Toviro looked at the person sitting up in the bed.
Slowly, he said, "Who are you?"
The person blinked. The question didn't make sense at first. He tried to fit it into something familiar, and couldn't. Then he said, "What do you mean, who am I? Who are you?"
But as the words came out, his hand went to his throat.
"My voice—" He stopped.
It was not his voice. Not the one he remembered. It was lower. Fuller. It came from somewhere deeper in his chest than it used to.
His eyes dropped to his hands.
He raised them in front of his face and looked at them the way you look at something that should be familiar but is not.
These weren't a child's hands anymore. The fingers were longer. The knuckles were more pronounced. The skin was the same, but everything underneath had changed.
"What happened to me?" he said.
Around the room, the others were discovering the same thing.
Aryan sat upright and grabbed his own arm.
He pulled up his sleeve and stared at it. The arm was thicker than it had been this morning.
The muscle beneath the skin wasn't something he had earned or worked for. It was just there, as if the past few years had happened to his body while he wasn't looking.
"My hair," he said, touching it. "Why are my arms like this?"
Ozair looked down at himself and went quiet for a moment. He lifted his shirt just enough to see. Then he sat back.
"When did I get abs?" he said, not proudly, but confused. As if someone had left something in his room that belonged to someone else.
Elina touched her face slowly.
Her hair was longer now—falling past her shoulders in a way it never had before. Her features had settled into something older.
Not aged, but finished, as if time had quietly done its work while no one was watching.
When she spoke, her voice had a different quality to it. Lower. Calmer. Not quite her own.
"I look different," she said. "I sound different."
Toviro stood up and looked at his own hands.
He turned them over slowly. These weren't the hands he had walked in with.
The fingers were longer. The palms were broader. His face was different too—the face of someone older, with a jaw that had set and eyes that had seen things.
He touched his cheek, feeling the shape of it under his fingers.
His clothes were torn at the shoulders and arms.
His frame had grown into them, and the fabric had not been given a choice. It had simply split where it could no longer hold.
He looked at the others and saw the same.
All of them were taller. Broader. Their clothes were split and strained in different places.
The room, which had always felt normal-sized, suddenly felt slightly smaller than it had been. Not because the room had changed, but because they had.
No one laughed.
No one panicked.
They just stood there for a moment, each of them looking at the others, each of them seeing the same thing: they had come here to wake Mayo, but something had woken in all of them.
Ozair turned around. His eyes landed on Aryan.
"Who are you?"
Aryan looked at him. "What do you mean?"
He started to turn toward Elina when the wind hit all three of them at once.
"Don't look at me!" she shouted.
The wind came from her side of the room, sharp and controlled, and before any of them could react, Ozair, Aryan, and Toviro left the floor.
They flew across the room and slammed into the wall, and for a moment the wind kept them there, pressed against it, unable to move.
Ozair and Aryan were slightly upended, their hair blown messy, while the pressure held them in place.
Then Elina turned and ran out the door. The moment she was through, the wind stopped.
The three of them slid down the wall and settled on the floor in various undignified positions. Aryan looked at his own hand. "What did I do?" he said quietly.
"I want to ask the same thing," Toviro said from beside him.
Ozair looked at where he had landed and said nothing, which was unusual for him.
Then the person on the bed put both feet on the floor and stood.
He was tall.
He looked at his feet, then at his hands, then at the shape of his own arms. He turned his wrists slightly, as if checking whether they belonged to him.
Then his eyes moved to the three of them on the floor. He looked at them with the expression of someone who has woken up to a situation that requires explanation.
"Who the hell are you?" he said.
Then he paused. He touched his head, as if trying to reach through fog.
"Tell me otherwise," he said, "or I'll call Toviro. Or Ozair. Or maybe Aryan to kick your asses."
Toviro looked at him, then stood up from the floor.
Aryan and Ozair glanced at the standing guy, then at Toviro, then back at the guy again. Something shifted in both their expressions.
Just then a figure appeared in the doorway, wrapped in a long cloth tied modestly around herself. Silver hair was just visible above the neckline.
The guy turned. His eyes met hers.
"Ooh, well," he said without hesitation, "what a beauty."
Just then Aryan moved, his fist slammed into the guy's right cheek before the sentence was fully finished.
The guy went down sideways, hand going to his face.
Aryan stood over him and raised his fist again. "Dare to say that again, if you can."
He held it there for a second, then lowered his fist and looked at the girl in the doorway. "That's you, right? Elina?"
She nodded.
Aryan turned to the blue-haired man. "You're Toviro."
Toviro nodded.
Aryan's eyes went to Ozair, still sitting on the floor. He looked at him for a long moment, then turned away. "You're not important enough to name."
Ozair got up off the floor in one motion, grabbed Aryan by the collar, and said, "You really want me to become important enough to kick your ass?"
"Stop," Toviro shouted.
They stopped.
Toviro walked forward and looked at Aryan. "If you are Aryan."
He turned to Ozair. "You are Ozair."
He turned to Elina. "And you are Elina."
Then he faced the guy sitting on the floor with his hand on his cheek. "Then you must be Mayo."
The guy looked up at him. "No doubt. I am Mayo."
He stood slowly and looked at each of them—Elina, Ozair, Aryan, Toviro—one at a time. His expression shifted. "Is that really you guys?"
Ozair walked over and held out his fist. "You got it right, loser."
Mayo looked at it for a second. Then they bumped fists, slow and quiet, their eyes meeting for just a moment.
After that, Ozair went and sat on the bed like it was his own room.
Aryan came forward. "Sorry for the punch." He smiled—small and real. "I missed you, slo-ku."
Then he sat beside the bed, back against it, arms resting on his knees.
Before he had fully settled, Elina crossed the room and hugged Mayo.
No one spoke.
Mayo stood there with his arms at his sides, eyes wide, looking at the ceiling.
His expression was that of someone who had been deeply confused for the last several minutes and was now finding that confusion turning into something else entirely.
"There's something called personal space, you know," Mayo said.
But she didn't care.
That was what Mayo said out loud. But inside, it was something entirely different.
Oh gosh... I'm in heaven.
He started to raise his arms to hug her back.
Then she stepped away and stood beside him, her cheeks red.
Mayo looked at what had just happened, made a small coughing sound, and lowered his arms.
Then Toviro came forward and stood before him.
They were the same height. Blue hair, blue eyes, real hands, a real face.
Their eyes met.
Mayo looked at the others. "Even if this is a dream," he said slowly, "you guys make sense."
His eyes went back to Toviro. "But you, Toviro—you're not right. The Toviro I know is made of metal. Blue and white. You're just not that—"
Toviro stepped forward and placed both hands on Mayo's shoulders.
Mayo looked up at him.
"It's not your fault," Toviro said. "Bodies, skin color, robot, human, or animal—none of those are boundaries for being friends. What makes a friend is what you already are."
Mayo was quiet for a moment. Then he said, "Toviro."
Toviro pulled him into a hug. Mayo held on. Toviro's eyes watered, and he let them.
"I missed you so much," Toviro said quietly. "I was afraid something would happen to you."
No one in the room said anything.
They let the moment be what it was.
The room fell silent.
Elina looked around. "I—I think we're all still us. Just changed."
Then Toviro, now fully human, stood calmly. "She's right."
He looked at Mayo, then at the group. "This is what Atsal meant. The Recast. It didn't just change time. It changed us—our bodies, our age, our voices. And everything around us."
A hush fell over the room.
Mayo looked around slowly at his friends, at his room. None of what they were saying made any sense.
"So," Ozair asked, "the new beginning Atsal was talking about is this?"
Toviro nodded solemnly. "Yes. And everything from this point on will never be the same. Now we fight back."
He paused, then added, "And also, welcome back, Mayo."
The group, still adjusting to their new forms, quietly descended the stairs of Mayo's house. Their clothes rustled slightly. Their boots were heavier now. Their new forms were still unfamiliar.
When they reached the bottom, Mina was standing near the kitchen doorway.
She didn't recognize them.
Her face went pale. She backed against the wall, hands shaking. "Who are you? Where are the children?" Her voice rose. "It's you—are you the ones who killed my husband?"
"Mom, wait!" Mayo stepped forward fast.
"Don't come near me!" She had a kitchen knife. Her hands were trembling, but she held it steady.
"Mom, it's me! It's Mayo! And this is Toviro, Elina, Ozair, and Aryan. Please—listen!"
She blinked. Then she looked at him. "M-Mayo?"
Toviro stepped forward carefully.
"It's okay, Mrs. Mina. We've all changed. This is because of something called the Recast. When the universes were shattered, the laws of time, space, even our bodies were rewritten. We've grown. We've evolved."
He paused. "The same goes for you too. You've changed as well. Your voice, your face. You're different. But you're still you."
She looked at the cracked glass of a photo frame on the shelf. Her own reflection stared back—younger, different, yet familiar. Her hand went to her cheek. She stared.
Then the knife fell from her hand.
She stepped forward, and her knees nearly gave out. "My son," she said. "My Mayo. I didn't recognize you." She held him and cried. "You're finally awake. I'm so sorry. My boy."
Mayo held her, but his face was confused, then becoming something else. Something careful. Something watching.
He pulled back.
"Mom." His voice was steady. "What you said earlier. You said something about Dad." He looked at her. "What did you mean?"
The room went still.
"Your father is… dead."
He looked at the others, at their faces, at the absence of denial in any of them.
"You're joking," he said. The words came out quieter than he intended. "Come on. Don't do this."
Nobody smiled. Nobody laughed. Nobody moved.
Mayo went to the living room. "Dad?" He checked the kitchen, the hallway, every room.
Then he came back and stood in the doorway with the same expression on his face, the expression of someone whose understanding is lagging behind what their body already knows.
"He probably went to the shop," he said. "He does that."
Nobody answered.
"Don't do this prank to me," he said. His voice had changed. "It's starting to feel real."
Mina stepped forward. "It is not a prank, Mayo."
She held him. He stood still in her arms and did not hold her back. "Please forgive me," she said into his shoulder. "I couldn't save him."
Mayo's eyes were open.
They were looking at the wall across the room but seeing something else entirely, the particular look of a person in the exact moment when something becomes true that they cannot make untrue.
His expression didn't collapse. It didn't crumble.
It went hollow and still and sharp, all at once, the way something goes when it has to bear more than it expected and finds, somewhere inside itself, that it can.
His hands hung at his sides.
His eyes stayed open.
Outside, the grey sky continued.
The world didn't pause for what was happening in this room.
It simply went on, the way it had been going on, indifferent and enormous and full of everything still left to come.
Mayo stood in it and said nothing.
And that said everything.