Why You Should Read The Merging of the Realms with an Open Heart

Key Takeaways

The Merging of the Realms can be read purely as high fantasy, but it was also written as a story of remembrance for those who feel called to it.
Tħę WåņdæRîng WøøÐs explicitly invite you to let go of doubts and questions long enough to experience the journey, not just dissect it.
Reading with an open heart means relaxing the sharp line between “real” and “not real” so myth and magic can speak to you as deeper layers of reality.
The premise of this book is that stories are living frequencies that want to find a home in you, not simple static entertainment you consume and forget.
An open-hearted reader is more likely to feel the quiet invitations in scenes with Offae, Ødîņ, the saber tooth, and the wizards, rather than only tracking plot.
The story suggests that separation is “the greatest illusion of all,” and reading it with openness allows that idea to move from concept to felt experience.
When you let the story in, it can become a mirror for your own life – your fears, your longing, your sense that you might be more than one lifetime wide.
Ultimately, the book’s magic is not just on the page. It lives in the way you allow to find it’s own life within you, even slightly.

Two Ways to Enter the Woods

Very early on, Tħę WåņdæRîng WøøÐs lay out two possible paths for you:

“If you choose to see this as only a faerytale, then that is your choice and that will be all it is for you, but there are truths in the frequency of these words that will embrace you as a friend.”

Not everyone comes to a fantasy book with the same intent. Some want an adventure and nothing more. Others come with a quiet suspicion that there are things they’ve always felt but never quite named. It is not for me to choose your path, In fact just the opposite. It is my responsibility to take you to the trailhead; the path you choose to walk is yours alone to decide.

So Tħę WåņdæRîng WøøÐs offer a gentle fork in the path:

You can read purely as a fantasy fan, enjoying dragons, enchanted forests, wizard libraries, and time-bending quests.
Or you can read as someone open to the possibility that this is also a story of remembrance, one that might stir memories of “days gone by, memories washed away by the passage of time.”

Either choice is valid. The story doesn’t direct the rational reader. It simply tells you that what you receive will be shaped by what you’re willing to allow.

The book you read is always a conversation between what is on the page and what you’re prepared to believe about yourself.

If all you want is a faerytale, there is one waiting for you. If you suspect that myth might be a language your soul still speaks, there is room for that, too.

What an Open Heart Actually Means

When I ask you to read with an “open heart,” I am not asking you to abandon discernment or to swallow every idea whole. In fact, the Woods themselves warn about the limitations of extreme certainty:

“Those who seek to draw a sharp line between what is real and what is not are limited by their definitions of that existence.”

Reading with an open heart, in the world of this story, means:

Loosening the rigid categories of “This is just imagination” and “This is real” long enough to let something in-between speak.
Allowing myth and magic to be deeper layers of reality, not just decorative illusions.
Noticing where you feel a resonance, a tug, a familiar ache, even if you can’t immediately explain why.

Tħę WåņdæRîng WøøÐs extend a very specific invitation:

“Open yourself to knowing that you are more than you ever dreamed possible. You are that which knows no limits. Only the limits you accept are your reality now.”

Reading with an open heart, then, is an act of gentle rebellion against those accepted limits. It’s not about forcing belief; it’s about agreeing, just for a while, to let the story show you where your definitions might be too small.

In practice, that might look like:

Letting a scene with Offae and the saber tooth sit with you for a day, not because you “believe in talking cats,” but because something in that conversation about past lives and soul memory feels oddly familiar.
Pausing on a passage about the Veil between realms and wondering, quietly, whether you’ve felt such a Veil in your own life – the sense that there is more, just beyond your current perception.

An open heart is not gullible. It’s courageous enough to admit that not everything meaningful can be proven on demand.

Letting the Story Remember You

Throughout The Merging of the Realms, characters are changed not by spells hurled in battle, but by stories told around fires and in quiet halls. Wizards speak of tales whose frequency finds the one who can feel them, and in that instant, “the story and the teller become one.”

In one of my favorite moments, a voice in the Wizard’s Library speaks directly to Offae:

“Trust the magic in the stories, Offae. Let them transform you. That is how the truest magic always begins. It is the first step.”

Open-hearted reading takes that seriously. It treats story as a living presence, not a product.

When you read this way:

You allow certain lines to follow you into your day, just as Offae carries the old wizard’s tale back into his own journey.
You notice that some scenes feel less like “made-up events” and more like something tapping on the inside of your chest, asking to be let in.
You may find yourself remembering—not necessarily past lives, though the book certainly invites that possibility—but forgotten parts of this life: the child who believed trees could speak, the teenager who felt moments of intense déjà vu, the adult who quietly senses patterns they can’t fully justify.

Stories that are truly told “will find a home within you… and they love you as much as you love them.”

Reading with an open heart is how you leave the door unlocked for them.

When Characters Practice Open-Heartedness Before You Do

Sometimes the characters in The Merging of the Realms model an open heart long before they would ever use that phrase.

Think of Offae’s first encounter with the saber tooth. Everything in his body says “predator.” His muscles tense; his spear is ready. And yet, when the cat speaks, Offae listens. He does not abandon caution, but he doesn’t shut down, either.

The boy’s first act of courage is not a strike with his spear; it’s a choice to stay in conversation with something that could kill him.

Later, in the halls of the Wîżârd’ş CôůņcîŁ, Offae meets Ędŵåřd, who reminds him that the truest magic lives in stories and that the tales they once told together changed both of them. Offae allows those memories to flood him—not as a clever idea, but as a felt reality that leaves him more than he was before.

Elsewhere, Tħę WåņdæRîng WøøÐs invite you to “follow the whisper” if you hear someone calling your name between the words, and to “open yourself to forgotten tales of your soul’s journey.”

When characters accept such invitations, they are practicing what I am asking of you as a reader:

To stay present when something strange but gentle approaches.
To notice the whispers between the obvious words.
To let a scene affect you even if you’re not entirely sure how you “feel about it” yet.

You don’t have to label that process. You don’t have to declare belief in anything. You only have to allow yourself to be moved, just a little, by what moves them.

Reading Beyond the Sharp Line of “Real” and “Not Real”

We live in a world that likes clean categories. We’re trained to ask: “But did this really happen?” As if what did not occur in recorded history must therefore be less true.

Tħę WåņdæRîng WøøÐs have a different view:

“Those who see myth and magic that way will find wonder, adventure and knowledge within these pages in the way you are ready to receive them now, but for others, those who know it is just a deeper layer of reality, it will call forth memories of days they lived long ago.”

From that perspective:

Myth is not a lie; it is a language.
The multiverse of realms is not an escape; it is a metaphor (and possibly more) for the many layers of existence we move through.
A dragon might not land on your front lawn, but you may recognize Ødîņ’s patience in an elder who has always seen more in you than you see in yourself.

Reading with an open heart allows you to ask softer questions than “Did this happen exactly this way?”

You might ask instead:

Where have I felt something like this in my own life?
Why does this particular scene leave me feeling as if I’ve remembered something instead of learning it for the first time?
What if the boundary between my “ordinary” days and the Realm of Myth and Magic is thinner than I’ve assumed?

That does not mean abandoning critical thinking. It means allowing truth to arrive in more than one costume.

What Changes When You Read This Way

If you accept the Woods’ invitation to “walk with us through realms of myth and magic as you have all done so many times before,” something subtle begins to shift.

You might notice:

Certain phrases echoing in your mind when you face a difficult choice, much like Offae hearing the saber tooth’s calm voice when the world begins to rearrange around him.
A softening toward the parts of yourself you once labeled “too strange,” as if some inner council of wizards is nodding and saying, “Ah, there you are, finally. We’ve been waiting.”
A new kind of curiosity about your own story – the sense, perhaps even the knowing, that your life has a mythic thread running through it, even if no one ever handed you a prophecy.
The Hero’s Journey is the journey we all take, in varying degrees at different times.
Start to look closely at those around you. What do you see beneath the skin of the human next to you, an ancient water sprite, a fae, a wizened wizard. Step away from the fact you were told too see only humans. What if that’s only conditioning imprinted upon you from those who knew no other way to see.

When you let a story like this touch you, you may find that the Veil you thought separated your everyday life from anything magical is not as solid as you were taught.

You may not start seeing portals in your living room (though who am I to say what your soul has planned?), but you might begin to:

Pay more attention to “coincidences” that feel suspiciously like choreography.
Treat your dreams with a bit more respect.
Notice where fear has been masquerading as practicality, keeping you away from paths that feel oddly like home.

An open heart doesn’t guarantee that a book will change your life. It simply creates the conditions where such change becomes possible.

If You’re Skeptical, You’re Still Welcome

All of this might sound like a lot to ask of a fantasy novel. If a part of you is thinking, “I just wanted dragons,” you are not wrong to feel that way.

The good news is: Tħę WåņdæRîng WøøÐs anticipated you, too. They are very clear that if you choose to see the story as “only a faerytale then that is your choice” and your experience—and you are still invited to enjoy the journey.

You do not have to:

Believe in reincarnation.
Accept the existence of other realms.
Treat Ødîņ and PůçĶ as anything more than two beautifully improbable dragons.

You are welcome to come for the adventure, the humor, the oddities of glyphic language, the sheer pleasure of watching a young hunter discover that his life is wider than the grasslands he grew up on.

All I would gently suggest is this:

Even if you arrive with a skeptical mind, consider letting your heart read a few pages ahead of you.

You might be surprised by what it recognizes.

Final Thoughts

When I look back at how The Merging of the Realms first came to me, it never felt like a story I was “making up.” In fact, If I did ‘try’ to make it up, it would become difficult. It was only when I let the frequency of the story speak of its own accord, with no expectations of my own, that it would drift through with ease and clarity. Then it felt more like something that had been waiting patiently at the edge of my awareness, tapping its foot, hoping I would sit in stillness long enough to allow it to come through in the way it thought best. Let the story be the guide, was always the whisper.

That’s why the book speaks, again and again, about stories as living beings, about realms that long to touch, about separation as “the greatest illusion of all.” It’s also why the very first greeting you receive comes not from a human character, but from Tħę WåņdæRîng WøøÐs themselves, asking you to “let go of what limits you and open yourself to knowing you are more than you ever dreamed possible.”

You don’t have to believe everything the book believes. You don’t have to agree with every implication. But if you are willing to read it with an open heart—with a curiosity that extends to your own soul as much as to the characters—you may find that the story doesn’t simply pass through you.

It may choose to stay.

And if it does, it will not be rude. It will sit quietly by your fire, like an old friend, waiting for you to notice that the magic you were reading about has been living in you all along.

Discussion Questions

When you first opened The Merging of the Realms, were you more inclined to read it as “only a faerytale” or as a potential story of remembrance—and has that inclination shifted?
How do you personally draw the line between what feels “real” and “not real,” and did any scene in the book make that line feel thinner than usual?
Have you ever experienced a moment in your own life that felt like the world quietly rearranged itself around you, similar to Offae’s first steps into the enchanted forest?
Which character’s way of facing the unknown (Offae, Ødîņ, the saber tooth, the wizards, or even the Woods) most closely mirrors how you handle uncertainty?
If you were to consciously read another story—with or without dragons—with a more open heart, what might you be hoping to discover about yourself in the process?

Category: Blog Tags: dragons, magic, Mythical, stories of remembrance, The Wandering Woods, wizards

Richard Talley