Chapter 2: Breath of Incense
Breath returned before memory.
It arrived as pain—sharp, insistent, shallow. Arjun Menon gasped, his lungs burning as if they had never known air. The world pressed in on him from all sides, heavy and close, and for a terrifying moment he thought the reactor had not killed him at all. That this was survival, and survival hurt.
Then scent overwhelmed sensation.
Incense. Thick, sweet, cloying. Not the sterile tang of laboratories or recycled air, but something older—resin and smoke and crushed flowers. It filled his mouth, his nose, his skull. He coughed, the sound thin and unfamiliar, and the ceiling above him swam into view.
It was not a ceiling.
Wooden beams crossed overhead, dark with age, carved with patterns that refused to settle into anything he recognized. Oil lamps flickered along the walls, their flames unsteady, alive. Shadows danced where no shadows should have been.
Panic surged.
Arjun tried to sit up—and failed.
His body did not respond the way it should have. Muscles protested weakly, unfamiliar in their limits. His limbs felt shorter, lighter, wrong. His heartbeat thundered in his ears, too fast, too loud.
This is hypoxia, his mind insisted. Neural hallucination at death.
Except hallucinations did not hurt like this.
A voice spoke, sharp with alarm.
"Call the physician!"
The words were not English.
They were not any language Arjun Menon should have understood. And yet meaning slid into his mind with terrifying ease, as if the sounds were merely keys turning locks that had always existed.
Another voice followed, softer.
"He's awake. Praise be."
Hands touched his forehead. Cool. Human. Real.
Arjun forced his eyes to focus. Faces hovered above him—brown-skinned, dark-eyed, framed by cloth and jewelry and hair bound in styles he recognized only from textbooks and museum displays. Gold glinted at throats and ears. Silk brushed his cheek.
A woman pressed a cup to his lips. Warm liquid flowed into his mouth, bitter and herbal. He swallowed reflexively.
This isn't possible.
His gaze dropped—to his hands.
They were smaller than they should have been. Unscarred. Young. A faint tremor ran through them, not with age or exhaustion, but with something closer to shock.
"Easy, Highness," the woman said. "You have been ill."
Highness.
The word struck harder than the pain.
Arjun's thoughts scattered, then regrouped with the discipline that had carried him through impossible equations and collapsing systems. He catalogued details automatically.
Clothing: fine cotton, unfamiliar cut.
Temperature: warm, humid.
Light source: flame, not electricity.
Language: intelligible without translation.
Every data point screamed the same conclusion.
This was not a dream.
Memory flooded back—not of the reactor, but of knowledge layered atop knowledge. Trade winds. Spice routes. Colonial maps. Dates he had memorized once for exams and later for rage.
Calicut.
The realization settled over him like a second skin.
No. Impossible.
He squeezed his eyes shut, hard, waiting for darkness to tear itself away. When he opened them again, the lamps still burned. The incense still smoked.
A man stepped forward. Tall. Broad-shouldered. His bearing was practiced authority, restrained by concern.
"My prince," he said, bowing his head slightly. "You frightened us."
Prince.
The word echoed, heavy with implication.
Arjun opened his mouth to speak—and froze.
What name would emerge?
"I…" The voice that came out was not his own. Lighter. Younger. Yet steady. "How long?"
The man smiled with relief. "Three days, Prince Abhinav. The fever broke this morning."
Prince Abhinav.
The name slid into place with horrifying precision. Memories—not Arjun's—rose unbidden: lessons recited, rituals endured, corridors walked a thousand times. They did not overwrite him. They layered themselves alongside his own, perfectly aligned.
Two lives. One mind.
Servants exhaled prayers. Someone wept softly. The room relaxed around him.
Inside, Arjun Menon felt the ground give way.
He lay back against the cushions, eyes fixed on the carved beams above, and understood the truth with cold clarity.
He had not been spared.
He had been sent.
And somewhere beyond these walls—beyond incense and silk and whispered devotion—history waited for him to make his first mistake.