Everett Blackbourne woke with ash on his tongue and no memory of the last five minutes. The last thing he remembered was his gun firing a final bullet at Abbadon Bloodstone. When Bloodstone's bullet hit his chest, the Crysalon orb in his pocket opened a rift where him and Lillian fell. Everett’s eyes opened. A village burned around him. The houses looked wrong — timber frames, thatched roofs, a stone well — nothing he had been briefed on. Lillian Eustice groaned two feet away. She sat up, pushed her glasses straight, and stared at the fire. "Blackbourne. Where the hell are we?" "Not where we were." He helped her up. Her hand shook once, then stopped. She was steadier than he felt. They moved through the smoke together. Bodies lay in doorways. The blood was fresh but the timber was old, sagging, cracked with weather no week-long fire could cause. Everett crouched by a fallen sign. The paint was flaked to bare wood. Two hundred years, easy. Maybe more. "Hands. Now." The voice came from behind a low wall. A soldier stepped out with a Cycler rifle raised — dark skin, helmet camera blinking red, plate carrier stitched with a patch Everett didn't know. Muscle under the sleeves. He moved like someone who cleared rooms for a living. Everett put his hands up slowly, Lillian followed suit. "Friendly. O.S.A. Captain Blackbourne. 55th Special Ranger Squad" The soldier didn't blink. "The O.S.A hasn’t been around for 200 hundred years, friend." His eyes went to Everett's patch, then Lillian's. Something changed in his face. "John Greene. UAC Sentinel scout. You're going to walk in front of me, and you're going to explain how you're wearing a dead organization's uniform in Y-245." He marched them past the burning village to a church on the ridge — gothic, tall, cracked bell tower still standing. Inside, sentinels in UAC armor worked around a table that projected a blue map of the village in the air. Rifles racked along the stone wall. A worn altar sat against the back, its cross scarred with a painted thunderbolt. The place was a church that had become a bunker. A gray-haired man looked up from the holo table. Greene said, "Commander Thorne. Found these two in the burn. They're not local. They're not anything." The commander studied them a long moment. "Names." "Everett Blackbourne. Lillian Eustice. O.S.A 55th Ranger Unit, We need to get home. To our own time. Two hundred years back, give or take." Saying it out loud made it real. "I need to find the rest of the O.S.A and rebuild Heeven City." The commander didn't laugh. That was the worst part. "Then you came to the wrong century for help, and the right one for enemies," he said. "Dr. Vile runs what's called the Purity Sons Order. A Rethesian and Szitherin private military force, built on extreme ideology. His Purity Sons burned Wimborne village this morning. The U.A.C has been on a global war with these rats for months now. You want a way back, soldier, you go through them first." Everett set his jaw. Home had just moved further away. “What is the U.A.C” Lillian asked “United Alliance of Countries” Commander Thorne replied. “Formed after the great Ash-fall war in Y-45, it’s a military alliance with every country on the planet. All except for Rethes, Szitherin, and Fele.”