The room fell into an uncomfortable and painfully awkward silence. Mom glanced at the ice cream cake, which sat half-melted on the table. The candles were floating in a sad puddle of blue and white.

“Why don’t you blow out the candles, sweetie?” she said softly, giving me a nudge.

I stumbled forward a step, standing in front of the sorry remains of the cake. The flames of eighteen candles still burned strong, as if they were purposefully trying to spite me.

Eighteen years on this planet and what did I have to show for it? A mediocre boy with no dreams. No ambitions. No friends. I could vanish into thin air, and the world wouldn’t change a smidge.

Hugging the book to my chest, I leaned forward, squeezed my eyes shut, and made my wish.

I wish I wasn’t here. I wish that I was in the world I actually love—the magical and fantastical world of Owen Thorn.

There I would be going on quests, attending Draconia Academy… being a hero. Not standing there, in front of my entire family, looking like a failure of a son in front of a half-melted ice cream cake.

Just take me away, I silently begged, clutching the book tighter.

A strange, comforting warmth seeped from the leather, curling around my fingers and spreading through my chest.

Please, please, please, take me far away from here.

I took a deep breath, leaned in, and blew out the candles. They flickered out all at once, plunging the room into darkness. For a brief moment, it felt like the only thing I’d done right all night.

But then the silence crept in, heavy and suffocating, stretching on and on with no one daring to break it.

“Uh,” Bridget finally spoke up, forcing a laugh that sounded more strained than cheerful. “Why don’t we, um… cut the cake?”

She reached for the knife and tried to slice through the melting mess. The blade barely made a dent, dragging through the soupy, unappetizing blob that had once been an ice cream cake.

I sighed, shoulders sagging. “I think I’m going to bed. I’m really tired.”

“But,” my mom said quietly, “you didn’t even try your cake.”

The ice cream had begun to seep off the plate in rivulets, pooling around the edges and cascading down in a rhythmic ‘plop, plop, plop’ against the floor. Each drop sounded louder in the oppressive silence.

“I’m not really hungry,” I mumbled.

Before anyone could react, I bolted, slipping past my parents and racing to my room. I slammed the door behind me, a final, resounding thud that echoed through the house.

I flopped onto my bed, curling into a ball with my knees pulled tight to my chest. Moments later, the muffled sounds of my parents’ argument seeped through the walls. It was a familiar, inevitable clash that only made the tears brimming in my eyes finally start to fall.

“Look what you did! It’s his birthday!” Mom snapped. “Couldn’t you have talked to him about this later?”

“I’m doing this for his own good,” Dad shot back. “It’s bad enough as it is that he’s a homo—”

“What the hell is wrong with you?” Mom’s roar cut through the room, a fierce, protective growl. “That’s your son!”

“Yeah, well, he seems dead set on making it a humiliation to call him that.”

With a shuddering sniffle, I rolled onto my side and pressed my palms tightly against my ears. I didn’t want to listen anymore. Their argument was nearly muted, but I could still hear my name shouted every now and then.

Making my parents fight, straining their marriage, probably pushing my sister into some glass-child scenario—just more entries on the list of Niko Price’s great life achievements.

The thought gnawed at me again: I could vanish into thin air, and the world wouldn’t change a bit. No… actually, things might even be better for everyone.

Desperate for a distraction, I turned my gaze to the poster of Owen Thorn across from me.

My room was cluttered with Owen Thorn merchandise, but that poster was by far my favorite.

Owen stood at its center, his face streaked with dirt and his wand thrust forward as if it might burst from the page and into my room. His snow-white hair was tousled and his clothes were tattered, but his blood-red eyes glimmered with an unwavering determination that always got me through anything.

“You never even knew your parents,” I murmured to the poster. “And you grew up with everyone gawking at you, treating you like some kind of object just because you were forced into being the Chosen One. Your life was way harder than mine. So I just… I…”

I shut my eyes, struggling to hold back a second wave of tears. I hugged the book close, its worn leather cover pressing into my chest as I curled into a tight ball at the center of my bed.

Voice trembling, I whispered, “I wish I could be as brave as you.”

And then, without warning, it felt like my bed had given way beneath me, and I was falling. Like... literally falling.

My eyes shot open in horror as I plummeted through darkness. The free-fall sent my heart racing.

The world around me transformed into a dizzying blur of colors—shimmering streaks of indigo, violet, and deep crimson—spinning like a whirlpool of paint. Whispers from a billion voices swirled around me, their murmurs merging into a roar as the void continued on and on with no end in sight.

But then, I landed on solid ground with a sudden, bone-rattling thud. The impact knocked the breath out of me. I lay there for a moment, gasping for air while my mind struggled to comprehend what had just happened.

“Ow,” I muttered, rubbing the back of my head as I sat up. “What the hell?”

Was there something in that tuna sandwich?

My glasses must have fallen off during the tumble, leaving the world around me nothing but a blurry haze. I squinted, trying to piece together my surroundings.

I was surrounded by a sea of green. The faint outline of tall grass swayed gently. It seemed I’d just been dumped in some sort of field—or something that resembled one.

Panic surged through me as I blindly fumbled through the grass, my fingers brushing against the damp, dew-slick blades. My mind raced.

Am I hallucinating? Am I dying from some bizarre food poisoning? Have I completely lost my marbles?

And to make matters worse, I couldn’t see shit!

I scrambled through the grass, crawling on my hands and knees—a humbling position, to say the least—as I pushed aside clumps of grass and stray twigs, desperately searching for my glasses.

“This ugly thing is yours, I presume?”

Whoever was speaking had a British accent with a slight Irish lilt weaving through certain words. It was... really bizarre. To make things even weirder, the voice sounded achingly familiar, which should’ve been impossible. I’d never traveled more than an hour from my small suburban town and definitely didn’t know any British or Irish people.

Through the blurred haze of my vision, I could make out the outline of a pair of long legs stepping in front of me. The figure stood with the kind of confidence usually reserved for celebrities, his posture practically exuding arrogance. He held himself with a tilt to his hip and a casual spread to his legs, as though even a god couldn’t displace him from his stance.

“Seriously,” the person drawled, “who wears wireframe glasses anymore? Serial killers? Psychopaths?”

A hand reached out in front of me, dropping my glasses into my lap.

“Okay, that comment was unnecessarily rude,” I said, scrambling to grab hold of my glasses. I pushed them up the bridge of my nose. “But, also, I really needed them, so I guess that means I should thank—”

As my vision sharpened and the world snapped back into focus, I looked up at my peculiar rescuer, and the words caught in my throat.

The boy before me was tall and slender, his eyes a deep, stormy green. His ruffled blue-black hair framed his face in waves, accentuating his sharp, chiseled cheekbones. There was an ethereal, almost regal air about him.

He wore a school uniform of deep burgundy paired with a black-and-silver striped tie. The lapel of his jacket displayed a patch with a golden dragon in mid-flight and the letters D.A. emblazoned beneath it in shimmering gold.

But most striking of all were the pair of pointed elf ears jutting up from the sides of his head. Before me was no other than Lucian Darkona.

My jaw dropped, feeling as if the air had just been suckerpunched from my lungs.

“The hell is wrong with you?” Lucian sneered. “You look like a total loser—”

I stumbled to my feet. Without even thinking, my fist went swinging. And just like that, I delivered on my promise to Lucian Darkona in the face.