The wolf was already dead when Red swung the axe.

Blood still dripped from its teeth, but it wasn’t her grandmother’s this time. No, she had made sure of that. She had done what no one else in her village had dared to do. She had finished the story.

But the moment the blade struck, the world ripped open.

Red barely had time to scream before she was falling—through shadows, through silence, through something that felt like the space between stories.

And then—

A crash. Hard ground beneath her back. A thousand strange sounds ringing in her ears.

Red gasped, blinking up at an endless stretch of metal and light. Tall structures scraped the sky. Strange metal carriages roared past, their wheels spinning on black stone. The air smelled of smoke and something artificial.

And everywhere, people.

Not like the people she knew. They dressed in stiff fabrics, carrying little glowing rectangles, barely looking where they were going. And not a single one seemed afraid of the world around them.

She scrambled to her feet, her fingers tightening around her axe handle. But the people barely glanced at her—at the girl standing in the middle of the street, her red cloak torn, her hands still stained with the wolf’s blood.

A loud horn blared. Red whipped around just in time to see one of the metal carriages hurtling toward her.

Hands grabbed her shoulders and yanked her back.

“What the hell are you doing?!”

Red spun, eyes wide. A girl stood before her—her age, maybe, but dressed in strange, tight clothes with laces on her feet instead of boots. Her hair was cropped short, her brows furrowed in concern.

“You almost got hit by that car! Are you—” The girl stopped, eyes flicking down to the axe, the blood, the shredded hem of Red’s cloak. “Oh. Uh. Are you… okay?”

Red’s breath came fast. Her heart slammed against her ribs, her mind spinning with too many things she didn’t understand. But one thing was clear:

This was not the woods.

This was not her world.

And the wolf was gone.

Her grip on the axe tightened. “Where am I?” she demanded.

The girl blinked. “Uh… Manhattan?”

Red scowled. “I don’t know this kingdom.”

“…It’s not a kingdom.”

Red inhaled sharply. She had heard of places beyond the forest—distant lands where witches wove time into threads and fairies built castles of bone. But this was something else entirely.

“I need to get back,” she muttered, mostly to herself. “I finished my story. I killed the wolf. I should have gone home.”

The girl hesitated. “You’re really committing to the bit, huh?”

Red’s glare was sharp enough to cut.

“Okay, okay,” the girl said, raising her hands. “Look, you’re obviously lost. And you really shouldn’t be waving that axe around. Just… come with me, alright? We’ll figure this out.”

Red studied her. This girl had no weapons, no cloak, no fear in her eyes. But something about her stance—steady, unshaken—felt oddly familiar.

Finally, Red exhaled, lowering the axe. “Fine. But if you betray me, I’ll gut you like the wolf.”

The girl huffed a laugh. “Cool. Looking forward to it.”

And so, Red followed the stranger into the unknown, stepping off the path for the first time in her life.

Because maybe—just maybe—her story wasn’t over yet.