Southern Starr Publishing Southern Starr Publishing creates family-friendly books, comics, and faith-inspired stories with imagination, strong values, and cross-media creativity.
“Between the Cracks“
The jump wasn’t supposed to take long. Kai counted the seconds out of habit. Three to stabilize, five for the pressure behind the eyes to fade, and ten for the world to finish deciding what it wanted to be. When he reached twelve that was when he knew something was wrong. The air around him refused to settle. It felt unfinished like a breath held too long. The ground beneath his boots looked solid, but the shadows didn’t agree with the light that cast them. They bent in directions that didn’t exist.
“Okay,” he muttered, palm resting near the jump device on his wrist. “Easy.”
The mission had been simple, a scouting hop with no anchors and no threats. Just a quick look at a low-energy world flagged by the system as unstable but quiet. Quiet worlds were the ones that lied. He took a step forward and the sound came from everywhere at once a soft tearing noise, like paper being pulled apart slowly. The horizon shuddered, not like an earthquake but worse. The sky folded inward, creasing like cloth and Kai’s breath caught.
This wasn’t a world, it was a seam between worlds. He activated the device, and the familiar hum answered him, then stuttered. The display flickered, symbols scrambling as if the system itself didn’t know where he was.
“No,” Kai said sharply. “No, no, no—”
The hum died, and silence dropped like a curtain. Kai stood between realities. He had read about places like this, spaces that weren’t meant to be entered. Leftovers from broken jumps, failed anchors, worlds that never finished forming. The manuals called them fracture zones, but the veterans called them coffins.
“Stay calm,” Kai whispered, though there was no one to hear it. “Panic makes it worse.”
He forced his breathing slow in order to stay calm. The space around him responded, it wasn’t stabilizing, but listening. The seam rippled, reacting to his presence like water disturbed by a hand. That was when he saw the other figure. At first, Kai thought it was a reflection. The shape stood several yards away, half-formed, edges blurring like heat haze. The figure watched him with unsettling stillness, that’s when he recognized the figure. The figure was him…
Kai’s heart hammered. “I’m not doing this,” he said. “This is not real.”
The other Kai tilted his head.
“You always say that,” the figure replied.
The voice was his, perfectly, right down to the tired edge he pretended not to have.
Kai swallowed. “You’re not me.”
The figure smiled faintly. “That depends on where you jumped from.”
The seam pulsed, as images flickered in the air. Snapshots of worlds Kai recognized and some he didn’t. Cities rebuilt, cities burning, and faces of people he’d helped… and people he hadn’t.
“You’re a possibility,” the figure continued calmly. “One of many you left behind.”
Kai clenched his fists. “I don’t leave people behind.”
The other Kai’s smile didn’t reach his eyes. “You leave worlds behind, and that’s worse.”
The ground shifted underneath the two Kai’s feet. Cracks spread outward, glowing faintly. Kai knew the signs, he had seen them before. The fracture zone was destabilizing, because it fed on unresolved states choices unmade, paths abandoned. And he was standing in the middle of it, full of both.
“I don’t have time for this,” Kai said. “I need to get out.”
“Do you?” the figure asked softly. “Or do you need to understand why the jumps keep getting harder?”
That hit closer than Kai liked. He had felt that the system hadn’t been right lately. Jumps taking more effort, and recovery times taking longer, as if something was pulling at him each time he crossed.
“You carry too much,” the figure said. “Every world you touch leaves an imprint. You don’t just pass through, you change things, and that change leaves echoes.”
The seam trembled harder now. The sky split into overlapping layers, each one a different version of the same place.
Kai backed up. “I don’t need echoes.”
“No,” the figure agreed. “You need an anchor.”
That word landed heavy as anchors were rare, but necessary. The kind of thing you didn’t realize you needed until you were already drifting.
“How?” Kai asked himself.
The figure gestured to the space between them. “Let go.”
The fractures surged. Kai understood then not with logic, but instinct. The seam wasn’t trapping him, he was trapping himself. Holding onto every jump, every outcome, every version of who he could have been.
“I can’t save every world,” he said quietly.
The figure nodded. “No. But you can choose which ones define you.”
Kai closed his eyes, and released the weight and the need to carry every consequence alone. The pressure eased, and the seam responded immediately, folding back on itself, smoothing like water after a stone sinks. When Kai opened his eyes, the other figure was fading.
“Next time,” it said gently, “jump lighter.”
The hum returned, and Kai activated the device, and this time it answered cleanly. The fracture zone collapsed inward, light folding into a single point and then he was gone.
Kai reappeared on the platform, knees buckling as gravity reasserted itself. Systems chirped and green lights lite up across the board.
Liora was there in an instant. “Kai! You vanished off the grid what happened?”
Kai laughed weakly, pushing himself upright. “I took a wrong step.”
She studied him. “You don’t look broken.”
He glanced at his wrist device, then at the quiet space beyond the platform, where worlds waited.
“Not yet,” he said. “But I know what to watch for now.”
Liora raised an eyebrow. “And that is?”
Kai smiled, tired but steadier than before.
“The cracks,” he said. “They always tell the truth.”
This has been a Southern Starr Original. Between worlds, every jump leaves a mark. Some are scars, and some are warnings.
Dimension Jumpers is an upcoming science-fiction adventure series exploring fractured realities, unstable anchors, and the people tasked with crossing the impossible spaces between them.
This story stands alone —but the journey does not.
The Dimension Jumpers series is coming soon from Southern Starr Publishing.
