Arjun didn't notice when the two worlds stopped alternating and began to overlap.
At first, it was subtle — a slip in language, a reflexive turn of phrase that didn't belong here.When his professor asked a question about mythic symbolism, he answered with a passage from an ancient text that didn't exist on Earth.When his friends invited him to dinner, he found himself calculating troop rations instead of menu prices.
The bleed was slow, patient, like ink seeping through paper.And Arjun, despite the fear clawing at him, didn't want it to stop.
Because here, he was a nobody.But there… he was needed.
He started carrying a notebook everywhere.At first it was just sketches — maps of the warfront, runic circles he half-remembered from Arathen's spellwork. Then came words: incantations, commands, entire pages of script that he swore he wasn't writing consciously.
When he woke one morning, the notebook lay open on his chest, his own handwriting looping across a page in symbols he couldn't read.
He took a photo of it with shaking hands, uploaded it to a translation forum, and within hours deleted the post — because staring at the image made the room bend. The symbols seemed to shimmer, as if alive.
He didn't upload again.
But he kept writing.
Classes became noise.Assignments forgotten.Sleep unpredictable.
When the slips came now, they weren't complete jumps — they were fractures.
He'd blink, and the library would blur into the war room. He'd blink again, and the soldiers' faces would turn to students, their armor to denim jackets. The words they spoke would overlap, both languages woven into one impossible echo.
Once, he saw his professor's face flicker — for an instant, replaced by the general's.And when he came to, the class was staring at him.
He'd been standing at the front of the room, lecturing.
The chalkboard behind him was filled with diagrams — not equations, but runes.
He had no memory of writing them.
That night, he didn't even try to sleep. He sat at his desk, staring at the mirror across the room.
His reflection stared back — tired, gaunt, haunted. But something in the glass was wrong. The eyes glowed faintly blue, just for a heartbeat.
Then a voice.
"Why resist?"
Arathen's voice. Calm. Deep.
Arjun's pulse thundered. "Because this isn't real."
"Reality," the voice replied, "is only the world that remembers you."
Arjun pressed his palms to his temples. "You're not real. You're me pretending—"
"You are pretending," Arathen interrupted. "Pretending to be small. Pretending to be weak. Pretending that your world holds you, when it has already forgotten your name."
The mirror darkened, shifting — for an instant showing a reflection of Arathen, cloaked in flame and lightning, staff in hand.
"Come back," the voice whispered. "We need you. They need you. You need you."
Arjun stumbled backward. His breath came ragged.
When he blinked, the mirror was just a mirror again.
Days passed — though he was no longer sure how many. Time felt fractured, folded.
He stopped answering messages. Stopped attending classes. Stopped pretending.
The walls of his dorm room grew strange — faint outlines of archways bleeding through plaster, shelves that flickered between books and scrolls.
One morning, he awoke to find a feather — white as frost — lying on his pillow.
He knew it. The messenger hawks. The ones Arathen used for council summons.
He should have screamed. But instead, he smiled.
It was a sign.
He was being called.
When the shift came that night, he didn't fight it.
He reached for it.
And for the first time, the passage didn't tear — it opened.
He didn't wake in Arathen's world. He merged into it — memories aligning like twin constellations. Every motion familiar, every heartbeat doubled.
He walked through the war camp, soldiers saluting him, and felt no fear, no confusion.
Because for the first time, he understood:He hadn't borrowed Arathen's life.
He had remembered it.
When dawn came in the real world, his dorm bed was empty.
The window was open. The air smelled faintly of ash and ozone.
On the desk lay the notebook, pages fluttering in the breeze. The last thing written there, in both English and the old tongue, read:
"The world that forgets me will fade first."