Chapter 1: The Last Thing I Remember
The rain had a rhythm that night — not gentle, not furious, but purposeful. As if it knew it was washing something away.
Aarav walked alone, hoodie soaked, hands shoved into his pockets. Streetlights flickered above like they were struggling to stay alive. He didn’t look up. He couldn’t. Not after the day he had.
His phone buzzed in his pocket again. He ignored it. It would be another message from his mother, a reminder to “stop sulking” or “come back home.” Home — the place that felt more like a waiting room for disappointment than a sanctuary. The rejection letter from the academy still throbbed in his mind. “We regret to inform you…” — Four words that shattered a year of dreams.
He found himself on the old flyover, which had been closed years ago after the landslide. Faint danger signs still hung limply from broken chains. Aarav didn’t care. He liked it up there — away from the noise, away from everyone who spoke in checklists and lived by expectations.
The city below looked like a memory blurred by tears. He leaned against the metal railing, feeling the vibration of thunder crawl up his spine. What if I just disappeared? he thought. What if I found a place that didn’t want me to prove myself every second? A world where I could be... enough.
A flicker.
The rain stopped mid-air.
Literally.
Droplets froze in place — like pearls suspended in invisible strings. He blinked. Time held its breath.
Then came the sound — low, metallic, like a mechanical hum from deep beneath the earth. It wasn’t loud, but it filled everything — the sky, the air, his bones.
His phone screen turned on by itself, blinding white. No messages. Just a single symbol: an eye surrounded by what looked like wings made of flame. Then the screen cracked from the inside — a thin black fissure racing across the glass. And the sky?
The sky split.
A line of pure white tore through the clouds above, and through it spilt a colour Aarav couldn’t name — something between ultraviolet and sorrow. He staggered back, disoriented, but his legs wouldn’t respond. His feet felt glued to the concrete. His skin tingled. His breath fogged with each exhale, despite the warm air.
And then it all collapsed.
The city melted into darkness. Not black — void. As if existence had been unplugged.
He woke with a gasp.
The first thing he noticed was light. Not sunlight, but something gentler — like the inside of a dream. It filtered through a sky of violet and broken constellations, where two suns pulsed like twin heartbeats.
He lay in soft, pale grass that shimmered every time the wind brushed it. The air smelled like cinnamon and electricity.
He sat up slowly. His hoodie was dry. His shoes were gone. The flyover was gone. The city, the storm, the phone — gone.
All around him stretched an endless field of rolling white hills under a sky stitched with silver lines that moved like veins.
No cars. No buildings. No people.
He reached for his pocket instinctively, but there was nothing. No wallet. No ID. Just... himself.
And in the silence, he heard it again. That low hum. Only this time, it wasn’t coming from the earth. It was coming from inside him. Like something had lodged itself in his chest and had started to awaken.
Aarav stood, legs shaky, heart pounding.
He took one step forward, and the ground pulsed under his foot, like a heartbeat.
He turned around. No path. No footprints. The grass erased everything.
The wind whispered something. It wasn’t English. It wasn’t even language. But he understood it.
“You’ve come back.”
His mouth went dry.
“Back? I’ve never been here.”
The wind didn’t reply.
Aarav looked at the sky again — violet, shifting, too vast.
And with a voice barely more than a breath, he said:
“Where the hell am I?”
Chapter 2: A Sky That Doesn’t Belong Aarav walked.
He didn’t know how long. Time didn’t feel real here. The two suns above him didn’t move. The shadows on the ground twisted like they were alive, flickering in directions they shouldn’t. And the air — too crisp, too quiet. No birds. No insects. No sound but the whispering grass and his uncertain breath.
The field stretched endlessly, but not in a natural way. It looped. He noticed that after the third time passing a white-leafed tree shaped like a trident. It was impossible to miss. No matter which direction he walked, it found its way back in front of him.
Something was wrong with the ground beneath him — too soft to be earth, too warm to be stone. It reacted faintly to his steps, pulsing a dull glow under his bare feet. The world wasn’t just strange. It was listening.
“Okay,” Aarav said aloud, just to break the silence. His voice echoed, but not outward — it seemed to echo inward, as though bouncing off invisible walls inside his mind. “This is a dream. It has to be. Or a coma. Maybe I’m in a hospital.”
He slapped his cheek.
Hard.
Pain. Real.
But the sky remained violet. The grass still shimmered. The air still buzzed.
Then something changed.
The temperature dropped in an instant. Not gradually. Like someone had flipped a cosmic switch.
He looked up.
The sky had opened.
Above him, where cloud shapes had lazily drifted moments ago, now spun a giant ring of stone — an ancient, levitating halo with carvings etched across its surface. It rotated soundlessly, casting no shadow, yet somehow blocking light.
Inside its hollow centre hovered a long black river, flowing upward — its surface rippling and glittering like glass. Small glowing orbs orbited it slowly, like tethered moons.
Aarav didn’t breathe. Couldn’t.
This wasn’t just another world.
This was a place that had no business existing.
Then something moved off to the side, near the glowing grass. A lumbering figure emerged slowly from a mound of dirt, covered in patches of moss and mechanical plating. It stood at least ten feet tall, its body part-organic, part-metal, with limbs made of bones and wires fused. Its head was a metallic dome that spun slowly like a gyroscope.
Aarav ducked low behind the tree.
But the creature didn’t attack. It didn’t even seem to notice him.
Instead, it limped forward on three legs toward a jagged stone structure ahead — a kind of collapsed tower made from dark, cracked stone and bones spiralled together like vines.
Driven by fear and curiosity in equal measure, Aarav followed.
The tower was ancient—or maybe beyond age altogether. Runes crawled across the surface like living veins. The entrance was a triangular gap at the base, surrounded by faded murals of people kneeling, weeping, raising hands toward a falling star.
Inside, the air was still. Too still.
Aarav stepped carefully past the remains of what looked like shattered glass and melted metal. At the centre of the room stood a mirror, but not like any mirror he'd ever seen.
It was tall and narrow, almost the height of the tower, its frame carved with hundreds of blinking eyes that opened and closed rhythmically.
The mirror showed nothing at first.
Then, without warning, it shimmered and revealed his street back home. The very flyover he’d walked on. The rain. The sky. The moment it split open.
And then... it shifted.
The image changed to Aarav himself, standing in the exact position, but older. His face was gaunt. Eyes hollow. He was screaming — a silent, soul-twisting scream — as shadowy tendrils dragged him backwards into blackness.
Aarav stepped back, nearly falling.
Then the pain hit.
A sharp, searing heat spread across the back of his hand. He cried out and looked down.
A symbol burned into his skin — the same one he’d seen on his phone before it cracked. The eye surrounded by wings of flame.
It wasn’t ink. It was alive. The edges pulsed, and with each throb, his chest tightened.
He stumbled out of the tower, heart racing.
The world felt wrong again. The sky had darkened. The suns dimmed.
And in the wind, that whisper returned — but this time, it was clearer:
“You are marked. You were always meant to return.”
Aarav fell to his knees, clutching his head.
“I don’t understand! What is this place?!” he shouted.
The air didn’t answer.
But the hum within his chest deepened.
His vision blurred. The landscape melted at the edges, distorting like watercolour in the rain.
And then, everything faded.
As his body hit the ground, only one word echoed in his mind:
“Return.”
Chapter 3: Rules of a World Not Mine
Aarav awoke with a gasp.
This time, he was beneath a vast tree whose branches curved upward like antlers. Its bark shimmered with hues of green and gold, and its roots pulsed slowly, like veins beneath transparent skin. He wasn't sure how he got here. He remembered the tower… the mirror… the mark.
And the pain.
But now? There was no pain. Only silence and breath.
The sky above still held its impossible colour — violet bleeding into silver — and the twin suns remained fixed in place like judging eyes. But there was something new in the air.
Purpose.
The tree hummed gently. Aarav placed his hand on the trunk, and as he did, the sigil on his palm — the winged eye — pulsed in perfect sync with the heartbeat of the tree.
The world was responding to him.
And that terrified him.
He wandered further, passing through a stretch of land where the grass floated inches off the soil and the hills rolled like waves in slow motion. Everything here was beautiful, alien, and wrong. A dream sculpted by logic that had forgotten its source.
Aarav stumbled upon a platform — a floating stone disc carved with symbols. At its centre hovered a book. Or what looked like a book. Its pages didn’t flip. They unravelled, like ribbons of light, responding to his presence.
The moment he touched it, the ribbons wrapped around his wrist and spun in the air, forming words:
“Thought is Form.”
“Emotion is Fuel.”
“Memory is Power.”
“What the hell does that mean?” Aarav whispered.
The book replied. Not in sound — but in understanding. You shape the world. It is made of you.
His heart raced.
“I’m not supposed to be here,” he said aloud.
But the world disagreed. The wind carried the words back at him like an echo… but reversed.
“Here be supposed to not… am I?”
Reality wasn’t just unstable here — it was conscious.
Testing it, Aarav focused on a memory — something small. A lit candle from his 10th birthday. He pictured it in perfect detail.
And then it appeared. Flickering gently in front of him, exactly as it had been.
He waved his hand, and it vanished in a soft puff of golden smoke.
He focused again — this time on fear. The night his father left. The screaming. The broken plates.
Suddenly, the sky dimmed. Clouds gathered, dark and slow. The ground trembled slightly. A shadow passed overhead.
He gasped and pushed the thought away. Instantly, the world stilled.
It was true.
This place bent to his mind.
Hours passed — or maybe minutes, time refused to behave. Aarav explored further and found signs of a once-great civilization: shattered towers of glassy stone, broken archways inscribed with moving glyphs, skeletal remains with metal joints and stitched leather skin.
At the edge of a cliff, he saw a memory that wasn’t his.
Projected in mid-air: a man in a torn cloak, laughing madly while lightning rained upward into the sky. Soldiers with glowing eyes bowed to him.
The projection flickered — then vanished.
Something had gone very, very wrong here.
As dusk approached — or what passed for it — the colour of the world began to invert. The grass turned black, and the sky turned pale red. The warmth of the air was replaced with a chilling stillness.
Aarav heard them before he saw them.
Low rattling. Bones clacking. Like teeth grinding in the distance.
He turned.
Emerging from the folds of mist were creatures made of fragments — scraps of memory, stitched together by shadow. Their forms shifted constantly: sometimes wolves, sometimes humans, sometimes both at once.
They were Vorrik — the name slithered into his head uninvited.
He ran.
The ground beneath him changed as he panicked. It softened. Thickened. Slowed him.
Calm down, he told himself. Calm down!
The creatures closed in.
He thought of light. Safety. His mother’s arms.
A burst of energy exploded from his chest. A golden wall surged out in all directions, pushing the Vorrik back like leaves in a storm.
They vanished.
The air went still again.
Aarav dropped to his knees, sweating, trembling, terrified — not of the monsters, but of himself.
He sat in silence until the sky began to warm again. The second sun brightened.
And in the golden grass before him, words formed:
“You are waking up too slowly.”
He blinked.
Then, beneath it, more words appeared, written in handwriting:
“But soon, you’ll remember why you made this place.”
Chapter 4: The Memory That Shouldn’t Be Mine
Aarav didn’t sleep that night — if it was night. The twin suns had dipped below the horizon for the first time since his arrival, revealing a fractured sky filled with stars that pulsed like living things. Constellations moved like thoughts drifting across the mind of the world itself.
He sat beside the massive root of the golden-veined tree, unable to shake the last message written in the grass.
“You’ll remember why you made this place.”
Made?
How could he have created this world? He had no memory of it. No understanding of its physics or laws. But… it knew him. It bent to him. It responded to his thoughts, his fears, his pain.
And now, something was changing.
At dawn — or the world’s version of it — he heard the sound again: the hum, deeper now, like a drumbeat within his chest.
Then came the figure.
It stepped through a slit in the air, like reality had been peeled open. A tall woman cloaked in a robe made of flowing ink and light. Her face was half-covered by a mask — one half serene, the other snarling. Her voice echoed not from her mouth, but from the air around him.
“Aarav, Bound of the Flame-Eye, you are late to your own return.”
He stood slowly, every muscle tense. “Who are you?”
“I am Saren, your tether to what you left behind. I kept your mind sealed until you were ready to remember. But the seal is breaking. The Vorrik already sense your incomplete return.”
“What do you mean return? I’ve never been here before.”
“You have,” she said, stepping closer. “You came here as a child — not of body, but of soul. This world was born of your grief, your hope, your guilt. You shaped it and fled from it.”
Aarav shook his head. “No, I don’t— this is insane. I’m just some kid from Mumbai who got rejected from school and took a walk during the rain—”
“You died, Aarav.”
Silence.
Time seemed to stop again — like the world held its breath for the second time.
His throat tightened. “That’s not true. I’m alive. I can feel everything. I’m breathing, thinking—”
“Your body fell,” Saren said. “The lightning strike on the flyover did more than split the sky. It fractured the veil between your worlds. But your soul did not belong entirely to that plane. It had roots here. Deep ones. You just forgot.”
Aarav staggered back. His knees buckled. “No. No no no— I didn’t die. I’m not dead.”
“You are not gone,” she said softly. “You are... transcended.”
She touched his forehead.
Images exploded in his mind.
A thousand versions of him — in armor, in robes, in shadow — fighting beasts made of smoke, walking beside beings of glass, sitting on thrones of flame, crying in a ruined temple. In one memory, he was a king. In another, a monster. In yet another, a child staring at the stars and whispering promises into the wind.
Each version of him had a name, but they all shared the mark.
The eye.
The flame.
The return.
He collapsed to the ground, gasping.
Now he remembered.
He had made this place once, long ago, as a shelter for broken minds — a halfway world for souls unable to pass on, a haven for lost fragments of consciousness. But the Vorrik had found it and corrupted it. He had tried to stop them. Failed. And so he locked his memories away, sealed his powers, cast himself out.
Back to Earth.
To be born again. Clean. Innocent.
But pain found him anyway. The pain brought him back.
And now he had returned.
Saren knelt beside him.
“The seal is broken. But the world is still dying. You must restore the core — the Heart Mirror. You hid it in the place where your first fear was born.”
Aarav looked up. “Where?”
“Beneath the reflection of your soul,” she said. “In the place where you learned to lie.”
He knew immediately where that was.
Back home.
His childhood bedroom.
The cracked mirror above his old dresser. The one where he used to practice fake smiles.
Aarav stood.
The world began to shift — trees folding inward, skies pulling like fabric. A portal formed — not like Saren’s slit in reality, but one made of fire and memory. On the other side: the outline of a familiar room. Earth.
He was going back.
But not as the boy who left.
As the one who created Elseworld.
React
