Monday, 16th June 2025
Dear Diary,
We were incarcerated the moment King Maelgor disclosed his horrific plan.
His guards did not utter a word—just dragged us down moist stone steps to the lower halls of the castle. They threw us into a dark, chilly cell, slammed the door, and departed without so much as a glance. No food. No question. Just silence.
We panicked at first. Lucas just paced back and forth. I sat in the corner and tried to stay calm. “We have to get back to the portal,” he kept repeating. “We have to warn Earth before it’s too late.”
I switched on my flashlight—fortunately, it still worked—and scanned the cell. That’s when I noticed it: something sticking out of the wall, behind a loose stone tile.
We tore it loose, and behind it was a scroll, rolled up, and a little fragment of stone that looked like… Earth. Not just Earth, however—a map. Our planet, with markings all over it. Dotted lines. Arrows pointing towards cities. Red Xs for military bases. One date was circled over and over again: June 21st.
Lucas stared at it. “This is the invasion plan.”
That’s when I saw something else—the cell door. It wasn’t shut all the way. The lock was hanging barely off the latch.
We looked at each other. No way that was an accident.
“Do you think… someone left this for us?” I whispered. “The scroll? The door? Maybe someone’s trying to help.”
Lucas nodded slowly. “Maybe. But we can’t wait around to find out.”
We cautiously opened the door, looking out for guards. Nothing. Just the whistling of wind through the corridors. We crept past the cells and up the narrow stone stairway to the main hall.
Every corner we turned, I was convinced we’d be caught. But for some reason, we weren’t. Either we were the luckiest kids in the world… or someone in that castle wanted us to escape.
When we reached the huge front gate, the portal was still open, bubbling and unstable—but more radiant than it had been previously.
There were two guards. We crouched behind a pillar. Lucas whispered, “Split up. Confuse them.”
He went left and threw a loose piece of stone fragment. I went right, clutching the map tight in my hoodie. The guards followed us, and I used that diverted moment to spin back around and run full speed towards the portal.
We did it.
We smashed back into the subway tunnel with a clang. I held the map up overhead like treasure.
We ran to the nearest street. By sheer luck, a police car happened to be nearby. The officer wouldn’t have believed a word—until we showed him the glittering rift and the scroll with invasion routes mapped on it.
Soldiers and scientists swarmed through the tunnel within the hour. A general examined the scroll. “This is authentic,” he stated. “You’ve done the world a service.”
I should have felt relieved.
But then the portal began flashing uncontrollably—and something moved inside it.
Marching shapes. Red eyes burning.
Possibly we ran…
…but war begins now.
To be continued…