Neither the portal nor Isolde had appeared in over a week. Days and nights blurred together, burning from end to end at a painfully slow pace. Zethar only knew how much time had passed by the tally he kept in his bedside field journal.


    Before now, he hadn’t bothered to even crack it open. It was standard issue on these missions. Researchers were encouraged to document everything—even innermost thoughts—as the notes might uncover something significant about atmospheric effects on mental state.


    The first evening she hadn’t come, Zethar went to bed restless. Eventually, he had opened the journal with the intention of writing to Isolde. It seemed the closest thing to being able to actually speak with her, but when he put his pen to paper, he could muster only a solitary scratch. The next night he repeated the ritual. And the night after that. And so on.


    There were thirteen lines scratched into the page so far.


    In official dispatches, Zethar reported only that the crater was emitting atypical levels of magnetic energy, indicating potential for dimensional anomalies to manifest. He wasn’t being entirely dishonest. By day, he checked the meters against his logs obsessively, trying to determine what might have caused the portal’s malfunction. According to all records, the energy levels in the basin were stronger and steadier than ever.


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    Perhaps they had crossed some cosmic boundary when Isolde’s cigarette smoke drifted into the portal and transcended dimensions, causing the universe to sever their connection. Or maybe, Zethar thought, they had simply exhausted the anomaly’s reserves, talking so late into the night.


    In a few day’s time, he had engineered a second stabilizer, hoping to bolster the energy field and revive the portal. It made no difference. He even tried commandeering the ship’s comm system, overriding the signal directs and speaking through the control intercom.


    “I''m still here,” he repeated again and again into the void. “I will search for you across the impossible.”


    On the shores of Veth, his words carried across the beach but they echoed into empty darkness. Isolde was too far away to hear.