• •
  The first thing they felt was the warmth of the sun.

Slowly, they opened their eyes. Soft grass brushed against their hands, and countless flowers swayed gently around them, covering the enormous hill in a sea of color. The air smelled clean and strangely sweet, carrying a distant breeze they didn’t recognize.

They sat up.

At first, there was only the hill.

Then they looked over the edge.

Far below stretched a vast human kingdom. White stone walls surrounded a sprawling city of towers, houses, markets, and winding streets. Beyond the walls, fields of golden wheat stretched toward the horizon, dotted with roads and tiny villages.

To the east, the landscape changed completely.

A massive swampy forest sprawled beneath a layer of pale mist. Twisted trees rose from dark, murky water, their roots tangled together like enormous claws. Somewhere within those wetlands lived the goblins.

Beyond the forest stood mountains.

They were enormous—jagged peaks piercing the clouds, their upper slopes covered in snow. Great shadows occasionally moved between the peaks. Dragons lived there, along with their dragonborn kin, hidden among ancient fortresses and valleys that seemed almost impossible to reach.

But there were other lands too.

Far beyond the human kingdom, strange towers rose from the horizon, some impossibly thin, others floating above the ground. Bridges of glowing light connected distant structures, and faint sparks of magic drifted through the air like fireflies.

The wizards’ lands.

They slowly stood, staring at the impossible world before them.

They had no idea where they were.

No idea how they had arrived.

Yet somehow, standing alone among the flowers at the highest point of the hill, they felt that this place was waiting for them.

Then, somewhere far below, a bell rang.

Once.

Twice.*