Elurra gasped and sat up suddenly. Radiant sunlight streamed through the windows. She blinked a few times and looked around. She was in a sitting room in the Lur Alavian castle, wearing a traditional rich navy gown with fur lining. Wooden furniture filled the room, and flames roared in the fireplace.

There were no rifts, screams, death, or Demons. The silence was jarring.

She jumped in surprise when a loud snore cut through the quiet and glanced down to find Terrin sleeping contentedly. His feet were hanging over the arm of the couch, and his head was a few inches from her lap. She was relieved to see him. For a moment she considered letting him rest, but she wasn’t sure if they were still in danger. She shook him violently, and he woke up with an exclamation of surprise.

“Terrin, how did we get here?”

“What’s wrong?” he asked, sleep slurring his words. Terrin stared blankly at her. For a moment, doubts crept into Elurra’s mind.

Does he remember? Was it all a dream?

His eyes abruptly widened, and he sat up.

“Where’s Anchor?”

“Anchor? What are you talking—”

The doors to the sitting room swung open, and Elurra yelped.

“Elurra? Prince Terrin? Are you still in here?”

Guards flanked the open doors, but Elurra’s attention was focused on the two finely dressed people accompanying them.

“M-Mother? Father?” she stuttered, her eyes as wide as saucers.

They looked older than she remembered, but it was clearly them. Her parents exchanged perplexed looks.

“Is something wrong, Elurra?” her mother asked. “You look like you have seen a ghost.”

Elurra’s mouth flopped open, but she couldn’t form a single syllable, much less a sentence. Tears glazed over her vision. She glanced at Terrin helplessly and saw he was also bewildered. Her mother’s brow crinkled with worry.

“Elurra, dear? Are you alright?” she asked, crossing the room and kneeling beside her daughter. Her lustrous golden hair brushed against Elurra’s knee as her mother cupped her face. Elurra felt her lip quiver.

“You are…alive?”

Iara recoiled in surprise. “Of course, direi! Are you ill?”

Elurra looked at Terrin again. Before either of them could come up with anything to say, another surprise and group of royal guards entered the room. A woman with graying ginger hair and deep hazel eyes stood before them, adorned in traditional royal attire. Wrinkles around her mouth and eyes had developed from years of laughing and smiling, and an elaborate crown, notably lacking a Kutsal Stone, sat on her head. A regular moonstone carved in the shape of celestial bodies adorned the centerpiece instead.

“What a crowd we have here! Elurra, if you two are getting bored, I suggest you take the prince on a ride to give him a better feel for the country. You know how beautiful the view can be from the northern cliffs,” the queen suggested.

Elurra stared at her blankly.

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“N-Nitiri?”

“Yes?” Nitiri asked, slightly confused by Elurra’s tone.

Am I dreaming or dead? the princess thought.

Terrin leaned over to her slowly. “They all keep calling me Prince Terrin. How do they know?”

Elurra glanced at him in disbelief. “Of all the things wrong with the scene before us, that is the first thing you felt the need to note?”

“Is something the matter?” Nitiri asked.

Elurra was becoming too overwhelmed with the situation. In utter exasperation, she balled her fists and screamed, “What on Incari is happening?”

The room fell deathly silent.

“Elurra, dear, there is no need to shout. If you could tell us what—” Iara started calmly, but Elurra didn’t let her finish.

“You are dead! She killed you,” Elurra said forcefully as she pointed to Nitiri. “To take your Kutsal Stone, which you hid in those bracelets, and then she tried to kill me! I escaped her blasted spider and went on a dangerous quest to stop her from taking over all of Incari. On the way, I met Terrin, a crazy band of pirates, a handful of Demons, and the queen of Tipet. Then Terrin died, time tore itself apart, and now we are here. Does any of this sound familiar?”

Nitiri, Iara, and Simon had matching expressions of confusion, shock, and horror. After a full minute of stunned silence, her father spoke.

“Elurra, dearest, did you have a nightmare or hit your head? The Demons, Guardians, Kutsal Stones, and rifts are gone. They vanished before you were even born. We banded together with Queen Lira and the other leaders to gather the Kutsal Stones and send them to Yamoi so Terrin would be safe. You have heard the story a hundred times.”

“Wait, I grew up in Tipet?” Terrin asked, sounding excited.

Everyone in the room looked at him like he was insane.

“Again, that is what you find most surprising?” Elurra hissed.

Terrin shrugged, although he seemed to be taking everything in stride. Elurra sighed and turned back to the three adults.

“Father, why are you not the king of Lur Alava?”

“Elurra! How could you ask such a thing? What has gotten into you?”

Nitiri turned away and was urgently speaking to one of her guards. The man nodded and left the room.

“I can explain, if you like,” Terrin chimed in.

“You can?” Elurra asked skeptically.

“Anchor told me.”

She fixed him with a withering glare, which he ignored.

“We are not from this timeline,” he explained. “We came from a very different world, where we had to get rid of the Demons on our own. During the final battle, cracks in reality were created, and we fell through one of them.”

Iara and Simon glanced at Nitiri. She was talking to the same guard, who handed her something and bowed.

“Is this a joke? If so, it is in very poor taste,” Iara said sternly.

“Sister, what do you make of this?” Simon asked Nitiri.

She pushed a button on the device in her hand, and a soft clicking noise filled the room. Nitiri walked forward slowly. The clicks grew closer and closer together as she approached Terrin and Elurra until they were practically continuous.

“They are telling the truth. They are awash with temporal radiation and show signs of reality displacement.”

Some of the tension left the room. Iara’s confusion turned to curiosity as the adults processed this sudden turn of events.

“So you both have peered into an alternate reality. Why was your aunt not the queen?” she asked. She suddenly processed some of Elurra’s outburst from a few minutes before. “Wait, did you say she killed us?”

Terrin and Elurra exchanged awkward glances.

“It’s a bit of a long story,” Terrin muttered.

Nitiri looked a bit pale. “Maybe we should summon the king, as he is an expert in magical matters.” she said.

“The king?” Terrin and Elurra asked in unison.

“Yes. King Cade.”

Elurra’s eyes widened as she made sense of this new timestream.

Lira gathered the Kutsal Stones instead of sending Terrin away, so the Demons and the Guardians are long gone. But that does not explain Nitiri, as her fate was sealed decades before Lira’s time.

There was a missing piece to the puzzle.

“What happened on your eighteenth birthday?” Elurra asked.

The room went dead silent as Iara and Simon looked over at the queen to gauge her reaction. Nitiri’s jaw clenched and unclenched a few times before she answered.

“On my eighteenth birthday, my father was assassinated. My mother became ill with grief and died shortly thereafter, so I became queen. I raised Simon from then on, until he decided to go to the Northern islands to investigate reports of Demon activity. That was where he met your mother. Things were hard after my father died, but I never mourned him. He was an extremely biased man incapable of tolerating diversity or change. I sometimes wish I could have met the assassin. I do not think I could necessarily thank them, but I feel their actions gave me opportunities and freedoms I never would have had otherwise.”

Elurra didn’t think she’d ever heard truer words spoken.