The summoning was nothing like a rift.

Rift was almost instant, one step through, one step out, the world changing between one breath and the next.

This was different.

It was slower, as if whatever had called him wanted him to see what he was arriving into, or as if the distance itself made the leap impossible to ignore.

His body existed somewhere between places, and the world gradually assembled itself around him.

First, he saw the sky.

It was wrong, yet beautiful at the same time. Too vivid, too present, the blue of it deeper than anything Earth’s atmosphere had ever produced, layered with clouds that moved against each other in patterns that suggested the weather operated far differently than on Earth.

Somewhere far above, something large moved through those very clouds, bigger and faster than any planes built by humans. It disappeared as quickly as it appeared, leaving parted clouds behind in its path.

Then came the land.

There were vast mountain ranges that made Earth’s mountains look like hills, their peaks lost in the cover of the clouds, reaching altitudes no human climber had ever reached.

Between them were valleys of dense forest in colours that didn’t quite match anything he had words for, greens that ran toward gold, shadows that ran toward violet. Rivers catching light far below like dropped silver.

And beneath it all, things moved through the forest that he couldn’t name, not because they were hidden, but because nothing in his experience had given him the vocabulary for what they were.

The air reached him next, even before he fully arrived. It was clean in a way that felt almost aggressive after months of a ruined city filled with dust, carrying the particular cold of high altitude mixed with something floral and sharp that had no equivalent in anything he’d ever breathed. 𝒇𝒓𝒆𝒆𝙬𝒆𝒃𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝙡.𝒄𝓸𝒎

But despite that sharp breath of air, he was still moving, still unable to control his body.

He was a lot closer now, close enough to see the specifics of the world below.

A cliff face rising from dense forest, its surface dark and wet, a waterfall descending beside it with the casual permanence of something that had been falling for longer than anything currently alive could remember.

The sound of it reached him even here, low and constant, more felt than heard, the kind of sound that made your chest resonate.

And there, built into the cliff face itself as if the mountain had grown around it rather than the other way around, was a structure.

Red lacquered wood and dark stone, multiple levels stepping up the rock face, its curved eaves catching the light in the particular way of architecture that understood weather and had been designed to outlast it.

Lanterns burned along its walkways in warm amber, visible even against the daylight. Steps carved directly into the cliff connected its levels, worn smooth by use measured in centuries rather than decades.

It was the most beautiful thing he had seen since the world changed.

Then, it vanished.

One moment, he was seeing the cliff face, the waterfall beside it and the impossible sky above and the next, he stared at four walls and a low ceiling, a room filled with the smell of something slowly burning, incense or wood, he couldn’t quite guess what it was immediately.

The disorientation hit him in the way it always did after the rift, just many times stronger.

His breath caught for a moment as he steadied himself.

Dark wood pressed in on all sides. Beneath his feet, the stone was unnaturally cold, even through his boots.

One narrow window cut the wall, letting in a pale sliver of the waterfall’s light. Lanterns hung in iron holders along the walls, their flames low and utterly still, as if the room had never learned to breathe.

At the far end of the room sat a figure he slowly began to recognise, settled in a chair that wished to be a throne but fell just short of one.

Her dress pooled around it in loose silk, the colour of a winter morning, its fabric stirring faintly in a draft he couldn’t quite feel. Where the silk parted, her crossed legs emerged, smooth and pale like white jade.

Her silver-white hair fell across slender shoulders with the casual perfection of someone who had never needed to try.

A pair of ears stood above the hair, the kind that didn’t belong to any human, while behind her, nine tails fanned in a slow, steady rhythm, each one the same silver-white colour as her hair.

Her feline-like crimson gaze was already at him.

The silence held for a long moment as their eyes connected.

The waterfall continued its descent outside the narrow window, indifferent to everything happening in the room.

"Ayame," he finally said, and in that moment, her plump lips curved into a smile.

"It’s been a while, my dear Damon."

She slowly uncrossed her legs and rose from the chair with the particular unhurried grace of someone who had never once needed to rush to get what they wanted.

The silk of her dress settled around her as she stood, its hem trailing slightly against the stone floor.

Then she walked toward him.

Her heels struck the stone with each step in a slow, deliberate rhythm that filled the quiet room the way the waterfall filled the canyon outside. Constant, unhurried and impossible to ignore.

She stopped when she was merely a few inches from him, staring right into his eyes as if she could see everything he had been through in that gaze.

Up close, she was both exactly as he remembered and nothing as he remembered at the same time. Her nine tails stilled entirely, which told him she was more focused than her face let on.

Her gaze moved slowly across him, taking in more than just his face, as if accounting for everything she’d missed.

Then she closed the last of the distance between them, and her arms found their way around his neck as if they had never left.