Jonathan clenched his fists, the lingering glow of Ryun fading from his fingers.

  He’d had enough.

  First—the whole “experiment” talk. Who the hell did this future, crown-wearing, god-slaying asshole think he was? Just because they shared a face and some fractured memories didn’t mean Jonathan was going to roll over and play “test subject.”

  This was his life. Or afterlife. Or whatever.

  Yeah, Jafar radiated power—now that Jonathan could sense it, the weight was staggering. He stood in the shadow of a being who could command reality with a glance. A presence that dwarfed everything Jonathan had ever known.

  But that didn’t explain how he got there.

  And it sure as hell didn’t make it right.

  Jonathan’s jaw tightened as he stared at Jafar. “You know,” he said, voice low and steady, “I’m not just some variable you get to watch from your cosmic balcony.” He shook his head, grounding himself in the one truth he still had.

  “I’m Jonathan North. But I’m not your shadow.”

  For a brief second, something almost like approval flickered in Jafar’s eyes. Or maybe it was just amusement. It didn’t matter.

  Jonathan looked down at his hand, remembering that surge of power, that connection to the dead gods humming in the air. He wasn’t falling in line. He was still his own person.

  Jafar laughed.

  Not that low, ominous rumble Jonathan had come to expect—but a genuine laugh, bright and raw, echoing through the silence between them. Jonathan couldn’t tell if it was good or bad. He just knew he was being seen.

  “It’s been a very long time since anyone has told me no,” Jafar said, still smiling. “Let alone raised their voice to me. It felt… nice.”

  Suddenly Jonathan was sitting in a chair. A table stood between them, smooth and endless as the horizon. Jafar sat across, now dressed in a simple red robe, black sandals silent on the marble. The ethereal red crown still hovered above his brow. His eyes—those endless, ever-shifting eyes—locked onto Jonathan.

  Jonathan felt the weight of that: power so vast, the very act of wanting something made it so. It’s simply intention—made law.

  Jafar’s gaze sharpened. “You see me as a threat. A challenge. You’re right to. Yet in truth, you are a cliff, and I am the wind. When the wind scours the mountain, does it care if the stone erodes and crumbles? Or if it becomes harder, sharper, more unyielding?”

  He leaned forward, eyes burning with layered realities. “No. The wind simply blows. The outcome… is the outcome.”

  Jonathan’s mouth went dry. Jafar’s stare felt like falling into a black hole full of needles.

  “Whatever you become,” Jafar said, “is satisfying to me. Whether you rise as a god or vanish as dust. If you are truly me, this—” he gestured to the impossible world around them, “—will be your outcome. Or perhaps… I am even superior to myself.”

  Jonathan managed a crooked smirk. “Sounds like you’re just bored. You hit your peak and now you want to see if I do the same. See if I end up like you—lonely.”

  Jafar’s eyes flickered with brief amusement.

  “You can play it off, but I know you are. You say I’ll become you, but you keep treating me like I’m something else.”

  Jafar said nothing, but the silence spoke volumes.

  “So since I’m being held at gunpoint by Mr.fate himself, sure—I’ll play along. Thanks for showing me Elena’s life, by the way. If that was even real.”

  Jafar nodded. “Become a god, and find out for yourself.”

  Jonathan’s jaw set. “I will. And I’ll be stronger than you—without becoming you. You destroyed yourself and now you’re sulking with the pieces.”

  Jafar shook his head, almost amused by Jonathan’s indignation. “Again, you mistake me for having mortal concepts—regret, loneliness. I have neither. I am simply… curious if I could do it again. However you interpret that? That’s on you.”

  The tension thickened—Jonathan leaned back, defiant,“I don’t like you.”

  Jafar just smirked, unfazed. “That’s fine. I’m indifferent to you.”

  Jonathan opened his mouth to fire back, but nothing came out.

  He tried again. Still nothing.

  Jafar’s voice was suddenly all there was, echoing directly in his mind. The cosmic patience was gone. Now he was simply a force—detached, direct, final.

  “I’m done with pleasantries. Three pieces of advice for your time here:

  One: Listen closely to the event’s rules.

  Two: Don’t let it be known you’re an outlander.

  Three: Don’t think using my name will earn you favor. With most, it won’t.”

  And with that—no warning, no transition—Jonathan blinked.

  He was somewhere else.

  No more throne room, no cosmic table. Just sky and salt and a city made of living trees and tidal waves.

  The building before him was colossal—a palace of interwoven branches and translucent surf, rising and falling like the world’s largest treehouse built by gods with a love of oceans. Massive, whale-like scorpions swam in and out of the rolling waves and around the trunks, their calls rumbling through the water and wood alike.

  And people—no, sentient life—everywhere. Millions, no, tens of millions: humanoids of every imaginable shape, animal-folk walking upright, scaled beings bartering with feathered merchants, insectile giants carrying baskets bigger than cars. It was chaos and festival, a living hub that felt straight out of a high-level RPG’s central city. Banners whipped in the wind, music drifted on the air, languages collided and merged.

  Jonathan steadied himself. His first thought wasn’t awe, but: Okay. Don’t use Jafar’s name. Don’t say you’re from another world. And definitely don’t get eaten by a whale-scorpion.

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Jonathan took a deep breath, then another for good measure, trying to steady the thumping in his chest. He set his jaw and walked toward the main building—if you could call a living mountain of wood and water a “building.” The closer he got, the more surreal it felt: carvings that shifted when he wasn’t looking, doors that melted into archways, pillars that grew and twisted like they were still alive.

  The signs above the entrance were written in a language that made his eyes blur if he looked too long. He had no idea what any of it meant. He wasn’t even sure how to not stand out. The crowd was a roaring river of colors, scales, fur, and skin. The only thing saving him was his attire.

  His mind raced. How the hell am I supposed to blend in here? That stupid god told me nothing—no spells, no guidebook, just ‘figure it out.’

  Well, I guess that’s the whole point, he thought bitterly. Apparently he didn’t know anything either, once.

  He paused at the threshold, forcing himself to breathe, to calm down. He’d survived worse—well, not “worse,” but he wouldn’t worry about that” If he let panic win, he’d never get anywhere.

  I’m not trying to be a champion for that prick version of myself, Jonathan told himself. I’m just gonna survive. Then I’ll worry about the rest of this cosmic junk.

  ——

  Jafar sat languidly on his throne, the red crown floating above his brow, a wide grin cutting across his face. Watching Jonathan stumble into this new world—awkward, stubborn, defiant—was a rare entertainment. He’d waited a very long time for this moment, for the loop to close, for memory and reality to tangle.

  Jahluyina entered, her armor whispering against the marble. She bowed low, then straightened, crimson eyes catching the dragons still slumbering at Jafar’s feet.

  “How did it go?” she asked.

  Jafar let out a small, amused breath. “As good as one can expect when conversing with a mortal.”

  Jahluyina’s brow creased in curiosity. “I’m surprised that… he’s your origin. That’s really where you started?”

  Jafar laughed, the sound echoing through the throne room, drawing a subtle stir from the nearest dragon.

  She approached, pausing near the base of the dais. “You know I have caution for him, falling straight into the fray. The realms now… they’re nothing like when you first came to Requiem. Why not create a realm with the same conditions and records?”

  He waved a hand dismissively. “It shouldn’t matter. I’m not crafting a false reality for him—I’d be in control, and I’d never get an authentic result. That’s why he joins the event. Real stakes. Real chaos.”

  She shook her head, a bemused smile curling her lips. “That event is suicidal. Even the most gifted die before making it halfway.”

  Jafar’s grin didn’t waver. “It’s a fraction of what I endured. If he breaks, he was never meant to ascend.”

  Jahluyina chuckled, folding her arms. “He may not be as lucky as you were in the beginning.”

  Jafar leaned back, he gazed into the distance, where infinite futures spun and died in silence. “Luck is just another factor he’ll have to seize for himself. If he wants to live, he’ll need to claim it—same as I did.”

  ——

  Jonathan was stressing out. He tried to keep his head down, to move with the flow of the crowd, but it felt like he had a neon sign above his head flashing OUTSIDER with every step. Maybe it was just his own nerves, but the press of bodies—fur, scales, armor, wings—felt suffocating. He swore half the people glanced his way, though when he looked, they seemed uninterested or preoccupied with their own strange business.

  The inside of the building wasn’t anything he could have prepared for. The high, vaulted ceiling rippled with shifting water and whale-scorpion hybrids that swam in lazy circles above. Sunlight filtered in strange colors through living branches, painting the hall in shades that changed with every breath.

  But below all that grandeur, the place felt like a cross between a bank and a stadium: counters of luminous wood and shell where people—no, beings—lined up, filling out forms or pressing their palms to glowing stones. Massive banners hung from every rafter, each bearing a different sigil, some animated and flickering. The walls pulsed gently with images and announcements in dozens of languages—most of which twisted in his mind when he tried to read them.

  But here and there, he caught snippets of English. Shouted orders. Transaction calls. Haggling. Not many, but enough to give him hope that his accent wouldn’t give him away immediately.

  He took another steadying breath, doing his best to look casual.

  Don’t stand out. Don’t say too much. Don’t let them know you’re an outlander. Just survive.

  Still, he felt like everyone was waiting for something—or someone—to arrive.

  He slid toward a corner, searching for a place to watch and figure out his next move before the “event” Jafar had warned him about began.

  Jonathan spotted a long line—no, a serpentine line that twisted around itself twice, packed with beings of every imaginable shape. The signs overhead were still gibberish to him, but one symbol stood out: the sigil he’d seen back at the castle. The crest of the Jafar Empire. It was by far the largest, flanked only by two others that came close in size.

  Those must be the family heads, Jonathan guessed, remembering Jafar’s explanation. No way another king’s sigil gets outshined if they’re anything like that royal jerk.

  He slipped into line, trying to look like he belonged, even if the nervous twitch in his eye might say otherwise. The air buzzed with conversations, the low murmur of hundreds of languages bleeding together. Ahead, the line seemed to snake toward a grand desk manned by a trio of officials—each one big, imposing, and definitely not human.

  As he settled in, Jonathan felt something odd—a small weight tugging in his robe.

  Wait. Since when did this thing have pockets?

  He reached in and pulled out a slip—a blue ticket, glowing faintly, as if it was lit from within. It thrummed in his hand with a strange warmth, and as he turned it over, unfamiliar runes pulsed along its surface. He couldn’t read the words, but the color and the symbol in the corner matched the line he was standing in.

  Jonathan grinned to himself, just a little.

  Score one for cosmic intuition. Or dumb luck.

  He tucked the ticket back into his pocket, feeling—if not exactly confident—at least one step closer to “not totally lost.”

  About two hours in—and with the line barely moving—Jonathan was losing his mind.

  He shifted from foot to foot, fidgeting with the hem of his robe. Most of the crowd around him seemed content, even relaxed, their attention glued to thin phone-like devices or elaborate scrolls that hovered in midair. Some watched movies or played games on shimmering Ryun screens. For others, the screens flickered and blurred, unreadable to outsiders.

  Jonathan considered messing around with Ryun—just to pass the time, maybe see what his own “screen” would look like. But he’d read enough comics and seen enough anime to know: bored mortals playing with god-juice rarely ended well. Especially when blending in was his only shot at surviving.

  Still, this was brutal. Like the DMV, if the DMV was built by drugged-up fantasy architects and run by eldritch line managers. The shifting lights and sounds gave him a headache, and the weird, sourceless music that drifted overhead was starting to make him twitch.

  He tried counting sigils. He tried making up names for the scorpion-whales swimming above. He tried seeing how many pockets he could find in his robe (seven, so far). Anything to keep from screaming.

  Then—he felt a tap on his shoulder.

  He froze. Oh, shit.

  “Hey,” a voice said, casual but friendly. “You seem a bit lost.”

  A chill crept up his spine—not because the voice was ominous, but because… damn it, he was standing out.

  Jonathan turned around slowly, running a silent prayer to every trope and shred of “main character energy” he could muster. Please, please, please—just a little plot armor.

  He didn’t dare pray to any gods. Not when “god” might mean Jafar. But right now, he hoped the story wasn’t about to end before it even began.

  Jonathan turned—and saw an elf girl.

  He almost thanked the plot gods right then and there.

  Long silver hair fell past her shoulders, and her emerald green eyes had that mystic-glow look that screamed magical accuracy: 99%. She wore a deep green robe trimmed with silver, and on her back was a sleek quiver of red arrows that literally hummed with Ryun energy. Stylish, deadly. Fantasy approved.

  She spoke English. That threw him off. But at this point, reality was unraveling so fast he just rolled with it.

  “I’m not lost,” he said quickly, trying to sound cool, “just… bored.”

  “Why not use your Ryun?” she asked, tilting her head.

  “Uhh…” Jonathan fumbled. Then narrowed his eyes. “Wait. Why are you in my business?”

  She chuckled—light, but not mocking. “Because you seem like a novice. And I’d hate to watch you die.”

  “A novice? What? No! I’m just… practicing complete control. You know, so I don’t leak Ryun all over the place.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “Well, you’re doing a horrible job.”

  Jonathan groaned and rubbed his temples. “Okay, lady, I’m done. I was perfectly happy—”

  “—being bored?” she cut in with a smirk.

  He took a step forward, trying not to look rattled. “You’re really starting to piss me off.”

  That’s when a shadow fell across them both.

  Jonathan looked up and immediately regretted it.

  Standing beside her now was a bear. Not a guy in bear armor. Not a shapeshifter halfway through transformation. A bear. Upright. Eight feet tall. Dressed in a deep red and purple robe, holding a green axe the size of a refrigerator door like it was a spoon. Its eyes gleamed with intelligence—and amusement.

  “Well, shit,” Jonathan muttered under his breath.