The day had been merciless.
From the moment Devra stepped out of that strange history class, it felt like everything had been waiting to drain him. His head still buzzed with the teacher's words, with memories of his own world clawing to stay relevant.
After the last bell, the routine here was strict. Students didn't simply go home—they were marched to the gym for mandatory physical training. "Preparedness drills," they called it. But Devra could see the truth: they were grooming everyone to be soldiers.
The gym was cavernous, its metal walls echoing with the thud of running feet and the barked orders of the instructors. The Federation didn't believe in gentle encouragement. You ran, you pushed, you lifted, or you were reminded—loudly—that the monsters beyond the Wall didn't wait for the unfit.
Devra did his best to blend in, copying the stretches, keeping his pace just behind Brok's. But every time his lungs burned, he was reminded—this isn't my body. It wasn't weak, exactly, but it wasn't trained either. Whoever this boy had been before Devra took his place, he wasn't an athlete.
By the end of the drills, his legs were rubber. His uniform clung to him with sweat, and his head pounded with exhaustion.
---
The sun had already dipped low by the time he walked home. The streets here were narrower than the ones he remembered from his world. Tall buildings loomed on either side, their windows dark or shuttered. The air was clean but carried a faint metallic tang, like it had been filtered too many times.
His apartment was on the fourth floor of a squat concrete block. The key scraped in the lock before turning with a reluctant click.
Inside, the place greeted him with silence. No hum of a TV, no distant voices. Just the faint, stale smell of a room that hadn't been aired out in days.
It wasn't much—one bedroom, one kitchen, a tiny bathroom. The fridge hummed in the corner, and when he opened it, the cold light fell on neat stacks of frozen meals. No fresh fruit, no milk. Just blocks of convenience wrapped in plastic.
He pulled one out, tossed it into the microwave, and sat at the small table while it spun. His mind kept circling back to the same thought:
Another world. Another life.
The microwave beeped. The food was edible, if bland. He barely tasted it.
After washing the plate, he stripped off his sweat-soaked gym clothes and collapsed into bed. The thin mattress squeaked under his weight. Outside, the city's night noises drifted in—a distant hum of traffic, the occasional clang of metal, the muffled call of a street vendor.
His body ached in every joint. But his mind… his mind refused to rest.
He stared at the ceiling in the dark.
Yama's voice echoed from the depths of his memory.
> "You will live as the one meant to be here."
Why him? Why not send him back? And the boon… the so-called reward… what good was it if he didn't even know what it was?
Eventually, fatigue pulled him under.
---
He opened his eyes and found himself standing in a world of rock and dust.
The air was damp and heavy. The ceiling above was jagged stone, dripping with water that pattered softly into pools. Lanterns, cracked and unlit, hung from rusted chains.
A mine.
He didn't remember walking here. The moment he'd closed his eyes in bed, he'd been here.
The ground was uneven, scattered with broken tools—pickaxes, shovels, carts with one wheel missing. Faint echoes whispered from somewhere deep in the tunnels, too distant to understand.
Confusion surged through him. His breath came fast, shallow.
"This isn't real," he told himself, though his voice sounded small against the stone.
He turned and began to move, his footsteps crunching over gravel. The walls seemed to lean inward, narrowing, pressing closer the deeper he went. His pace quickened without meaning to.
Something scraped behind him.
He froze. Slowly, he looked back.
In the dim distance, shadows stirred. Shapes moved—low, hunched figures with limbs that bent wrong, eyes glowing faintly in the dark. Their skin looked wet, stretched too tightly over their bones. And their mouths… rows upon rows of jagged teeth, clicking as they walked.
A chill ripped through him. Instinct took over. He ran.
The tunnel twisted, split, then narrowed again. His breaths came ragged, heart pounding in his ears. The scrape of clawed feet behind him grew sharper, faster.
He didn't look back again.
He kept running until the tunnel widened suddenly into a cavern, its walls glittering with veins of pale crystal. He skidded to a halt, chest heaving.
That's when he saw him.
A figure stood in the center of the cavern—familiar in the most unsettling way.
It was him.
And yet, not him.
One half was crystal clear, every detail sharp: the curve of the jaw, the same hair, the same posture. The other half was nothing but blur, like a smudge on glass, colors and edges shifting with no form.
The figure moved before Devra could speak.
Blue light burst around him—not from the crystals, but from the figure's body. It flared like fire, bathing the cavern in cold radiance.
The monsters poured into the cavern from the tunnels behind Devra, their shrieks rattling his bones. But the figure didn't hesitate.
In a single step, he crossed the space between them, blade in hand. The blur half flowed like liquid, twisting unnaturally as he moved.
The blade swept once. Twice.
The monsters fell in pieces, their bodies dissolving into black mist before they touched the ground.
Devra could only stare, rooted in place. The figure didn't even slow down.
Then, without warning, the blurred half twisted sharply toward him.
For the briefest moment, Devra saw the eyes—cold, merciless, and far older than his own.
The figure moved. The blue light cut through the air.
And pain bloomed white-hot in his chest.
---
Devra jerked awake with a gasp, clutching his shirt. His heart pounded as if he had run for miles. Sweat drenched his skin.
The room was silent again. No monsters. No cavern. No blue light.
But the ache in his chest lingered.
He lay there in the dark, listening to the sound of his own ragged breathing.
And for the first time since Yama's words, he felt certain of something—
The boon wasn't going to stay hidden forever.
And when it revealed itself, it might already be too late.