He showed up at my door last Thursday—same crooked grin, same Army-issue jacket I thought he was buried in. I slammed the door in SHOCK, heart POUNDING, then opened it again, slower this time. “How are you even alive?” I whispered. He just handed me a folded map and said, “You need to see this for yourself…

I stare at him, at the dirt smudged along his jaw, at the hollow look buried behind the grin he’s trying too hard to wear. My palms turn clammy as I reach for the map, but he jerks his hand back slightly, as if he suddenly regrets giving it to me. His eyes flick toward the dark hallway behind me, like he’s checking for shadows I can’t see. I pull him inside before the neighbors notice, slamming the door and locking all three deadbolts in one frantic motion.

“Start talking,” I demand, trying to keep my voice from shaking. “The Army told me you died. They told me you died, Matt.”

“I know what they told you,” he says, lowering the hood of his jacket and exhaling slowly. The sound is shaky, haunted. “And they weren’t lying. Not completely.”

I feel the floor slide sideways. “What does that even mean?”

He sets the map on my kitchen table and flattens it with both hands. It’s old—real old. Not printed. Hand-drawn. The paper is yellowed and stiff at the edges, like something that belongs in a museum or an attic full of forgotten secrets. Black ink marks snake across it, forming trails and symbols I don’t recognize. Some look like coordinates. Some look like warnings.

And three of them are circled in red.

“Where did you get this?” I ask.

He doesn’t answer. Instead, he runs his fingers over one of the red circles, tapping it twice, like he’s checking if it’s still real. “This is where they found us,” he finally murmurs. “Where everything went wrong.”

“You were in Afghanistan, not—” I pause, squinting. “Is this even a place on Earth?”

He looks up at me, and the silence stretches so thin I feel it might snap between us. “Not the Earth you know.”

My breath catches. I laugh, but it’s rough and too sharp. “Okay, seriously. If this is some messed-up joke—”

“It’s not a joke,” he snaps. His voice cracks at the edge. “You think I want to be like this? You think I understand any of this? I shouldn’t even be breathing right now.”

He lifts his shirt before I can ask what he means. For a second, I expect a gunshot scar, maybe something from shrapnel. But what I see steals the air from my lungs.

His skin is marked by something that looks like a burn, except it isn’t charred or broken. It’s glowing. Faintly. Like an ember buried under skin. Lines branch outward from the center of the mark, weaving into patterns that resemble the symbols on the map.

I take a step back. “Matt… what did they do to you?”

“It wasn’t them,” he whispers. “It wasn’t human.”

I grab a chair before my knees give out. My heart is sprinting, and every instinct screams for me to run, but I can’t. He’s here. He’s alive. And the grief I spent two years drowning in suddenly floods backward, leaving me gasping.

He sits across from me and folds his hands, linking his fingers like he’s praying—or trying to stay grounded. “Our convoy was hit. Half the squad was gone instantly. The rest of us tried to radio for help, but everything went static. Then this… light appeared. Not like a flare or an explosion. More like it was alive. It swallowed everything. Next thing I know, I wake up in a place that looked like Earth but wasn’t. The sky was wrong. Too still. Too quiet.” He swallows hard. “Something walked toward us. Something I can’t describe without sounding insane.”

“You don’t sound insane,” I whisper, and the terrifying part is that he doesn’t. He looks like a man holding together the last shards of his sanity by sheer will.

“Whatever it was, it touched us,” he says. “It marked us. And one by one, the others vanished. Pulled into the ground, into the air—I can’t even tell you. They were just… gone.”

My skin prickles. “So how did you get back?”

“That’s the part I don’t understand,” he admits. “One second I’m running through that impossible forest, and the next I’m waking up in a field six miles from town. Like no time passed at all. But I can feel something inside me—like a countdown I can’t read.”

A faint humming starts. Low. Vibrational. Matt presses a palm against his chest, wincing. “It’s happening again.”

“What’s happening?” I ask, voice trembling.

“The mark—something triggers it. It’s like a beacon. And I can’t control it.”

He grabs my hand suddenly, squeezing hard. “I came here because you need to see what’s at the second red circle. If I disappear before I can show you, promise me you’ll go.”

“I’m not letting you disappear anywhere,” I say, pulling him closer. “You’re staying with me. We’ll figure this out.”

The humming deepens. The glow under his skin pulses brighter.

“Matt, we need to get you to a hospital—”

“No hospital,” he snaps. “They’ll lock me up. Study me. I’m not going through that.”

The lights flicker. My heart jumps to my throat.

“What’s causing that?” I whisper.

He shakes his head. “I don’t know. But it’s getting stronger.”

The glow expands, bleeding through the fabric of his jacket. I stand up instinctively, ready to grab him if he collapses, but he reaches for the map and shoves it into my hands.

“If I go, follow the path. Don’t trust anyone. And whatever you do—”

The lights burst white, blinding. The air rips open with a sound like tearing metal. My ears ring. I stumble back, choking on the sudden heat.

“Matt!” I scream.

He looks at me—eyes scared, desperate, apologetic—and then he’s gone.

Just… gone.

The glow collapses inward, leaving nothing but a scorched mark on my kitchen floor. Silence punches the room.

For a moment, I can’t breathe. I fall to my knees, gripping the edge of the table. Reality tilts. My heartbeat becomes a violent drum in my ears.

He was here. He was alive. And now he’s gone again.

I stare at the map shaking in my hands. The red circles blur behind tears, but one detail stands out—small handwritten text next to the second circle: “Doorway.”

I wipe my face. “Okay,” I whisper to myself. “Okay. If this is the only way to get him back, I’m going.”

I grab a flashlight, my keys, and my jacket. Fifteen minutes later, I’m driving through a dark stretch of woods outside town, following coordinates I can barely decode. The deeper I go, the heavier the air feels. As if something is waiting.

When I reach the spot marked by the second red circle, I park on the shoulder and step out. The woods are too quiet—no crickets, no wind, not even the rustle of leaves. Like the world is holding its breath.

The ground slopes downward into a clearing that shouldn’t exist. The trees bend away from it, forming a perfect ring. In the center lies a stone slab engraved with the same symbols from the map. They pulse faintly, like they’re alive.

My legs tremble, but I force myself forward. “Matt!” I yell, my voice echoing unnaturally in the still air. “Can you hear me?”

Something stirs behind me.

I whip around—and freeze.

A shimmer in the air. Light bending. Then, slowly, a shape steps forward. Humanoid, but not human. Its outline flickers like glitching pixels, its skin a shifting mosaic of colors I can’t name. Its eyes are deep, dark wells of gravity. And when it speaks, its voice is layered, like multiple tones vibrating through my bones.

“You seek the marked one,” it says.

I can’t feel my fingers. “Where is he? What did you do to him?”

“He is between,” it replies. “Pulled by the call of the mark. He exists in the crossing place, where your world touches the other.”

“Bring him back,” I beg. “Please. He didn’t ask for any of this.”

Its head tilts, almost curious. “The marked return only by choice.”

“He didn’t choose to disappear!”

“No. But he must choose to come home.”

It steps aside, revealing a swirling fissure in the center of the clearing. Light dances across it, pulling at my vision, my breath, my very thoughts.

“If you enter,” the being warns, “you bind yourself to his path. You may not return unchanged.”

I take a step toward the fissure, then another. My fear burns away, replaced by something sharper. Fierce. Unyielding.

“I’m going.”

The being watches silently as I step into the light.

The world dissolves.

I fall through color and sound and sensation until suddenly my feet hit solid ground. I gasp, looking around.

I’m standing in a mirror-version of the clearing—but the sky is white, the trees too tall, their branches twisting like braided wire. The air tastes metallic.

A figure stands alone at the edge of the clearing.

“Matt!”

He turns. His face is stunned, terrified, then relieved all at once. “You shouldn’t be here,” he says, running toward me. “You shouldn’t have come.”

“I’m not leaving without you.”

Before he can argue, the ground trembles. The fissure behind us starts collapsing, shrinking like a closing eyelid.

“We have to move,” he says, grabbing my hand. Together we sprint through the alien forest. The air pulses with every step, like the world is breathing around us.

“What is this place?” I pant.

“It’s the crossing point,” he says. “A place between dimensions. They pull soldiers here. Test them. Mark them. Most don’t survive.”

“And you?”

“I survived because I kept running.”

Branches whip past us as the tremors intensify. A glowing crack races across the sky.

“They’re collapsing it,” he says. “They don’t want us to leave.”

“Then we run faster.”

We burst into another clearing, and there—floating like a tear in space—is a crack of familiar darkness. Earth. Home.

But as we approach, the shimmering being appears again, blocking the path.

“You choose together,” it says. “Or you remain apart forever.”

Matt squeezes my hand. “Do you trust me?”

I look at him—really look at him. The man I grieved. The man who came back for me. The man who risked everything to warn me.

“Yes,” I whisper. “I trust you.”

He pulls me forward.

We leap into the darkness together.

The world slams back into place with a sharp, electric jolt. We land hard on the forest floor of our world, gasping. The night feels warm, real, alive. Birds stir. The breeze returns. The clearing is just a clearing again.

Matt laughs—a raw, disbelieving sound—and pulls me into a tight embrace. His mark flickers once, then fades completely, leaving only smooth skin behind.

“It’s over,” he whispers against my hair. “I’m home.”

I cling to him, feeling his heartbeat steady against mine. For the first time in years, the fear loosens its grip around my chest.

He’s alive.

He’s really alive.

And as we walk back toward the road, the map crumpled in my hand and his arm wrapped tightly around me, I realize something simple and undeniable:

Whatever tried to take him doesn’t own him.

Love does.

And love just brought him home.