It seems like we're all on a similar pacing of achievements as we move through life — learning to talk, then walk, more skills follow, and so on. Within a few years we are set on a treadmill of educational milestones meant to prepare us for the world, and each one is celebrated. I'll pause to say graduating from kindergarten seems a bit much, but those of us on the Gen X side tend to be harsh by modern standards.
Back to those milestones — each event horizon in life has a portal-esque effect, where we step into a bigger world with new possibilities and, in many ways, we don't return to our younger selves. We are charged to navigate whatever is on the other side. High school becomes university, university becomes a job, and so it goes.
Everyone has a vision of what that other side will look like. Some keep lists. They can describe their dream job, dream house, the person they want beside them, and any number of other details. How much of it actually comes true? It really doesn't matter, because every one of those list items was made based on priorities that existed before the previous portal. Graduation, marriage, the first home — the real priorities get decided only after you've already stepped through. So a shift is inevitable.
Those portals are everywhere in life. Your next era is already forming, and ready or not, the moment you step through draws closer each day.
The thing is, we all seem to know what we want beyond the next portal, but we don't know how we'll feel once we have it. That is the conflict. Having everything on the list and still feeling hollow is no different than being a miserable person who goes on vacation, and is now miserable and on vacation.
And the reverse is just as surprising: abandoning the list entirely and discovering a life you wouldn't trade. It turns out the future we dream of is previewed on a physical blueprint, but we experience it through an emotional lens.
Wouldn't we be better off if our tendency to make lists started with how we want to feel on the other side of the next portal, instead of what color our car is?
Regardless of which portals you've already crossed, or the ones still waiting, there could be another way. A magical way — where we take what we know and move back or forward in time to set things right. As a fantasy story, Airovale was always going to involve some form of time dilation. But it has to have rules, a magic system that defines how it works. Without rules, convenient escapes and time warping become routine, and there's no consequence to make any of it meaningful.
The Mystic Portal, named for the indigenous people of Canyon Myst, is where the story takes that turn into quantum mechanics and time travel. What makes it unique? As a traveler you get one trip — it will never work for you again. You'll arrive in the same place geographically, just before or after the moment in time where you left. And every traveler leaves a trace: the portal shows every point in time ever visited by anyone else, while your journey through time is underway.
I decided this was necessary because even time leaves a footprint. So, as you're going back or forward, you will see the ghosts of every traveler who came before you. It could mean hope that time travel works, or a warning that there is no going back — but it felt like there should be something to mark time passing. Similar to the way we feel when we see old photos of ancestors who were once young and looked like us.
How does a traveler choose a destination? There are markings in the cave where the portal resides — images carved into glyphs that, when selected, dictate the landing point in time.
There are many mysteries about the portal still to be discovered. Thalos studied it in the ancient world, before coming through as an escape from the great eruption. He was the only scholar of its workings and of Canyon Myst's magic systems — but even he never claimed to have built it.
So who built the portal?
How did anyone know about all the destinations to carve those glyphs, if they can only pass through once?
And why is it forbidden to travel to the ancient city now buried under miles of lava and ocean water?
All good questions. And just like those personal portals we all step through, we get the answers on the other side.