Chapter 1: The Wrong Green

The Cherokee National Forest stretched like a green carpet behind the ramshackle house, its ancient trees whispering secrets that eleven-year-old Leo Morrison had never bothered to decode. September in rural Tennessee meant the last gasps of summer heat, the kind that made your shirt stick to your back and turned the creek water into liquid salvation.

"Bet you won't jump from the top," James called out, his voice carrying that particular brand of older-brother smugness that made Leo's jaw clench. At fourteen, James had three years and four inches on Leo, advantages he wielded like weapons in their daily battles for dominance.

Leo squinted up at the waterfall cascading down the rocky cliff face, maybe fifteen feet of churning white water that ended in a deep, dark pool surrounded by moss-slick stones. They'd been coming here since they could walk, following the deer path that wound through their backyard and up the mountain. Mom always said to stay away from the deep parts, but Mom wasn't here now.

"That's kid stuff," Leo shot back, though his stomach did a little flip as he watched the water disappear into what looked like a cave beneath the surface. "I've done it before."

"Liar." James's brown eyes—the same warm chocolate brown as Leo's own—sparked with mischief. "You've never jumped from higher than that ledge there." He pointed to a rocky outcrop about halfway up, where they'd both made countless cannonballs over the years.

The dare hung in the air between them like smoke. Leo felt the familiar tug of sibling rivalry, that burning need to prove he wasn't just the little brother, wasn't just along for the ride. The creek gurgled and laughed around their ankles, and somewhere in the forest, a bird called out a warning that neither boy heard.

"Fine," Leo said, the word tumbling out before his better judgment could catch it. "But when I do it, you have to tell Sarah Hutchins that I'm cooler than you."

James snorted. "Deal. When you chicken out, you're doing my chores for a week."

Leo was already scrambling up the rocky face beside the waterfall, his bare feet finding purchase on familiar handholds. The stone was warm from the afternoon sun, and the mist from the falls cooled his face as he climbed. Don't look down, he told himself, though he could feel James's eyes tracking his progress.

The top of the waterfall was different than he'd imagined. Up here, the creek seemed wilder, more urgent as it rushed toward the edge. Leo could see clear to the bottom of the pool below, where submerged logs lay like the ribs of some ancient beast. The water looked black in the shadows, and for a moment, something that might have been fear whispered in his ear.

"Any day now!" James shouted from below, his voice barely audible over the rush of water.

Leo took a deep breath, tasting creek water and pine needles and the electric promise of autumn. He thought about Sarah Hutchins's blue eyes, about the way James always got to sit in the front seat of Mom's beat-up Corolla, about all the times he'd been told he was too little, too young, too scared.

He jumped.

The fall lasted both forever and no time at all. Leo felt weightless, suspended between the Tennessee sky and the dark water below, and for one perfect moment, he was flying. Then the pool swallowed him whole.

The water was shockingly cold, driving the breath from his lungs in a rush of silver bubbles. Leo tried to kick toward the surface, but something was wrong. The current was stronger down here than it should have been, pulling him sideways, deeper. His lungs burned as he fought against the invisible hands dragging him toward the shadowy cave entrance he'd glimpsed from above.

Panic bloomed in his chest like a poisonous flower. This wasn't how it was supposed to go. He was a strong swimmer, had been since he was little. But the water here moved with purpose, with hunger, and Leo found himself being pulled into a darkness so complete it seemed to swallow light itself.

His vision began to tunnel. The surface, visible as a distant shimmer of gold, might as well have been on the moon. Leo's movements became sluggish, dreamlike, as his oxygen-starved brain began to shut down. In the depths of the underwater cave, something pale flickered at the edge of his failing sight—another boy, maybe, with eyes that burned with quiet rage.

Then strong hands grabbed his shoulders, hauling him up and back toward the light.

Leo broke the surface gasping and choking, creek water streaming from his nose and mouth as James dragged him toward the rocky shore. His brother's face was tight with fear, brown eyes wide with an emotion Leo had never seen there before.

"Jesus, Leo! What happened down there? You were under for like two minutes!"

Leo tried to speak, but only managed a wet cough that brought up more water. His vision swam, and for a moment, the world tilted sideways. James helped him onto a flat rock, pounding his back as Leo retched up what felt like half the creek.

"I'm fine," Leo finally managed, though his voice came out as a croak. "Just got... got turned around down there."

"Turned around?" James's voice cracked. "Leo, you sank like a stone. I thought..." He swallowed hard, and Leo realized his big brother had been crying. "I thought you were gonna drown."

Leo wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, tasting copper and creek water. Something felt different—not wrong, exactly, but shifted, like a picture that had been hung slightly crooked. He looked up at James, ready to make some joke about how he'd still completed the dare, and the words died in his throat.

James's eyes were green.

Not the warm brown they'd been Leo's entire life, but a startling, vivid green like spring leaves shot through with sunlight. They were beautiful and terrible and completely, impossibly wrong.

"James," Leo whispered, his voice barely audible over the creek's babble. "Your eyes..."

"What about them?" James frowned, reaching up to rub at his face. "Do I have something in them?"

Leo stared, waiting for the hallucination to fade, for his oxygen-deprived brain to correct itself. But James's eyes remained stubbornly, brilliantly green, and something cold that had nothing to do with the creek water began to spread through Leo's chest.

"Nothing," he said finally, looking away. "Nothing, I just... I think I hit my head."

But as they gathered their things and started the hike back home, Leo couldn't shake the feeling that he'd left something important in that dark water. Something essential. And in its place, he'd brought back a world that looked exactly like his own but felt as foreign as the surface of an alien planet.

The first thing he did when they got home was look in the bathroom mirror, and his reflection confirmed what some deep, animal part of his brain had already known. The boy staring back at him had the same unruly dark hair, the same sun-freckled nose, the same thin scar on his chin from when he'd fallen off his bike at seven.

But his eyes—his eyes were the exact same impossible green as his brother's.

Leo Morrison had jumped into the creek with brown eyes and climbed out with green ones, into a world that was almost, but not quite, the one he'd left behind. And somewhere in the dark water of that underwater cave, something with his face and burning brown eyes was already planning its return.