The room was silent.

  Not the comforting silence of solitude, but a kind that pressed against the skin—dense, heavy, almost sentient. Alaric sat on the edge of his bed, unmoving. The late morning light slanted through the blinds, painting the floor in pale stripes, but it did little to warm the cold that had settled in his chest.

  The apartment was small—just enough for one. White walls, peeling at the edges. A fridge that hummed like a dying machine. A desk with scattered notes from classes he barely attended anymore. Nothing here reflected life. Only survival.

  He had stopped answering messages. Stopped checking his phone. Stopped looking in the mirror.

  Each day had bled into the next like a long smear of gray paint. He didn’t remember the last time he’d felt hunger, or laughter, or anything resembling hope. The dreams had returned last night again—visions of stars collapsing, voices whispering names in languages he didn’t know, and that feeling... that he was supposed to be more.

  He dragged his hand down his face. “What does it even mean?” he muttered to himself.

  Outside, the world moved on. Cars passed. People laughed. The living kept living.

  But inside him, there was only the sound of breathing, shallow and automatic.

  He got up slowly and walked to the mirror in the bathroom. The boy who stared back wasn’t the one he remembered. He looked older, not by age, but by weight—emotional erosion. His silver hair, once unique, now felt alien. His eyes, normally a deep gray, were now flickering with faint traces of something else—gold? Blue?

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  They shimmered differently every day.

  He leaned closer. “Who are you?” he whispered.

  The reflection didn’t answer. But deep down, he knew.

  He didn’t belong here.

  Not in this apartment. Not on this Earth. Not in this reality.

  He’d felt it since childhood—a pressure, an echo of something forgotten, just beneath the skin. The dreams only confirmed what he already feared: he was out of place.

  The visions... the symbols carved into stone, the circular patterns orbiting a black sun, the name that echoed in his ears every night before waking—Aetherion.

  He didn’t know what it meant. But it was the only thing that felt real.

  A message had appeared in one of his dreams. Glowing in golden light, etched across a sky that felt both infinite and intimate:

  “Return, Child of Balance.”

  He had written it down on a piece of paper and taped it to the wall. Just in case he ever doubted his mind, there it was. Every morning, he saw it again.

  Child of Balance.

  Balance between what? Between this world and that... place?

  He thought back to his parents. Distant, loving but secretive. They never spoke of where they truly came from. But now he understood. They weren’t from here either.

  They had run. From something. To protect him.

  And in doing so... had left him incomplete.

  The mirror flickered.

  Alaric stepped back. His reflection didn’t move.

  And then it whispered.

  “You are awakening.”

  He froze. The words hadn’t come from the room. They had come from within.

  The reflection slowly raised its hand, placing it on the glass.

  A golden ripple spread across the mirror like a drop in water.

  And suddenly, he remembered something—not from this life, but from before.

  The sound of drums. The feeling of falling through stars. A voice—his mother’s, but older, ethereal—saying:

  “Never forget who you are. You are the key to convergence.”

  A sharp pain struck his chest, and Alaric fell to his knees. Images flooded his mind—cities suspended in clouds, beings made of light and code, realms where thoughts shaped reality. And at the center of it all, a tower piercing the sky like a needle into the soul.

  He gasped, clutching the edge of the sink.

  He wasn’t crazy.

  This world was the illusion.

  And he was starting to wake up.