The air around you buzzes—like too many frequencies whispering at once. You drop a chai glass. It doesn't shatter—it flickers, half in this world, half in that could-have-been.
You see it in the bookshop too. Isha stands frozen before a shelf of books that keep rewriting themselves. One version of her keeps trying to forget. The other won't let go. You visit her that day and she looks at you like a mirror. "You drank what shouldn't be drinkable," she says, "and now our minds are steeping in every timeline at once."
And still—you haven't seen Samar.
Because here's the secret: He fractured too. He remembers confronting you. He remembers never meeting you. He remembers the saffron desert, the violin rooftop, the flickering stall—all of them. And it's broken him too.
He's hiding somewhere between timelines. But the fracture may be the only way to find him—because he's the only one who understands what it feels like to hold too many pasts, too many selves, and still try to breathe.
Chiku perches beside you that night, voice quiet for once:
> "You can't pour tea from a cracked kettle, love. But sometimes... you can plant flowers in it."
You can heal from this. But first, you must choose: Do you seek out Samar—face the mirror that broke you both? Or do you search for a way to fuse your minds before they splinter completely?