A dull warmth spread across Alvenar Bhardwaj's face as the sun poured in through the half-drawn curtains. His eyes blinked open slowly, heavy, reluctant, as if protesting the idea of waking. The air smelled faintly of detergent and something like citrus — familiar, but just off enough to stir unease in the pit of his stomach.
He sat up.
The room was neat. A single bed, a wooden desk, a closed laptop, a neatly folded grey hoodie over the back of a chair. A poster of a skyline he didn't recognize clung to one wall. His breath caught in his throat.
He didn't recognize anything.
Not the texture of the sheets. Not the layout of the room. Not the ceiling fan gently turning overhead.
Alvenar ran a hand over his face. Alvenar—that name echoed strangely in his head. That wasn't his name. Or rather… it hadn't been.
I'm… Anuj. Anuj Kaushik.
The thought was clear. Crisp. He remembered it as clearly as he remembered breathing. His name. His identity. His life in Ghaziabad, his college campus, the way his mother used to call him for dinner like clockwork. And yet…
He stood, walked toward the desk, and opened the laptop. It was unlocked.
He checked the desktop background — a photograph of a street corner at night, warmly lit. The signage glowed in a script similar to the Latin alphabet, but the words were strange. "ZeltraMart," read the neon board above a store. Beneath it, a tagline in smaller letters: Every home. Every need. Every price.
Alvenar frowned. Not D-Mart. Not Big Bazaar. ZeltraMart.
He clicked open the browser. The home page was set to something called Findlo — a search engine that looked suspiciously like Google but with a navy-blue interface and a green swirl as its logo.
He typed in: India map 2024.
A second later, a detailed map loaded. His heart stopped. The shape was nothing like India. The subcontinent was gone. In its place, a jagged landmass labeled Zunera sprawled from sea to sea.
He swallowed.
His fingers moved fast. Earth continents. The results showed:
Salantris
Virelia
Orunel
Dravahn
Kestaria
Talmeir
Nosthra
He'd never heard of any of them.
He leaned back in the chair, fingers slightly trembling. His reflection in the darkened screen stared back: sharper jawline, slightly paler skin than he remembered, a scar along the left brow. The face was his, but also not. Like looking through a filter that changed nothing and everything at once.
A buzzing in his chest grew louder. Not panic. Not yet. Confusion. Disbelief. Logic trying to catch up with reality.
He stood, walked to the window, and pulled back the curtains fully.
Outside, the city pulsed like any modern metropolis. Clean streets, fast-moving cars, pedestrians in business attire or headphones. Tall buildings, huge LED advertisements — but the names were wrong. All of them.
Yutronix Electronics.
VarshaFast Food.
Ripel Hub Rideshare.
Balto Cola — Now with Triple Fizz!
None of them existed back home. Not on Earth.
He turned, opened the wardrobe, and found a wallet lying inside a coat. Inside the wallet was a sleek black ID card.
Alvenar Bhardwaj
Resident of City: Brimdale
Province: Estervale
Nation: The Republic of Virelia
A cold sensation crawled down his spine.
This isn't Earth.
He wasn't sure how he got here. No memory of transition, no accident, no waking dream. Just… waking up.
A glance at the corner clock showed 8:14 a.m. He needed answers. His phone, lying beside the bed, flickered to life. No fingerprint lock — it opened easily. Apps lined the home screen, all familiar in design but alien in name.
He opened Twickr — apparently the social media app here — and scrolled. The newsfeed was filled with the usual: sports updates, a politician making grand promises, food bloggers showing breakfast platters. It looked exactly like the content he would've seen back home. And yet…
Everything was wrong.
Scrolling through the comments, he noticed the names: Kaevin Drustein, Yasha Pelmore, Rudra Hiven, Lucan O'Zarr.
Not a single Singh, Sharma, Verma, or Khan.
The language was English — or something exactly like it — but the cultural anchors were all different. He couldn't place any actor mentioned, any city name tagged, any sports league abbreviation.
Still barefoot, he slipped on a pair of sandals from near the door. They fit well.
He walked outside.
The air was warm. The street was clean, the apartment building he'd emerged from looked high-end. Across the road, a convenience store buzzed with soft music. The logo above it blinked in animated teal: ZeltraMart — just like the desktop wallpaper.
He crossed the road and walked inside.
The cashier gave him a polite nod. "Morning, sir."
Same voice tone, same accent structure. Perfectly Earth-like, but with words just a little... clipped.
Alvenar walked through the aisles. The products resembled what he expected — chips, biscuits, noodles, juice boxes — but the names were foreign.
Chorka's Spiced Rings
Julli-Bit Cream Biscuits
XaviCup Instant Brew
He picked up a pack of biscuits and examined the text. Manufactured by Julli Foods Pvt. Ltd., Estervale Province, Virelia.
A young man in a delivery uniform entered. Alvenar walked up to him.
"Excuse me," he said, steadying his voice. "I'm a bit new here. Which city is this?"
The man raised an eyebrow. "Brimdale. Capital of Estervale. You alright, sir?"
Alvenar nodded quickly. "Yeah, just jet lag. Thanks."
He walked back out, heart pounding. The pieces were clear now. This wasn't a dream. It wasn't Earth. It looked, felt, functioned like Earth — but the details were undeniably off. Like a copied world drawn from memory and stitched together just wrong enough to stand out.
Back home — or rather, back in his real world — he had never heard of Brimdale. Or Virelia. And the names people carried were out of some alternate cultural evolution. The logic, the tech, the infrastructure — everything was familiar. But none of it matched.
The laptop. The ID. The phone. The wardrobe. All of it pointed to a single, impossible fact.
This wasn't his life. This wasn't his world.
This was someone else's.
And that someone… was Alvenar Bhardwaj.