I didn't scream.
Not because I wasn't terrified, but because something deeper than fear settled in me. Like my soul had braced for this all along. Like part of me expected this moment to arrive the second I stepped back into the past.
The whisper came again.
Faint. Careful.
"Ruhan..."
From the hallway? The mirror? My own head?
I couldn't tell.
But I followed it.
Because that's what you do when a version of yourself is out there, untangling truths you buried in the name of growing up.
The torchlight flickered.
I tightened my grip and walked toward the end of the hall, past the photos on the wall. One caught my eye: a family photo. Mom, Dad, me, and—
Wait.
My brother wasn't in it.
He had always been in that photo. I remembered him in that photo.
I turned to look again.
Still missing.
No. Not missing.
Erased.
Like he had never been part of this house.
Like time itself was unraveling, one memory at a time.
I reached the old storeroom again.
I didn't unlock it.
It was already open.
The lock lay on the floor, shattered clean down the middle.
Inside, the notebook had a new page waiting.
"Some truths rewrite memory. Others erase it."
"He's almost gone. Do not forget him."
My heart pounded harder than it should. I whispered my brother's name aloud, like trying to anchor it in the world:
"Zaid."
The walls didn't echo it.
The house didn't respond.
I said it again.
This time, a quiet sob followed from behind me.
I turned.
Nothing.
But in the air, I could feel him. The kind of presence you never mistake — the warmth, the aura of someone you shared childhood with.
I ran back to my room, dug into every drawer, every dusty album, every report card, every corner where his name might be printed.
Nothing.
He was being erased.
Not from the present — from the past. From everything.
Like he never existed.
Except in my memory.
And now, maybe even that was fading.
I sat at my desk, numb, trembling.
If this was some curse or glitch in time, I didn't know how to fight it. But I knew the cost now. First my friend. Now my brother.
And I knew the next to go wouldn't be random.
Because the mirror had changed again.
New words.
Scrawled in backwards script so only I could read them:
"You are not the original."
I stumbled backward.
Because maybe this wasn't my second chance after all.
Maybe I wasn't the one given it.
Maybe I was just borrowing someone else's life.
And they wanted it back.