Ley Lines and Nexus Points

As you are aware, the surface of planet Earth is comprised of the Lithosphere (the earth's crust), Hydrosphere (oceans, lakes, rivers, ice caps and clouds), atmosphere (gases) and Biosphere (all the life on the planet).
Imagine, if you will, that the biosphere is a plasma globe made up of all the living things on the planet powered by the arcane energy of life itself:

Plasma Ball by Milesl

For the entire existence of life on Earth, our planet looked much like this, with all of the life energy of the planet constantly recycled within the biosphere. As life forms die, their life energy is released and enters the flow, concentrating in certain Nexus points before being recycled. (those would be the pink spots in the illustration above) There have been times throughout history when the loss of life in a single location exceeded the ability of the local node to recycle it. This excess would then flow from the overwhelmed nexus to a nearby nexus. Some sensitive attuned Humans have felt these flows of energy from nexus to nexus and have given them the name Ley Lines. A typical Ley Line would last from dozens to hundreds of years before subsiding. One well known example is the St. Michael's Line in Great Britain, depicted in the sidebar on the right.
This ability to sense and interact with ley line energy has been present in only a small percentage of human population, but that is the subject of another discussion.
Starting in the 21st century, great wounds were inflicted upon the biosphere through the nefarious machinations of greater powers. These wounds were inflicted on a number of strategically chosen nexus points over the span of more than a century. Each wound was a massive deadly event causing enormous spikes of released life energy, overwhelming the local nexus point and straining all its neighbors with the surplus.  In fact, so much energy was released in each of these events to actually warp space and time, creating momentary rifts between dimensions.  None lasted more than a few minutes but they elicited great panic around the world. These were mankind's first documented rifts. Little did they know what was coming.
To stick with our analogy of a plasma globe, consider these wounds to be chips in the glass surface. Historically these wounds, the chips, would heal over the course of decades and centuries. But these intentional strikes built on each other, never allowing any to heal. With each chip, cracks started forming. With each chip, the cracks lengthened and connected. With each chip the entire surface of the biosphere became more and more dangerously fragile with a complex web of intersecting cracks.  The amount of life energy in the recycling queue eventually approached the maximum capacity the planet's system could handle.
It was then that the asteroid/planetoid passed between Earth and her Moon. Whether the body was foreseen by the conspirators or was sent by them is immaterial. What does matter is that it brought their machinations to fruition. Being almost the size of Earth's own moon, it threw the moon off it's orbit.  The gravitational forces on Earth caused such widespread destruction it became known as The Great Cataclysm. The actions and reactions of the humans on the planet are a subject for another article, but it suffices to say that the loss of life on the planet was apocalyptic. This caused the cracked and fragile structure of the biosphere to shatter permanently.
Without the systems in place to recycle it, all of the planet's life energy escaped the now-shattered biosphere and erupted out into the rest of the ecosphere, made visible and tangible for the first time. It would forever be exposed to the physical world, accessible as an energy source by those with the ability to harness it.
All this energy continues to recycle from death to life as it always had; but without the structure of the biosphere systems, it travels across external to the biosphere instead of within it. It flows in rivers of life energy through the physical world, from nexus point to nexus point without end as if it were searching for a lost way back into the systems meant to take it.  It cares not whether it travels through the lithosphere, the atmosphere or the hydrosphere since those physical mediums are invisible to it. It is life energy, it is magic itself; it is not some mundane phenomenon of physics.
In some places, the ley lines are stable and run in well-established paths. In other places where life is more chaotic, they are wild and squirm about between nexus points. And while most nexus points are stationary (or at least they seem so to the non-tectonic time scale of life on earth) other nexus points wander, some more rapidly or sporadically than others.
In one location, the site of the very first "chip" from which the first cracks spread, there is a chaotic region where a nexus point should be but isn't. In this location the ley lines flail about, seeking to discharge their energy like open-ended hoses. When they come into contact with each other here, they form temporary nexus points that last from mere minutes to days.
When the energy in a nexus point reaches a certain threshold, a tear forms in reality connecting that location to another location in time and space. It has been speculated that because of the inability of the life energy to go anywhere once it reaches a nexus point, it reaches to other dimensions instead. These tears are known as Rifts.
Rifts can last mere moments or can be permanent connections as long as enough energy is fed through them. The below image shows some open rifts:

Open Rifts by Kevin Long et. al.

Once a rift forms, it is possible for it to draw power from either or both sides. In this way, Earth is able to sustain its life energy by drawing it from other planets, perhaps indefinitely.

There have been times throughout history where some of energy escaped and took a route across the surface of the biosphere from one nexus to another. One such example was the St. Michael's line in Britain which lasted for over four centuries shown below:

The British St. Michael Line by John Mitchell

It is likely the intersection of this ley line and the much longer Apollo/St. Michael line that the rift formed to Palladium which brought Faerie Folk, Albos, Unicorns and other fanstastical creatures to Great Britain. Creatures that have since entered the human mythological lexicon.