Jai was still invisible.
Nothing magical had happened yet. No sudden success. No dramatic discovery. Just the same dusty roads, the same studio gates, the same tired security guards who now recognized him but still waved him away.
"Come tomorrow."
Tomorrow had become the most repeated lie in his life.
Days blurred into each other. Auditions. Rejections. Warehouse shifts. Cheap meals. Sleepless nights. His body was getting stronger, but his hope felt like cloth worn thin.
Still… he didn't quit.
Because quitting meant accepting he was meant to be no one.
---
One evening, after a particularly humiliating audition where the assistant laughed and said,
"Bro, your face is too real. Cinema needs fantasy,"
Jai didn't go to work.
He walked.
No destination. No plan.
Just walking to quiet the storm in his chest.
The city slowly thinned. Buildings became smaller, streetlights fewer, traffic noise fading into distant hum. He didn't even realize how far he had gone until the road turned into a mud path, and the mud path led toward a patch of dense trees he had never noticed before.
A forest.
Right on the edge of the city — yet strangely silent, like the world had forgotten to include it in the map.
Jai would normally never enter a place like that at night.
But that night, he didn't care.
Inside him, something felt… pulled.
---
The air changed the moment he stepped under the trees.
Cooler. Heavier.
The sounds of the city vanished completely, as if someone had muted the world. Even the insects were quiet. Only the crunch of dry leaves under his shoes followed him.
Moonlight slipped through branches in thin silver lines. Shadows moved where nothing moved.
He should've been scared.
But instead, he felt… calm.
Like he had been here before.
---
After walking for what felt like both minutes and hours, he reached a small clearing. In the center stood a massive, twisted tree with roots rising above the ground like frozen snakes.
Jai stopped in front of it.
His heart began to pound.
Not from fear.
From recognition.
He didn't know how, but he knew this moment mattered.
He stepped closer and placed his palm on the rough bark.
The second his skin touched the tree—
The world tilted.
---
Suddenly, he wasn't in the forest anymore.
He was standing in a dusty village street.
Horses tied to wooden posts. Men in turbans whispering in fear. A woman crying near a well. The sky was orange with sunset.
Jai looked down at himself.
Different clothes. Old. Torn. Blood on his sleeve.
"What—?"
A voice echoed behind him.
"So you finally came."
Jai turned.
A man stood there — tall, scarred, eyes burning with quiet madness. The kind of face that would terrify a village.
A villain.
But not from any movie Jai had seen.
This felt… real.
The man looked directly at him and said,
"You know what happens next. You've read this story. You've watched it a hundred times in different forms."
Jai's mind raced.
"I… I don't understand—"
The man stepped closer.
"You actors borrow lives. Wear them for a few hours. Feel fake pain. Speak written anger. But you…"
He touched Jai's chest.
"You carry real scars. That is why you can enter."
Enter what?
Before Jai could ask—
The scene shattered like glass.
---
He was now in a palace corridor. Torches on walls. Guards running. Somewhere, a king was shouting orders.
Jai looked at his reflection in a metal shield nearby.
His face was his.
But his eyes…
Colder. Older. Like they had lived a hundred betrayals.
A whisper filled the air.
"Stories are not just written… they are worlds. Most people watch from outside."
Footsteps thundered toward him. Soldiers.
Another whisper:
"But some… can walk in."
---
Jai stumbled backward—
And slammed into the tree in the forest clearing.
He gasped, falling to his knees, breath shaking.
The forest was back.
Silent. Dark. Still.
But his palm was burning.
He looked at his hand.
For a brief second, faint lines glowed across his skin — like ink forming words in a language he didn't know.
Then they faded.
---
He sat there for a long time, trying to understand.
Hallucination?
Exhaustion?
Madness?
Maybe he had finally broken under pressure.
But then he remembered the details — the dust in the village air, the weight of the palace armor, the emotions that weren't his but felt real.
He hadn't watched a story.
He had been inside one.
Not as a viewer.
As a presence.
---
A cold realization crept in.
All his life, Jai had tried to enter cinema from the outside — auditions, roles, begging for chances.
But what if…
He wasn't meant to enter through a camera?
What if stories themselves had opened a door?
And what if only someone who had suffered enough… who had lost enough… who had the emotional weight of a villain…
Could cross that door?
---
The wind finally stirred the trees, breaking the silence.
Jai slowly stood up.
His fear was still there.
But something else stood beside it now.
Purpose.
He didn't understand his power yet.
Didn't know how to control it.
Didn't know why he was chosen.
But he knew one thing:
He was no longer just a background extra in the real world.
Somewhere beyond reality…
Stories were waiting for him.
And for the first time—
Jai wasn't trying to become part of a script.
The script had reached out to him.