The evening sky hung over the city in a tired shade of grey—not quiet, but not alive either. Streetlights blinked awake in uneven rows. Cars argued with one another through honks and brakes. People streamed past in practiced urgency, faces briefly illuminated, then swallowed again by motion. Everyone was going somewhere. No one was really there.
Divya walked among them.
Her heels clicked steadily against the pavement, the sound precise, controlled. One hand held a structured shoulder bag—black, clean-lined, unmistakably corporate. The other wrapped around a condensation-cold iced Americano. She wore a crisp V-neck shirt beneath a fitted cardigan, wide-legged trousers flowing with each step. Polished. Intentional. Safe.
She looked like someone who belonged.
Fresh out of work, she should have gone home. She usually did. But today, her feet ignored routine and carried her elsewhere—toward the glow rising at the far end of the street. The festival.
For weeks, she had watched it from a distance, its lights staining the evening sky with neon color. For weeks, exhaustion—and a boss who mistook overworking for leadership—had won.
Not tonight.
Crossing into the festival grounds felt like stepping through a veil.
Sound hit first—music overlapping music, voices shouting, laughing, calling. Light followed, flashing and spinning across banners, stalls, towering statues. Cosplayers wove through the crowd like living art, armor gleaming, wigs defying gravity. Vendors barked prices. Cameras flashed. Fiction spilled freely into the open air.
It was chaos.
It was beautiful.
For Divya, who had spent years filling the quiet spaces of her life with stories, it felt like walking inside a dream she'd only ever visited through pages.
She wasn't special. She knew that.
Twenty-three. Employed at one of the country's top firms. An orphan with no record of her birth parents. No close friends—except Gabrielle D'Souza, an extrovert with no respect for personal boundaries who had decided Divya was hers and never let go.
Her life was stable. Predictable. Safe.
And unbearably hollow.
Stories gave her what reality didn't—color, danger, meaning. A whisper of more.
She never imagined one would answer back.
A sudden disturbance rippled through the crowd.
Voices rose. Laughter spiked. Phones lifted.
Divya slowed, her attention pulled toward the center of the commotion.
And then she saw him.
Tall. Unmistakably so. Broad-shouldered, standing wrong among the crowd, like he hadn't learned how to take up space here. Black hair fell slightly too long around his face, parted off-center. Faint freckles dusted his skin. His torso was bare, marked with familiar tattoos. Cargo pants sat low on his hips, a thin silver chain catching the light at his collarbone.
Her breath caught.
No.
He looked exactly like Adrian.
That Adrian.
Her favorite character. Her favorite book. Down to the smallest detail she'd reread obsessively at three in the morning.
It had to be cosplay.
It had to be.
And yet—
He looked furious.
Divya hesitated only a moment before moving toward him. Her rational mind screamed for distance, for logic, for common sense. She ignored it.
Some instincts don't ask permission.
---
Adrian
What—
What was this place?
Adrian stood rigid as the world pressed in on him—too loud, too bright, too wrong. Moments ago, he'd been alone in his chambers, steel singing softly beneath his whetstone. Familiar. Controlled.
Now—
Color assaulted his vision. Voices spoke in tongues he didn't know. Structures rose without magic, without stonework he recognized. The air felt empty. Dead.
No magic.
His chest tightened.
Worse—people were staring at him. Laughing. Pointing.
Some wore twisted reflections of him. His armor. His scars. His name, spoken lightly, mockingly.
When he demanded answers, they laughed harder. Clapped his back. Praised his "commitment."
His pulse roared in his ears.
This wasn't a battlefield. This was humiliation.
Panic crept in, cold and sharp, slipping beneath his anger.
Then a voice cut through the noise.
"Stop!"
He turned.
A woman stood before him, posture straight, eyes sharp. Her clothes were strange, her drink absurd—but there was authority in her stance. Real. Grounded.
For one suspended heartbeat, the chaos dimmed.
"What are you doing?" she said. "You can't act like this. You'll get reported."
Reported?
His confusion hardened into offense. "Do you know who I am?" he snapped. "I have the authority to—"
He raised his hand, instinct guiding him.
"I can burn you to ashes," he said. "Watch."
Nothing happened.
The air remained stubbornly still.
His fingers trembled.
No heat. No response.
No power.
Adrian stared at his hand. Then at her face. Then back again.
Fear, raw and unfamiliar, surged up his spine.
The woman's eye twitched. "You know," she said flatly, "just because you're dressed like Adrian doesn't mean you are him. This isn't a fantasy land. Come back to reality, Mr. LARPing Prince."
She turned away.
Something in him broke.
Before he could think, his hand closed around her wrist—not rough, not threatening. Desperate.
"Wait." His voice cracked. "Please."
The word tasted like shame.
"I don't know where I am," he whispered. "I can't feel my magic. I—" His breath hitched. "I need help."
He had never begged. Not as a knight. Not as a general.
But here, stripped of power and certainty, he was only lost.
And somehow, impossibly, this sharp-tongued stranger felt like the only solid thing left in the world.
Divya froze.
Slowly, she turned back to face him.
Up close, he didn't look like a character.
He looked terrified.
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