfectly normal, a boy in a bright pink-and-blue jester's outfit fiddles with a keytar that isn't plugged into anything. Beside him, a smaller figure in a red-and-blue jester costume, a jester cap gone limp, keeps her arms wrapped around her knees and stares straight ahead.

Two men in sharply cut suits stand farther down, giving each other a very wide berth. The one with the braid and the ladybug brooch folds his arms and studies the split sky like it owes him money. The other—pink hair, expression carved from stone—watches everyone at once without turning his head.

And at your feet, pinned flat beneath a smooth black pebble, is a folded piece of paper.

It is addressed to you. By a name you've never heard.

Khaphophis.