My hand hovered over the drawer. Yeah, it was called that. I think? It's been a long time since I last saw this place, since I'd thought in terms of drawers and tables and all the mundane objects that filled ordinary lives.
The movement felt both alien and instinctual, as if my body remembered a path my mind had long ago abandoned. My fingers traced the edge of the handle—cheap plastic made to look like wood, the kind of thing you'd find in furniture that came with an instruction manual and too many screws.
I opened it. Inside I found multiple items that submerged me in a wave of nostalgia so strong it was almost physical. A slight smile stretched my cheeks as I rummaged through the contents. Strange how objects could hold so much weight, so much history compressed into simple shapes and textures.
The first thing I took was a picture. Me, my mom, and dad.
We were standing in front of some tourist attraction—a waterfall, maybe? The details were fuzzy, but our faces were clear. Mom with her arm around my shoulders, dad making some goofy face at the camera, and me looking uncomfortable but trying to smile. I looked so young. So normal. So unaware of what was coming.
My finger slightly caressed the picture as memories of my family back in Ohio surfaced. Mom and her eternal maternal worry—the way she'd fret over everything from whether I was eating enough vegetables to whether I was making friends at school. I remember when I moved to New York to continue my studies, she had called me every afternoon to check up on me. Every single day. "Just to hear your voice, sweetie."
Tears welled up in my eyes as they rolled down my cheeks and fell to the floor. I might have been a powerful being, a slayer of dragons, a guardian of realms who had stood against cosmic forces that could unmake reality itself.
But in this moment, I was just a son who had been lost for centuries, finally finding his way home. Throughout my life on Nemucury, my worst fear hadn't been death or defeat or even the eternal torment Exheltor promised. It had been forgetting her face. Forgetting the sound of her voice. Forgetting that I'd ever been anything other than a weapon shaped by necessity and war.
By the time I was strong enough to access the deeper recesses of my brain and conjure up images of my past life, they were already faded to an unrecognizable state, like photographs that had been dumped in water and left there for decades. I tried everything. I tried every magic spell I could think of, every mental technique, every method of memory preservation and recall. I even sought out the Archive Keepers of the Eternal Library, beings who specialized in preserving knowledge across eons.
Nothing worked. Whatever force had brought me to Nemucury had done more than just transport my body. It had begun the slow process of erasing who I used to be, making room for who I needed to become.
But I couldn't come back. No matter what I did, no matter how powerful I became, I couldn't find the path home. Until now.
I carefully deposited the picture on the table, treating it like the precious artifact it was. Then I reached for something else in the drawer—my phone.
It was an older model, the kind that was already outdated when I'd bought it. I turned it around in my hand until I located the power button and pressed it. The screen flickered to life with a sound that was purely electronic and completely familiar.
What greeted me was a Kyubi-themed wallpaper. Right. I was a huge fan of that manga. What was it called? Naruto, that was it. The memories were coming back in pieces, like water finding cracks in a dam. I'd been obsessed with it, spending hours reading forums and theories about what would happen next.
I would have to look all of it up later to refresh my memories. So much of who I used to be felt distant now, viewed through the lens of centuries and cosmic responsibility.
I looked at the date.
12 August, 2025.
My eyes widened slightly. This was it. This was the exact same day it happened. I remember now—I'd stayed up late reading manga, fallen asleep at my desk, and then... then I'd woken up somewhere else entirely. In a place where dragons were real and magic flowed through everything like blood through veins.
Have I been returned to my original world at the exact same timeline I left it? Down to the minute? This couldn't be an illusion. It was too intricate, too detailed, too painfully real to be conjured up by my brain or anyone else's. My memories of this place were fuzzy at best after so many years. An illusion would have been full of inconsistencies, gaps, details that didn't quite match reality.
But this... this was perfect. Right down to the crack in the phone screen that I'd gotten when I dropped it running for the bus.
I pressed the green icon with an amount of surprising eagerness. My thumb moved automatically to the contacts app, muscle memory from a life I'd almost forgotten. I navigated through the list and paused breathlessly at one name.
Mommy ❤️.
My heartbeat accelerated as my breathing became increasingly heavy. Five hundred and fifty-seven years. That's how long it had been since I'd seen that name, since I'd had the option to just... call her. Like it was nothing. Like crossing the void between worlds was as simple as pressing a button.
My thumb hovered over the call button. What would I even say? How do you explain centuries of absence in a conversation? How do you tell your mother that her seventeen-year-old son had become something else entirely, had fought wars across dimensions, had blood on his hands that would never wash clean?
I pressed call.
The phone rang. Once. Twice. Each ring felt like an eternity.
"Alex. You better have a good reason for calling at this hour. Or else I will fly to New York first thing in the morning and smack you around silly."
That voice. That exact same voice I had longed to hear for so long, had tried desperately to remember through the haze of years and violence and transformation. I had forgotten how it felt to hear someone say my name—my real name—with such casual, familiar irritation. For the first time in centuries, I was at a loss for words.
Alex. That's who I used to be. Alexander Miller. Alex to friends, sweetie to mom, nerd to everyone else.
After commanding armies and treating with gods, negotiating with cosmic entities and staring down the architects of reality itself, the voice that truly humbles you is still that of your mother asking why you're calling at six in the morning.
"Alex? You there?"
I heard her shifting on the other end of the line, probably sitting up in bed, automatically switching from annoyance to concern the way only mothers can.
"Sweety. Talk to me! Are you alright?"
"Mo-m," I almost choked on the word. My voice was heavy with centuries of nostalgia and longing, with grief I'd never allowed myself to fully feel.
"Alex! What's happening? Are you sick? Do you need me to come?" And there it was, her protective maternal instinct kicking in at the first sign that something might be wrong with her baby. Some things never changed, no matter how much time passed or how far you traveled.
"Mom. I—I missed you, Mom," I finally said. The simplest, most profound truth in any universe.
Silence stretched between us. I could almost see her frowning, trying to figure out what was wrong, what had prompted this call, this tone, this raw emotion in my voice.
She audibly sighed. "Alex! Are you drunk right now? Don't even try to lie to me, sweetie."
Of course she'd think that. What else would explain her college-aged son calling before dawn just to say he missed her? I almost laughed at the mundane assumption. If only it were that simple.
"Wh-at? N-o. I am not drunk, mom. I just wanted to hear your voice." I have crossed the gulfs between worlds to hear it.
"Couldn't you... I don't know, wait till normal hours to call? I was worried sick wondering why you had called at such an hour." She was using her stern voice, but I could hear the underlying relief that I wasn't in jail or the hospital or some other crisis that required early-morning phone calls.
"Uh... Sorry, mom!" The apology came automatically, a reflex from childhood. Some responses were apparently hardwired too deep to change.
"Whatever." She sighed again, but softer this time. "In the future, at least respond faster. I thought something happened when you didn't talk right away."
"Yeah, sorry... I was... distracted." Distracted by the collapse of my entire reality and the discovery that everything I thought I knew about existence was wrong.
"Well, alright. Do you need anything?"
"No. Thanks, mom. I just wanted to check in on you." I wanted to hear you say my name. I wanted proof that this life, this ordinary existence, had been real once.
"Awwww... Love you too, sweetie. Well, I am gonna go and resume my... sleep." She chuckled, that warm sound I remembered from bedtime stories and scraped knees and all the small dramas of childhood.
"Yep. Sweet dreams and love you, mom."
The line went dead with a soft beep.
I cut off the call and put the phone down on the table. I released a long sigh I didn't know I was even holding. This was real. She was real. The love in her voice, the casual irritation, the immediate concern—all of it exactly as I remembered.
I missed this. The simplicity of it. The love, uncomplicated by cosmic strife or ancient prophecies or the weight of entire civilizations depending on your decisions. Just a mother and son, connected across distance by nothing more miraculous than radio waves and shared affection.
Knock! Knock! Knock!
Before I could rummage further in the drawer, before I could ground myself fully in this return to normalcy, a knocking sounded from my apartment door. Sharp, authoritative raps that cut through the morning quiet.
I looked at it confusedly. Who could it possibly be at this hour? I glanced at the time on my phone.
6:27 AM.
I frowned slightly as I got up. My movement was automatically silent—old habits from centuries of warfare—but my posture was all wrong. My shoulders wanted to be set back in the confident bearing of someone accustomed to command. My stride wanted to be the measured pace of someone who expected others to step aside.
I forced the slouch of Alex Miller back into my spine, remembered how to shuffle instead of march, how to look uncertain instead of dangerous. It was harder than it should have been, like trying to fit into clothes that had shrunk.
I looked through the peephole and my frown deepened. Two men in blue uniforms stood in the hallway. They looked alert, ready, professional. They were wearing bulletproof vests—I recognized the configuration from my scattered memories of this world's technology and customs.
Police officers. People in charge of upholding the law in a world where the greatest threats were other people instead of cosmic horrors or interdimensional tyrants.
Why were they at my door, though? Did I do something wrong? And then it hit me like a physical blow. The screams. The rage. The thrashing around and crying. Of course someone had heard that. Of course they'd called the authorities.
In a world without magic or monsters, a young man screaming about feeding someone their entrails would sound like a clear sign of mental breakdown or worse. Great. Just perfect. My first morning back in reality and I'm already dealing with law enforcement.
How was I going to explain this in a way that didn't involve psychiatric holds or criminal charges?
Knock! Knock! Knock!
They knocked again, more insistently this time. One of them spoke up, his voice carrying the authority of someone accustomed to being obeyed.
"New York Police! Open up, please."
Yeah, right. Better not give them any reason to escalate this situation. In my experience with authority figures—albeit in very different contexts—the key was to appear cooperative while revealing as little as possible. I waited a couple of seconds before opening the door. Not wide enough as to seem eager, nor too narrow as to appear suspicious. Just the cautious opening of someone who'd been woken by unexpected visitors.
"Hi there, sir. I hope we are not bothering you." The lead officer was middle-aged, professional, with the kind of practiced neutral expression that probably came from years of dealing with every kind of human drama imaginable.
Let them take the initiative. State the purpose of their visit. In situations like this, when you're the first one to speak, you almost always end up sounding guilty of something, even if you haven't done anything wrong.
"Uh... Well, I mean it's kinda early. But how can I help you?" I stated the obvious, put the mild inconvenience back on them. If this had been the middle of the day, I might have said something else. But six-thirty in the morning was objectively an unusual time for social calls.
They looked at each other—a quick, professional exchange that probably meant something in cop code. Then the lead officer continued.
"Sorry about that. We received a call about thirty minutes earlier. Concerned neighbor. They heard some commotion coming from this apartment. Do you live alone?"
A concerned neighbor. Of course. In a building this old, with walls this thin, my morning breakdown would have been audible to anyone paying attention. I wondered which neighbor it was—the graphic designer who kept weird hours, or maybe the old lady who seemed to hear everything that happened in the hallway.
"Yeah, I live alone. Well, about that, it's silly really. I was playing this new frustrating game. Had an episode of rage. Usual gamer stuff." The lie came easily, drawing on memories of who Alex Miller had been, what would sound plausible to adults trying to understand the weird behavior of young men.
It was plausible enough. Though one would wonder why someone was having a gaming rage session at dawn. But that was a minor inconsistency, not the kind of thing that would lead to deeper investigation.
They looked at me skeptically. The younger officer—probably in his thirties, with the alert expression of someone still taking the job seriously—tilted his head slightly.
"Right. Can we check the apartment real quick, if you don't mind of course?"
Of course they wanted to look around. Standard procedure for wellness checks, probably. I could refuse—even with my fragmented memories of this world's legal system, I was pretty sure of that. But refusing would drag this out, make it much more complicated than it needed to be, probably result in more questions and more attention.
And I'd rather not find out the hard way what the policing protocols of this world were when dealing with potentially unstable individuals.
"Well, not really. Come in."
They entered the apartment with the casual professionalism of people who did this regularly. I had nothing to hide, after all. Unless Alex Miller had been involved in something illegal five hundred years ago, there was no reason to be nervous.
The apartment was nothing grand. Just a two-room setup—a bathroom and a living room that doubled as a bedroom. Simple layout, simple life, no hidden rooms or concealed anything that might raise eyebrows.
They did a quick but thorough check-up. Professional, efficient, probably routine for them. As one officer bent down to look under the bed, my right hand twitched almost imperceptibly. The fingers curled slightly, muscle memory trying to form a combat sigil or reach for a sword hilt that wasn't there.
I caught the motion and forced my hand to relax, shoving Nylka'htar's instincts back down into whatever dark corner of my mind they'd emerged from. These weren't enemy scouts or potential threats. They were just people doing their jobs, making sure a citizen wasn't in danger.
After a couple of minutes, they reconvened near the door. I stood there trying to look appropriately sheepish—the expression of someone embarrassed about their neighbor calling the cops over a gaming session.
"Well. Everything seems to be in order, sir," the lead officer said. His tone had relaxed slightly, the professional wariness replaced by the mild annoyance of someone whose time had been wasted by a false alarm.
"Yeah. I just had a particularly frustrating gaming session," I said, chuckling slightly. The sound felt foreign in my throat, like I was remembering how to perform normalcy rather than actually being normal.
"Right. Try to keep it down in the future. Disturbing the neighborhood is punishable by law, so we'll leave with just a warning."
"Yeah, I will. Sorry about that."
"No worries. Take care." And just like that, they were gone, their heavy footsteps echoing down the hallway as they moved on to whatever the next call would bring.
I closed the door and sighed audibly, the tension draining from my shoulders like water. From now on, I'd have to be more careful about my reactions to this new reality. Or should I say my old reality? Though who could blame me for losing my composure? I had slowly, gradually forgotten about this place entirely as the years passed on Nemucury. The details had faded, replaced by more immediate concerns like staying alive and protecting entire civilizations from cosmic threats.
Now I found myself suddenly back here, in such an abrupt manner too. After all, I clearly remembered fighting with Exheltor in that godforsaken dimension of his, remembered the spell he was weaving, the way reality had begun to crack around the edges...
As I closed the door on the officers—the local enforcers of this peaceful, mundane world—the silence they left behind felt different. It wasn't the silence after battle, heavy with the grim satisfaction of survival and victory. This silence was empty, ordinary, safe in a way I'd almost forgotten was possible.
And in that emptiness, my thoughts turned inevitably to my companions. To Kaelen's loud laughter echoing through grand halls after successful campaigns. To Lyra's quiet strength at my side during desperate watches, her presence a steady anchor when the cosmos seemed intent on driving us all mad.
What would they think of their commander now, explaining himself to town guards over a noise complaint? The sheer, absurd whiplash of it was enough to make my head spin. From negotiating with beings that existed outside normal space-time to apologizing for disturbing the neighbors.
I wondered what had happened there, in that other world. Was it frozen in time, like this world seemed to have been while I was gone? Were my companions still fighting the war I'd been pulled away from? Or had everything simply... stopped? The thought of Kaelen and Lyra facing whatever came next without me was almost unbearable.
Was that all a dream that I'd just woken up from? I chuckled at that stupid thought, but the humor was hollow. That couldn't have been a dream. I clearly remembered every waking hour, every fight, every adventure, every person I'd ever encountered. The weight of command, the exhaustion after battles that lasted days, the satisfaction of protecting entire worlds from annihilation.
The thought terrified me to the core. Imagine waking up from a vivid dream where you'd won the lottery, where you'd been important, where you'd mattered on a cosmic scale, only to realize it was all just your mind playing tricks on you? That your life was exactly as small and ordinary as it had always been?
The memories felt too real, too textured, too painful and glorious to be anything but genuine experience. Yet what proof did I have? Nothing but the scars on a soul that now resided in a body that had never seen a day of real battle.
The possibility that it had all been an elaborate fantasy, a five-century-long delusion I'd concocted to escape this mediocre life, was a special kind of hell. It would mean everything I'd fought for, everyone I'd loved and lost, every sacrifice I'd made and witnessed... was nothing. Less than nothing.
I looked down at my soft, unchapped hands. No calluses from gripping weapons. No scars from claws or spell-burn or the thousand small injuries that came with a life of constant conflict. Only the faint memory of pain that had felt so real just an hour ago.
But I had performed magic. I had healed my broken hand with actual, functional magic. That wasn't imagination or delusion. That had been real power flowing through real channels, following real laws of metaphysics that this world supposedly didn't have.
That could mean only one thing: both worlds were real. Somehow, impossibly, I existed in both. Which raised the question...
Could I still perform magic here?