The world believed they were murderers.
Six teenagers--four boys and two girls--vanished the night a school janitor was found dead. Everyone whispered they had fled to Canada to escape justice.
But the truth was stranger.
The six had gone on a holiday trip, sailing by ship. Somewhere in the middle of the journey, they were taken. Abducted. When they woke, they were inside a massive mansion, filled with every facility imaginable.
Two strangers already lived there. They welcomed the teens warmly, gave them food and luxuries, and offered only one condition: no one must step outside.
At first, the teens obeyed. The house felt like paradise. But soon, small details gnawed at them--the same clouds looping overhead, the faint hum of walls, streets outside that looked normal yet too symmetrical. On one road, the same tree appeared twice. The air had no scent. Everything was staged.
It was too perfect. Too false.
Suspicion grew. The teens tested the rules, disturbing their mysterious hosts. At first nothing happened, but soon the hosts began watching one boy in particular--the smartest among them. The one piecing the puzzle together.
Then, one night, he was gone.
He awoke strapped to a chair in a vast chamber. All around, distorted humanoid creatures slurped black tofu-like soup. On the wall opposite hung a portrait of six towering alien figures. Beside it, a mutilated human body was nailed like a trophy.
Beneath the portrait glowed holograms--two Earths side by side. One was their world, Earth Prime. The other was a half-finished replica, Earth Mirror, still under construction.
The doors opened. Guards dragged him before a Watcher officer. With him came a woman--Japanese, human, sharp-eyed, and composed. She looked at the officer, then at the boy, and declared:
"You can build a thousand Mirror Earths, but none will ever replace the Prime."
A gunshot echoed. She fell dead instantly.
The boy's blood ran cold. He was not in a house, nor on Earth, but in the headquarters of beings far greater--The Watchers.
They tortured him, demanding answers he did not have. His body broke, burned, and bled--yet every wound healed. They grew unsettled. Though he groaned in agony, he never begged. He felt pain, but never broke.
That was because, long ago, some instinct had driven him to modify his body--to become nearly invincible. He had not erased his emotions, for without them, he would be no more than a machine.
Days later, the Watchers changed tactics. They brought a weak, terrified woman into the chamber, bruised and trembling. They called her his wife.
At first, he didn't recognize her. But when they tortured her instead, something deep within him shattered. Memories long buried surged back--visions of another life, of betrayal, of love.
He remembered.
He was not just a boy. He was the Seventh Human, the most intelligent being the galaxy had ever known. Out of jealousy, the Watchers had turned his allies and his kind against him. He foresaw this, prepared his body, and fled. But while escaping toward Earth at faster-than-light speed, he was struck down. He crashed, losing his memory. By Earth's timeline, he awoke as a teenager of fifteen--though in truth, he was centuries old.
Now, as his wife screamed, his true self awakened.
With a roar that shook the chamber, he broke free of his restraints. His power ignited. Guards fell instantly. The six Watcher masterminds emerged, but he tore through them, ending their godlike reign in blood and ruin.
Silence followed. His wife clung to him weakly as the holograms of Earth Prime and Earth Mirror flickered--the Prime pulsing with life, the Mirror still unfinished.
But then the shadows shifted.
A deeper voice, colder than any he had heard, filled the air:
"You think you've remembered who you are," it said. "But you've only remembered what I allowed you to."
The six masterminds had never been the true rulers.
Behind them all was one greater being--the Puppet Master.
And the real war--for both Earths--was only just beginning.