The ground was damp beneath me. Not cement. Not asphalt. Earth. Cold, damp earth.
I blinked once. Then again. The world above me was no longer gray skies and traffic horns. It was… blue. Blindingly blue. Too clean. Too calm.
I stepped out of the place I had been.
"Where the hell am I?" My voice cracked as I spoke — hoarse and unfamiliar.
I pushed myself up on trembling elbows and took in the scene.
A forest. But not the kind you see on road trips or hiking trails. This one looked like it was painted by an over-enthusiastic game designer. The trees were unnaturally tall, the leaves shimmered with an almost metallic green, and the air smelled of spice and damp stone.
I stared at my hands. They were mine — same skin, same faint burn on my wrist from a college short film gone wrong. But something was… off. My sleeves were torn, replaced by rough cloth. My jeans were gone — swapped for dark leather pants and a sleeveless tunic that felt like it belonged to a cosplayer. My shoes? Sandals. Ugly ones.
I stood too fast and nearly collapsed. The dizziness hit like a wave, and I clutched the trunk of a nearby tree, grounding myself.
Breathe, Seif. Breathe.
"Seif Amer," I whispered aloud, reminding myself.
But the name didn't sit right in my mouth.
"...Nawar."
I didn't say it. It was said to me.
I spun. A woman stood behind me, cloaked in moss-colored robes. Her expression was unreadable, but her tone was soft — familiar, even.
"You shouldn't have left the camp, Nawar," she said. "You're still healing."
"Nawar?" I repeated, trying the name on like a jacket that didn't fit.
She nodded, then stepped closer. Her eyes narrowed.
"You don't remember, do you?" she asked.
I didn't answer. I was too busy trying to stop my brain from imploding.
She touched my forehead briefly. Her fingers were cool. Then she sighed.
"Come. We'll get you some water. And maybe something to remind you who you are."
I wanted to scream. To tell her she had the wrong guy. That I was Seif Amer, rising actor, idiot, and — if I was lucky — still alive in a hospital bed somewhere, dreaming this up.
But I didn't speak. Because somewhere, buried beneath the fear,a part of me recognized her voice.
And that was the scariest part.
She led me through the trees like it was the most normal thing in the world.
I, on the other hand, kept glancing over my shoulder, waiting for a camera crew to jump out and yell "Cut!" Or maybe for my real body to wake up in a hospital bed, surrounded by beeping monitors and white sheets. None of that happened.
What did happen was worse.
The forest thinned, revealing a clearing tucked between two cliffs. Smoke drifted lazily from a campfire, and several canvas tents flapped in the wind. Everything looked... lived in. Real. Worn. Not a set.
People — actual people — moved around the camp. A boy with a bandaged arm carried a basket of herbs. An older man with braided gray hair sharpened a blade near the fire. And every single one of them looked at me like they knew who I was.
I didn't know any of them.
"Rest here," the woman said, pointing to a log near the fire. I obeyed without speaking, because honestly? My legs were ready to mutiny.
A clay cup was pressed into my hand a moment later. It smelled like boiled bark. I hesitated, then drank.
It was awful.
I gagged, coughed, and wiped my mouth. "What the hell is this? Tree sweat?"
She cracked a smile. "You used to call it that."
I stared at her.
"You really don't remember anything, do you?" she asked again, softer this time.
I shook my head. "I'm not who you think I am. My name is Seif. Seif Amer. I'm an actor. I was on my way to—"
I stopped.
On my way to……a filming location.…a movie.…a script I never read.
My stomach turned cold.
"Seif?" she repeated, as if tasting the name. "Is that your birth name? Before the temple changed it?"
No. That's my real name. My only name.
But the words died on my tongue.
She sat beside me, pulling a pouch from her belt. Inside were folded pages — worn, stained, and covered in symbols. She handed them to me like they were holy.
"Maybe this will help," she said. "You've written in this every day since the war began."
I looked down. It was a journal. My journal.
My fingers flipped through it like they had muscle memory. Drawings. Notes. Strange phrases. Sketches of people I didn't recognize.And one word, scrawled over and over again in the margins: Nawar.
I stared at it. The handwriting looked like mine.
But I don't remember writing any of this.
I kept flipping through the journal.
There were pages filled with sketches — maps of places I didn't recognize, weapons I'd never held, people whose eyes seemed to stare back at me from the paper. The handwriting changed slightly from page to page, as if it belonged to a man being pulled apart and stitched back together over and over.
None of it triggered anything. Not a memory. Not a whisper. Nothing.
Still, it felt familiar. Not in my brain, but in my fingers.
Like I'd held this book every day.
Like I'd needed it.
"You always said writing helped you sort your thoughts," the woman said quietly beside me. "Even when the memories… began to fray."
I didn't answer. I was too busy staring at a particular page near the end — where a line was written in larger, frantic handwriting, again and again:
"This is not my role."
My stomach twisted.
It was a phrase I could imagine myself writing.
The woman noticed. "That was the last thing you wrote before… before you collapsed."
I looked up at her. "Who are you?"
She hesitated. Then offered a small smile. "Lisan. We fought together. Trained together. Traveled for months. I was there the day you saved the village at Red Fen. You don't remember any of it?"
I shook my head slowly. Red Fen? Fighting? Saving people? That wasn't me. I was a guy who forgot his lines in class performances and faked confidence during casting calls.
I was a fraud.
A real one, not even the cool TV kind.
Still… something in her eyes held warmth. Trust. Maybe even pain.
"Where exactly am I?" I asked, gently closing the journal.
She looked surprised. "You don't know the kingdom's name?"
"Humor me."
Lisan studied me for a moment. "You're in Aruvia. The western territories, just past the Breathless Peaks."
Aruvia.
The word rang in my head like a bell I couldn't place. I knew it.
Not from here. From somewhere else.
I narrowed my eyes. "Is there a capital city? A main fortress? Something like… Drosmere?"
Lisan's brows lifted. "Yes. Drosmere is the capital."
My heart skipped a beat.
That name was in the script.
The one I never read — not properly. But I remembered glancing at the cover page… the setting description…
"The Kingdom of Aruvia, capital city: Drosmere."
Oh, no.
"Seif," I whispered to myself. "You absolute idiot."
I didn't say anything for a while.
Just stared at the dirt, the fire, the journal in my hands.
This isn't just some weird dream.This is the script.The world I was supposed to act in.
But I didn't read it. I skimmed the synopsis. Glanced at the character sheet. Laughed at the world map because it looked like every other generic fantasy map I'd seen before.
I hadn't memorized my role.
And now… I was living it.
I looked up at Lisan again. She wasn't looking at me anymore — her eyes were on the fire. Her face calm, like this was just another normal day in the world of Aruvia. Like the man beside her hadn't completely lost his mind.
"Can I ask something?" I said, quietly.
She nodded.
"If this is real — if I'm Nawar — what happened to me? Before I woke up?"
Lisan's jaw tensed. For a long moment, I thought she wouldn't answer.
Then: "You vanished during the Battle of the Cradle. You were separated from your unit. The scouts said they saw you run into the storm alone."
I blinked. "Why?"
"You said… you heard something. A voice. A presence calling your name."She hesitated. "You came back three days later, unconscious. Burned. Marked."
That last word stuck with me.
"Marked?"
She leaned over, gently pushed up my left sleeve.
I stared.
There, on my shoulder, was a symbol I had never seen before.A perfect spiral etched into my skin — not a tattoo, not a scar — something deeper. It pulsed faintly with golden light, almost like it was alive.
"What the hell is this?"
"That's what you've been trying to find out," Lisan said. "Before… everything changed."
Before I lost my memory.
Or before I stopped being Nawar.
Or maybe… before I became him.
The fire crackled between us.
Somewhere in the woods, a horn sounded — long and low.
Lisan stood immediately, face sharp. "Scouts. That's the signal."
She looked back at me. "Stay here. I'll return before nightfall."
Then she was gone.
I sat alone, journal in hand, spiral burning beneath my skin, and a thousand questions clawing at the edge of my mind.
I didn't know the rules of this world. I didn't know who I was supposed to be. I didn't know if this was real or if I'd lost my mind during the crash.
But one thing was certain:
This world thinks I'm Nawar.
And if I want to survive it… I'll have to become him.
End of Chapter 2.