"Truth often arrives disguised as confusion, asking to be followed before it's understood."
The road east wound like a vein through the hills, narrow and old, beaten down by centuries of feet that no one in River moor remembered. It wasn't a road people used anymore. Too quiet. Too forgotten. The kind of path elders warned kids away from with stories half-meant as jokes, half-meant as the kind of warnings no one writes down because written warnings become real.
Aarav had never walked it.
Now he couldn't shake the feeling that it had been waiting for him.
Not a path he found.
A path that noticed him.
The stranger led them with steady steps, staff tapping lightly in the dirt. His gait was smooth, unhurried, but purposeful—like someone walking toward an answer he'd seen a hundred times. He didn't look back. Didn't explain anything. Just moved with the grim calm of someone who had already survived whatever they were heading toward.
Aarav hated that. It made him feel like he was catching up to his own life, chasing a version of himself hidden somewhere up the road.
Meera walked beside him, notebook forgotten at her side. The wind tugged at the loose pages, but she didn't bother securing them. Her eyes stayed fixed on the stranger, dissecting every movement, measuring the cadence of his steps, searching for patterns in the way he held silence. She didn't trust people who used mystery as a personality. Secrets were fine—everyone had secrets—but people who wielded them like currency? Those were dangerous.
Amar stayed close too, muscles coiled, every step controlled. His eyes kept sweeping the horizon, the tree line, the dips of the land, mapping exits and threats like second nature. He wasn't just watching the stranger—he was watching the world itself.
The world felt off.
And Aarav wasn't imagining it.
A faint shimmer drifted along the edge of the fields. Ripples in the air, like heat rising from stone, even though morning was still cool. They slid across the grass like thin waves of distortion, flickering at the border of sight. Meera didn't notice yet. Amar definitely didn't.
Aarav did.
Every time the shimmer bent the air, the hum inside his chest responded—soft at first, then sharper, like something inside him was tuning itself.
A bird swooped low overhead, then veered off abruptly, wings fluttering as if startled by something unseen. Even the animals felt it.
They walked for nearly an hour. The landscape shifted slowly, fields giving way to patches of wild brush and scattered stones. The air grew warmer even though the sun hadn't climbed much higher. Strange pockets of heat brushed against Aarav' s skin, then vanished.
Only after another long stretch of silence did the stranger finally speak.
"You sense it more clearly today," he said without turning around.
Aarav stiffened. "Sense what?"
"The imbalance," the stranger answered. "The shift beneath the skin of the world."
"That's not an answer," Meera shot back. "Try again, without riddles."
The man paused mid-step, looking at her with a faint, tired smile. A smile that carried weight, like he'd seen her defiance before in others long gone. "You always push. Good. You'll need that."
Meera blinked. "I don't even know you."
"Yet your questions know me," he said. "You gather truths even when you're not chasing them."
His tone wasn't mocking. If anything, it sounded like a recognition she didn't ask for.
Aarav stepped forward. "Stop talking around it. What's happening?"
Instead of answering, the stranger lifted his staff and pointed toward the horizon.
Aarav followed the gesture—and froze.
Smoke.
A thin column rising from the direction of High crest Roadway. Not farm smoke. Not hearth smoke. Darker. Bitterer. Wrong. The kind of smoke born from something breaking, not burning.
Amar cursed under his breath. "That's too far for an accident."
Meera whispered, "And too early in the day for a controlled burn."
The stranger lowered his staff. "The first fractures begin at the edges. Always at the edges."
Aarav felt a cold weight settle in his stomach. "You knew this would happen."
"Yes."
"And you didn't warn anyone?"
"I'm warning you."
"That's not good enough," Aarav snapped.
The stranger turned fully, meeting Aarav' s anger head-on. There was no challenge in his stare. No threat. Just expectation, like he'd been waiting for this reaction.
"You think you want the whole truth," he said quietly. "You think you're ready for it. You're not."
Aarav's fists tightened. "Try me."
A long silence stretched. The wind rustled through the grass. Somewhere deep in the hills a distant flock of birds took off all at once, scattering across the sky.
The stranger sighed. "Very well."
He tapped his staff into the ground.
Once.
A pulse rippled outward—visible, unmistakable—like a ring spreading across water. The dirt under their feet quivered. The air around them shimmered as if it had been struck from the inside.
Meera gasped. Amar raised his knife in reflex. Aarav staggered backward as the hum inside him surged so violently he nearly dropped to his knees.
The air around them shivered.
Colors bent. Sound warped. The world seemed to twist inside a thin membrane of itself, stretching, trembling, then snapping back as though reality had been briefly replaced with something truer.
Aarav's breath hitched. His mind scrambled for words that didn't exist.
"What… was that?"
The stranger watched him carefully. "The truth finding you."
"That wasn't—" Aarav swallowed. "That wasn't real."
"It was more real than anything you've known."
"Explain it," Meera demanded, voice trembling but fierce.
The stranger nodded slowly.
"Fine."
He pointed at Aarav.
"It starts with him."
Meera's head whipped toward Aarav. Amar moved instinctively in front of him, body angled like a shield, but Aarav stepped past him, drawn forward by something deeper than fear.
"What did you mean?" Aarav asked. "What starts with me?"
The man's voice dropped to something quiet, but heavy enough to reshape the air.
"The world listens to you," he said. "It always has. That resonance you feel? That pressure in your chest when the world shifts? It isn't imagination. It isn't an illness. It's not fear."
He paused.
"It's the way reality hums around an Anchor."
Aarav stared at him, words evaporating.
"Anchor?" His voice was barely a whisper. "What does that mean?"
Meera's mind raced visibly. "Anchor of what?"
The stranger looked between them, expression grim, almost regretful.
"Of the layer beneath this one," he said. "Of the part of the world that reacts to emotion, memory, and truth. You are tied to it. Whether you want it or not."
Aarav barely heard the rest.
The world tilted.
The hum in his chest roared like a second heartbeat waking from a long sleep.
Anchor.
The word settled into him like something ancient stretching its limbs.
Amar grabbed his shoulder. "Aarav. Breathe."
Aarav tried. The air felt thin, like the space around him wasn't space anymore. Like it was bending toward him.
The stranger approached slowly, gently. "This is only the beginning. But you need to hear this part now. Everything that's coming—the fractures, the eyes watching, the ancient forces waking—they're moving because you are."
Aarav's voice cracked. "Why me?"
The stranger's gaze softened with something like sorrow. "Because the world doesn't choose gently."
Aarav's knees nearly buckled. Meera stepped to his side, steadying him. Amar braced at his back.
The stranger tapped his staff once more.
"We reach the truth soon," he said. "But understand this—your life is about to stop being small."
The road ahead shimmered again, brighter this time.
Aarav didn't look away.
He couldn't.
The world wasn't asking him to wake up anymore.
It was demanding it.
"He didn't solve anything, but the world adjusted as if he had."