He sat at the kitchen table. The ceramic mug felt warm, but the phantom cold of the blade still dominated his mind. He was back, whole, but the other world had tainted this one. He had died, and the phantom sensation was proof.
He needed to find out how long he was gone without sounding insane. A direct question was impossible. He would have to use a trick.
Psychological Trick 1: The Sincere Anchor
He had to anchor the conversation to a moment just before he left. A Sincere Anchor.
"I feel drained, Mom," he mumbled, rubbing his temples. "I must have overdone it. I remember wrestling with those War of the Roses dates, trying to memorize every battle... then I just crashed."
He waited for her to correct his timeline. She had to believe he was genuinely struggling.
Meena's face softened. "That's why I didn't wake you, Arjun. I came up about twenty minutes after the storm started, right after the big lightning flash."
She continued: "You were already asleep, facing the wall. I saw your textbook open and thought, 'He actually applied himself for once.' I just let you be."
Twenty minutes. That was the window. His death and journey had taken less than a third of an hour here. The other world ran on a terrifyingly compressed clock. He had his answer. He had his alibi.
Psychological Trick 2: The Compliance Reversal
He stood up, looking at her with sudden, surprising determination. He was enacting the Compliance Reversal, shifting from "problem child" to "motivated son" to regain his freedom.
"You're right," he said, his voice firm. "Worrying won't fix my grades. I wasted enough time. I'm going upstairs to start fresh. No more excuses."
He walked upstairs with a clear purpose. He needed this façade of obedience.
In his room, he didn't study. He sat, closing his eyes, forcing his breath to slow. He was alive, but the world was different.
He spent the next hour making noise: loudly shifting books, rustling math textbook pages. He was playing the role of the dutiful student, but only so he could investigate the terrifying truth.
The Missing Thread
The next morning was gray and cold. Arjun walked to school, the math test completely forgotten. The memory of the jagged spire was now his only reality.
He passed the market square and heard two women whispering at a bus stop.
"Heard it was another one from St. Jude's," one worried.
"Three boys and a girl this week, all high school age," the other replied, shaking her head. "Just vanished. The police are saying they ran off, but who runs off in groups like that?"
Missing students. Arjun slowed.
His eyes snagged on a bright, laminated missing person poster on a lamp post. A photo of a man in his late twenties: short dark hair, sharp, worried eyes.
Arjun's breath hitched. He knew that face.
It was the terrifyingly perfect resemblance of the man who had led the group in the desolate city. The one who shouted, "Val'koth!"
The two worlds weren't just running on different clocks. They were exchanging people. The Mindrift wasn't a journey; it was a bridge, and the line between Arjun and its terror was breaking.
He forced himself to breathe. It's just similar. He told himself the posters were common, and all young men with that haircut looked vaguely alike. The man in the picture was older—late twenties. The leader in the desolate city was just a harsh face his mind had filled in. Arjun locked the thought away and resumed his walk.
He arrived at St. Jude's just as the second bell rang. He slipped into the packed corridor, the scent of stale disinfectant and cheap paper anchoring him firmly in his mundane life. He reached his seat just as Mr. Evans, the English teacher, swept in, holding a stack of papers.
"Arjun! You actually made it," his bench partner, Sameer, whispered, eyes wide with panic. "Did you finish the annotated essay? He's checking them first thing."
Arjun froze. The English homework. In the haze of being stabbed, dying, and returning, the annotated essay on The Odyssey had been completely forgotten. The full weight of his neglected school life crushed the fleeting adrenaline of the Mindrift.
"I—I haven't," Arjun stammered, feeling sick.
"We have two minutes!" Sameer shoved his own notebook toward Arjun. "Just do the first paragraph. Write something. Hurry!"
Arjun snatched the pen, his heart now hammering for a purely academic reason. He began to scribble furiously, trying to condense hours of analysis into rushed, unintelligible lines. His hands, which had felt strong in the ruined city, now shook with pathetic inadequacy. It was futile. The words were a jumbled mess of half-formed ideas. Time evaporated.
"Arjun," Mr. Evans' voice cut through the air, cool and sharp. Arjun dropped his pen. The teacher stood over him, looking at his near-empty notebook. "That look on your face is not the look of a completed assignment. Out. Now. Go stand by the main office until the period is over."
Arjun's cheeks burned. He shuffled past the silent rows, enduring the silent judgment of his peers. He hated the walk, the failure. He hated being the ghost who failed even at the simple task of blending in.
He reached the designated spot outside the main office. The corridor was empty and silent, lit by harsh fluorescent lights. He leaned against the cool wall, trying to control his breathing.
His eyes drifted towards the quad outside. They settled on the enormous, ancient banyan tree that dominated the center of the school grounds.
Suddenly, the silence around him deepened. It wasn't audible, but a feeling—a low, rhythmic thrumming that resonated not in his ears, but in the center of his chest, exactly where the phantom cold of the blade still lingered.
It was the same energy. That wrong, pale-blue shimmer of power he felt from the lightning, from the Mindrift spire. It wasn't visible to the eye, but his heightened awareness—the connection from the other world—was telling him: the tree was an anchor. A doorway.
He stared, captivated. The normal world was holding fast, but there, beneath the thick, gnarled roots, was a faint, invisible pulse. The broken line to the Mindrift was here, in the middle of his school.
"Arjun!" The sound was a loud, sharp snap that brought him violently back. Mr. Evans was standing in the doorway, glaring.
"Are you even standing outside, or have you vanished completely?" the teacher demanded, his voice laced with annoyance.
"Yes, sir," Arjun replied instantly, straightening up.
"Then come back in here. Maybe watching the others work will remind you what you're here for."
Arjun felt a wave of fear. Re-entering the room of judgment was worse than being sent out. But he had a mission now. He couldn't risk being branded a distraction again. Control. He straightened his collar, took a deep breath, and walked back into the suffocating reality of the classroom.