Mr. Evans was done. "Sit down, Arjun. And try to look like you belong here."
The teacher turned away. Arjun slid back into his bench. The shame felt heavy and hot.
The bell rang. English class was over.
Sameer quickly grabbed his Chemistry book. He avoided Arjun's eyes. It was a common, unspoken rule of school survival: You are on your own.
The new teacher, Mrs. Rao, walked in. Chemistry. A subject where if you missed one part, you missed everything. Arjun felt the instant cold fear return.
He looked at the clock above Mrs. Rao's head. 40 minutes left. It looked like an impossible mountain to climb.
He watched the second hand move. It seemed to stop for a moment, then jump forward, cheating him of time. This was the silent truth of every long class.
He looked at the blackboard. Formulas he did not know were scrawled there. H2SO4. Acids. Bases. He had not studied. He understood nothing from the middle of the chapter.
The panic was sharp. It was the absolute, paralyzing terror that Mrs. Rao would point at him and ask a question. Any question. He knew nothing.
He kept his head down. He pulled his notebook close. He started drawing simple shapes, pretending they were important notes. This was the best way to look busy and invisible.
He counted the desks between him and Mrs. Rao. Five students who were closer. The odds were low, but not zero. He needed to be silent. He needed to be invisible.
The period felt like an hour spent underwater. He took a gasping breath only when the bell rang.
Next came Biology. Then Economics. The fear cycle was relentless. New subject. New teacher. New chance to be exposed. He knew nothing of either.
He focused only on hiding. He kept a quiet, focused look on his face—a mask to hide the blank terror in his mind.
He spent the next two periods watching the teachers move. He was a silent watcher. Every time a teacher started to scan the room, he tightened up. He was always afraid.
By the last period, he was exhausted. He had not heard a single word of instruction all day. But none of them had called on him. The fear had kept him alert, but only for survival.
The final bell screamed.
Instantly, the tension vanished. The crushing anxiety of the day lifted like smoke. Arjun stood up, his body feeling light and free. The school was suddenly just a building, not a prison.
He walked home. This is my life, he thought. A constant fear cycle. He was afraid every day. He always tried to focus in class, but his mind always drifted. He always got lost in his thoughts. After a few minutes of trying, he was always back in the Mindrift, or somewhere else far away.
He reached his room. He didn't bother changing. He collapsed onto his bed, wanting the awareness to stop for just a few minutes. He closed his eyes.
He opened them.
The shift was too fast. No warning, no shimmering light. One moment, the soft cotton of his pillow, the next, the sharp sting of grit against his cheek. He was thrown into the world of stone and ash.
The air here was not cold, but heavy, thick with the smell of hot metal and something burnt, like old electronics. He was surrounded by people wearing the rough, patched clothes of the other world. They weren't hiding; they were working. They were hitting stone with crude metal tools. Their movements were mechanical, joyless. The rhythmic clanging of the tools was the only sound, constant and dull.
Arjun scrambled to his knees, utterly lost. He saw people chipping away at a massive, dark wall, freeing jagged pieces of rock. He was staring at one of the workers—a young woman whose face was completely expressionless, moving her hammer like a machine—when the world tilted.
CRACK!
A harsh, shocking pain exploded on his shoulder. It felt like being hit with a baseball bat wrapped in wet rope. He cried out, the pain stealing his ability to breathe.
Arjun twisted, gripping his shoulder. The wooden stick, thick and heavy, dropped back to the man's side.
A man stood over him. He was huge. His skin was thick and rough, stained reddish-brown with dust from the constant digging. His arms were like thick, knotted rope, the muscles barely contained by his ragged tunic. His face was wide, his jaw set hard, and his small, dark eyes burned with contempt and cruel purpose. He looked like stone made flesh, brutal and unforgiving.
The man roared a strange word, loud enough to stop the clanging of the tools. All the workers looked at Arjun, their eyes empty.
The man pointed the stick at Arjun's chest. He jabbed it hard into Arjun's ribs, not caring that Arjun was already doubled over.
"V'AAR!" the man bellowed. "MEDITATE!"
Arjun cried out, the pain too sharp, too immediate. The feeling of the cold blade is now replaced by this raw, physical agony.
"AAGH!"