Alise appeared in the dusty, moonlit attic with no particular fanfare, just a gasp, a book falling open to the floor, and a stumble as though she had just halted a headlong dash.

She was in shock, as was apparent to the zero spectators. Once she found her breath, she fell to her knees and, with a wordless wail, scrabbled back to the book. It lay open to a blank page. With a growing moan, she flipped through it at increasing speed, heedless of rips and tears, finding only blank paper. On the last page, she collapsed. All sign of the magical world of Iridia had vanished. She had no way back.

Alise tried to live a normal life. She reached out to the family she'd thought she'd never see again, she looked for a job. But each time she saw a book—not just any book, but a tome of weight and substance like that she'd traveled through—it arrested her. Her throat caught, her mouth dried, the book seized her thoughts until she opened it and found no Iridia within.

She never found it. They eventually found her in the local library, half-buried in a pile of books, weeping uncontrollably.