The wind smelled different.
Soft, sweet, and humming — like sunlight poured through silver.Ayan's lungs filled with it before his mind even realized he was breathing again.
He opened his eyes.
Two suns floated in the sky.One gold, one pale blue — rising together over a valley of silver grass that shimmered as if each blade carried a heartbeat. For a long moment, Ayan just stared, mind blank, heart still.
This… isn't real. I'm dead.
He remembered the last moments — the empty apartment, the cold floor, the hum of the ceiling fan.He had closed his eyes, thinking it would be quiet afterward.
So why could he feel the wind?Why could he hear birds singing in two different tones, as if echoing from parallel skies?
He tried to sit up, but pain shot through his chest — sharp, electric. His vision blurred, and his hands... they weren't his.Smaller. Younger. Pale skin, faint scars across the knuckles.
"Whose body… is this?"
He stumbled to a nearby pond, its surface like liquid glass. The reflection staring back wasn't the weary face of a 26-year-old man.It was a boy — maybe fifteen. Black hair tangled with dirt. Eyes faintly glowing gold.
Then came the whisper — soft, almost like static in his mind.
Kael.
The name echoed through him like it belonged there all along.His pulse raced. His thoughts spiraled.
I… I'm not Ayan anymore?No — I am. I remember everything.The interviews. The failures. The note I left on the desk…
The memory hit him like a wave — and then faded, leaving only confusion and the soft hum beneath his skin.
The air around him shimmered faintly. Threads of light curled toward his body — strands of something invisible but alive. The silver grass began to wilt where he stood.
"What… what's happening to me?"
He reached out instinctively — and the world reacted.The light snapped toward his hand, pulled into him like water down a drain. His veins burned. The air warped.
A small bird nearby gave a sharp cry — and fell from the sky, motionless.
Ayan—no, Kael—stumbled backward, trembling.The shimmering light that had filled the valley was gone, leaving the air dry and thin.
Footsteps echoed behind him. He turned.
A woman in a brown cloak was standing at the edge of the meadow, clutching a wooden staff. Her eyes widened when she saw him — not with relief, but horror.
"By the gods… your core— it's consuming the aether."
"The what?" Kael rasped, voice hoarse.
She raised her staff, panic trembling in her fingers. "Stay back, boy! That power— it's unstable! You'll draw everything in!"
"Wait— I don't understand—"
But before he could finish, his chest flared with light.A pulse of energy burst outward, rippling the air like heat. The woman screamed, shielding her face as her staff cracked and splintered.
Kael collapsed, gasping.The last thing he saw was the twin suns fading into a blur of gold and blue.
And somewhere, deep inside the void of his fractured core…a voice whispered — not from outside, but within.
"You were not meant to die, Ayan. But you were never meant to live as Kael, either."
Darkness swallowed him whole.