Kivamus knew that at this point he couldn't just bluff his way anymore. At least there was the consolation that Gorsazo had come to him to talk about this privately, instead of directly gathering the villagers to burn him at a stake or something.

He sighed, and making sure that the doors were still closed, he took a deep breath and continued, "I knew that you were the only one who could have guessed that. But, I don't want to lie anymore, not to you. But I am indeed Kivamus, the same person you have always known."

Seeing that Gorsazo was going to interrupt him, he put up a hand to stop him from speaking. He pulled up his tunic, and pointed at a scar on his left bicep. "I remember when you bandaged my arm after my brothers pushed me into a thorny shrub in the palace. I still have that scar as you can see. I also remember when my brothers locked me and my sister in a small storage room in the palace, and you were the one to find us, while both of us were crying. I still remember all the times my brothers have made fun of me, or tormented me. I am the same Kivamus as you have always known!"

Gorsazo frowned, and looked at his face carefully for a while, as if searching for something in his eyes. "It is true that only you could have known about those things, since there was no one else nearby when those things happened. But what about those unfamiliar things you mentioned, like the seed drill, the metric measurements and other such extraordinary things? I am still completely sure that those books do not exist in the library."

He gave a deep sigh while gazing at the fire. "But you also reminded me of those incidents which I had nearly forgotten - things which no one else could have known. And yet..." He looked back at Kivamus. "I don't know what to believe anymore... But you still do not seem like the person I have known for nearly two decades."

Kivamus gave a sigh with a sad smile. "You are not wrong, Gorsazo, but I am still speaking the truth. I don't know how to explain it."

Gorsazo gazed at him for a moment, before he said, "Try me!"

Kivamus replied, "You said that you know me better than anyone else here - which is true. But that also means that I know you very well as well. You are the only person that I can genuinely trust in this place, especially when people have already tried to kill me twice. I have known you for long enough to be completely sure that you had nothing to do with the assassination attempts. Not to mention, you even tried to shield me with your own body when those mercenaries had attacked us at Helga's inn." He added in a low voice, "But I am worried that you will not believe me even if I did try to explain... I just don't want to say too much and lose you."

Gorsazo snorted. "I have brought you up since you were a toddler. After your mother died, it can even be said that I was the one who raised you. Even though I might not be related to you by blood, you know that I have always treated you as my own son. Why do you think I came with you to this village from Ulriga, when only you were ordered to leave? So tell me, is it possible that a parent would ever abandon his child?"

Before Kivamus could say anything in reply, Gorsazo added, "I do realize that it was your father, the Duke, who exiled you here, but we both know that he hasn't really been running the duchy for many years now. Everyone knows that his health has been declining for the past few years. In light of that, whether it was Sarzolus or Tarilus who came up with the bright idea to banish their youngest brother far away from Ulriga, we might never know. Apart from your sister, none of them have ever really treated you like family anyway. But I have raised you like my own son!"

He continued with a smile, "Trust me, even if you have grown up now, I am here for you and I am not going anywhere. I know that at least one person is trying to kill you, but I would give my life to protect you before I let any harm come to you. But you have to tell me something, dammit! Everything you have done in the past few weeks doesn't make any sense at all! I am going insane just trying to think of an explanation!"

"Alright then, so be it," Kivamus muttered. "And I am trusting you that you will not let another soul know about what I am going to say." Seeing Gorsazo nod in reply, he added, "Like I have said many times, I am Kivamus - the same person that you have known for so long, and that's completely true. However, I also have memories of living a life as another person in another world, named Steven."

Gorsazo looked confused. "I don't understand. What do you even mean by that? How can anyone be two people?"

"I remember two lives," he tried to explain, "one of Kivamus, and one of Steven. I have no idea how such a thing is possible any more than you do, and yet, that's how it is. I remember drinking too much that night on the road we were coming here hoping I'd never wake up because I had been sent to a no-name village by my father, while my brothers were going to be the Duke and the Commander of Fort Aragosa. And yet, I also remember celebrating with my friends on the planet called Earth after I had gotten a promotion in my job. And then I woke up the next day here in that carriage, as Kivamus, with the memories of both of them. As implausible as it might seem, that's the simple and complete truth." He gave a shrug. "Maybe it's as the villagers say, that the Goddess sent me here to help them, or maybe it was aliens doing weird shit, I have no idea..."

"Aliens?" Gorsazo asked with a frown. "What is that?"

"It's a word on Earth - which means living beings from another world," Kivamus replied. "The point is, I have no better explanation about how I have memories of two people in my head, any more than you do. I don't know if I am Kivamus, or if I am Steven. Or maybe, I am both of them. I have no idea..."

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Gorsazo didn't say anything for a while. He seemed to be lost in thought after the unexpected revelations. Finally, he asked, "Tell me about that place, the one you mentioned earlier - Earth."

"It was a wonderful place," Kivamus began. "Truthfully," he snorted, "I never thought so while I lived there, but now that I am here in a medieval world, I realize how wonderful that place was compared to Reslinor." He continued, "That world where Steven lived his life was completely different from this place. We had huge machines there - called trains - which we used to transport people and other things at speeds of hundreds of kilometers per hour, or hundreds of miles per hour in the local measurements."

Seeing Gorsazo's eyebrows shooting up in astonishment, he added with a laugh, "We also had highly advanced machines called airplanes there - which flew in the air, and transported people thousands of kilometers in a single day. We had rockets, which had taken people to space - which means outside the planet and its atmosphere, tens of thousands of kilometers above the ground. We even managed to take people in one such rocket to the moon itself - which was hundreds of thousands of kilometers above the ground." He snorted, "Or so they claimed."

Shaking his head, he continued, "We had very advanced machines there - called computers, that stored more information than all the libraries combined in all this world in something which was only a few feet big. We had things called phones and the internet, which allowed people to talk to someone on the other side of the planet in real time. There were so, so many things and advanced technologies there...", he said wistfully, his eyes getting wet with an intense yearning for his lifelong friends, his parents, and the familiarity of his past life. He had knowingly made himself busy with trying to manage everything in the past few weeks so that he wouldn't have to think about London. He never had anyone else in this world with whom he could talk about it anyway. But finally being able to talk about his life on Earth with someone had opened the floodgates of memories.

He added after a moment, blinking repeatedly, "Most of those things are not feasible here, not yet anyway, but I was a very well educated person on that planet. So I do remember the concept of how a lot of such things worked. And now that I am here, I believe the villagers to be my people, and I want to do everything to help them by using the ideas and technologies from that world. That's how I know about those concepts - about the metric measurements, the seed drills and so on."

He continued, "So, yes, I am Steven! But I am also Kivamus! In this world, I miss my sister Astela, as much as I dislike both my brothers, and yet I also miss my parents and friends from Earth..." At this point he was crying openly. "I really want to return back to Earth... I really, really want to... even if I have no idea if such a thing is even possible. And yet, I do not want to leave the villagers in Tiranat to starve at the whims of the nobles - not when there is so much I can do to help them!"

Gorsazo looked at him carefully but didn't say anything for a while. Finally, he gave a small smile and said, "Come here," and leaned towards him to hug him, while patting his back slowly. "I have no idea how any of those things you mentioned are possible. It seems incredible that you could talk to a person on the other side of the world! Or that humans could fly! And yet, I believe that everything you have told me is the truth in your own opinion. I have known you for long enough that I would have found out immediately if you were trying to make things up, even though that's exactly what it seemed like for a moment." He added, "I still don't know if any of those things are really possible or not, but I am convinced that you completely believe in all those fantastical things you told me."

As Kivamus sat up straight again, and wiped his eyes with his sleeves, Gorsazo continued, "For a while I thought that there was a small possibility that you had gone completely insane, or maybe some cult-sorcerer had put a hex on you and taken over your mind! But what had reassured me, and prevented me from raising this topic with you earlier, was the time a few weeks ago when you said that you would use your own savings to buy food for the villagers. As different as you have always been from your brothers, you would have never done that earlier." He laughed. "Knowing you, you would either have drunk it away, or saved those coins as a miser - like most nobles like to do. I do know that the Duke barely gave you any allowance after all, especially compared to what your brothers got."

Kivamus gave a laugh in reply as well, remembering the drinking habits of the original Kivamus, as well as his tendency to save what little money he had. Well, little money for a noble - it was still a fortune for any commoner.

Gorsazo continued, "But after seeing that you were willing to do that much - that you were willing to use your carefully saved coins for the villagers - people who were commoners, not even nobles - people whom you had never even met before, I felt reassured that whatever had happened to you, whether it was a cult-sorcerer putting a hex on you, or something else, it was certainly a change for the better. That's why I didn't say anything before today."

Saying that Kivamus still had tears in his eyes, Gorsazo patted his back again and said, "Don't cry now. Even if you have the memories of someone from another world, you are still the Kivamus I have raised for nearly all your life. We will find a way to get through this. And I will have your back, as always! Even though I have no idea how you got those memories, I know that we can't let anyone else know about it, so don't worry, I won't tell anyone else about it."

Once Kivamus had calmed down, he wiped his eyes again and asked, "Do sorcerers really exist in this world? Can they do magic, or things like shooting fire or making ice from their hands?"

Gorsazo looked at him for a moment in surprise and then burst into laughter. "Of course not! Where did you even get such an absurd idea? Those so-called sorcerers are charlatans and swindlers who prey on the gullible. There is no such thing as magic in this world!" And then he continued laughing loudly for a while.

Kivamus didn't know what the future held for him and if there would be more people trying to assassinate him or if he would even survive a full year in this world, but for now, he would have to be satisfied by the fact that at least he wasn't going to be burned at the stakes anytime soon. He just shook his head slowly after the mentally exhausting conversation, and joined freely in that laughter, relieved that it had gone much better than he could have hoped for.