Rachiyata Raghuvanshi was seventeen years old when he realized that no matter how hard he tried, he would never be just another student.
On paper, his life looked ordinary enough.
A Class 12 student in Mumbai, attending a junior college that smelled of chalk dust and stress, riding overcrowded local trains every morning, and pretending that competitive exams didn't already feel like a slow execution. His days were filled with lectures, revision schedules, and teachers who spoke about "the future" as if it were a single narrow road everyone had to squeeze onto.
But his name never let him disappear.
Raghuvanshi.
Teachers hesitated when they read it aloud. Classmates whispered, sometimes with curiosity, sometimes with envy. A few tried too hard to be friendly. Others avoided him altogether.
Because Rachiyata Raghuvanshi was the son of Anaya Raghuvanshi.
A woman whose stories had rewritten what endings were allowed to look like.
Rachit—because he preferred the shorter version—didn't look like the child of a literary legend. He wasn't dramatic, didn't chase attention, and didn't talk much unless he had something worth saying. He observed more than he spoke, noticed patterns others ignored, and treated most situations like puzzles waiting to be solved.
His mother's greatest work, Rech: The End of the World, was not just famous.
It was historic.
Listed among the most popular and influential stories in the world, it had crossed languages, cultures, and formats. Critics argued about its philosophy. Fans fought endless wars over its morality. Entire online communities existed just to analyze its symbolism.
The most discussed arc was Asura Mahadipa.
A land ruled by Asuras—ancient beings born from hatred, sacrifice, and forgotten promises. They weren't evil tyrants or monsters to be slain. They were the natural conclusion of worlds that had rotted from the inside.
In Rech, the protagonist didn't defeat the Asuras through power.
He endured them.
And when the world finally ended, it did so without hope, resurrection, or miracle.
Readers begged for an alternate ending.
Anaya Raghuvanshi refused.
"If I change the ending," she had said once,
"then everything before it becomes a lie."
Two years later, she died in a car accident.
No foreshadowing. No meaning.
Just an abrupt full stop.
Rachit learned then that real life was crueler than fiction.
The night everything changed, Mumbai was unusually quiet.
Rain slid down the apartment windows as Rachit sat alone at the dining table. His textbooks were open, but his eyes weren't on them. Outside, the city lights blurred into something distant and unreal.
In his hand was a pen.
Black. Scratched. Familiar.
Srijana.
His mother's pen.
She had written Rech: The End of the World with it—every Asura, every fallen city, every irreversible choice. It was the closest thing he had to proof that she had once been real.
Rachit rolled the pen between his fingers.
"…You really trusted ink more than people," he muttered.
The apartment felt heavier at night. During the day, routine kept the grief quiet. At night, silence invited it back.
He leaned back and stared at the ceiling.
If you were still alive, he thought, would you be watching this version of me… or rewriting it?
The air changed.
Not violently.
Subtly.
The lights flickered.
Rachit straightened.
"…That's not normal."
The sound of rain vanished.
Then the table vanished.
Then Mumbai vanished.
Reality folded inward like a page being turned.
When the sensation stopped, Rachit was standing on an endless pale plane beneath a sky filled with drifting letters, broken sentences, and dissolving symbols.
He inhaled slowly.
Then again.
"Okay," he said quietly. "This is either a hallucination or a genre shift."
He wasn't alone.
Figures began appearing around him—men and women of different ages and appearances, some in modern clothes, others dressed in ways that didn't belong to any time he recognized.
Confusion exploded instantly.
"Where the hell are we?!"
"Is this some kind of joke?!"
"Who did this?!"
Rachit counted automatically.
…ninety-six. Ninety-seven. Ninety-eight. Ninety-nine. One hundred.
A massive circular structure rose from the ground—a colossal arena formed from glowing text. Its tiers were carved with living words that rewrote themselves endlessly.
Above it burned a title:
TOURNAMENT OF AUTHORS
Before anyone could process that, the space itself seemed to observe them.
A presence manifested.
It did not walk or descend.
It simply was.
A figure layered with overlapping silhouettes, its form impossible to fix, eyes reflecting countless scenes—wars, births, deaths, endings.
When it spoke, the sound reached everyone at once.
"You have been summoned."
The chaos froze.
Every voice died mid-shout.
"I am an Observer."
Rachit didn't move.
He watched.
Listened.
Analyzed.
"All one hundred of you are authors," the Observer continued.
"Your stories have influenced your respective worlds."
Murmurs spread through the crowd.
Authors.
Stories.
Rachit's fingers tightened slightly around Srijana.
"This space exists beyond your realities," the Observer said.
"It was created to determine which narrative deserves continuation."
The words burned into the air above the arena:
ONLY ONE STORY MAY CONTINUE
A woman staggered back.
"No… that's insane."
"The rest will be erased."
Silence followed.
Not the calm kind.
The suffocating kind.
Rachit felt it then—not fear, but recognition.
This is her logic, he thought.
Unkind. Honest. Absolute.
"You will participate in the Tournament of Authors," the Observer said.
"Your understanding of narrative, choice, and consequence will determine survival."
Someone screamed.
Someone laughed hysterically.
Rachit remained still.
One hundred authors.
One ending.
So this was the scale his mother had written for.
The Observer's gaze passed over them.
"The first event will begin shortly."
A countdown ignited above the arena.
Rachit looked at the others—his rivals, his obstacles, his mirrors.
Then he looked down at the pen in his hand.
"…Figures," he murmured under his breath.
"You always did believe endings mattered more than beginnings."
The arena hummed.
And the world began to watch them back