Upon entering the temple, we were informed that the library was exclusive to the Mage’s guild and required special permission to access. The old man was true to his word, however, and they found my description listed, allowing me entry. Sky, as a member of the Mage’s guild in the Dragon kingdom, flashed a silver medal containing a simple circle, the sign of the mage’s guild.

As she let us in, the temple attendant explained that unlike libraries we were supposedly familiar with, we were free to browse the scrolls ourselves. Compared to modern libraries, it wasn’t very large, probably about the size of my apartment living room. Golden dust danced over the two tables and chairs provided for studying, lit by the windows built into the far wall for light. Shelves lined the walls, containing well-dusted books, scrolls, and tablets. The heavy wooden door shut and locked with a clang behind us.

As we walked past the shelves, Sky pointed out labels, called sillyboi, which were attached to the ends of the scrolls and the spines of the books and detailed their subject matter. As I drifted closer to the shelves full of scrolls, books, and tablets, he asked if I could read the sillyboi.

“Yes?”

The scrolls in front of me were labeled Fire, and I pulled one off the shelf to open. I untied the tie holding it together and pulled it open as if to read from top to bottom. My mistake was obvious immediately, and I hastily turned it to read from right to left. I glanced over to see if Sky noticed, but his eyes were unfocused as he trailed his fingers over the shelves, thinking.

“What language do you see?”

I glanced down at the obviously in-English, if a bit erroneous, scroll I was reading. “English?”

His fingers traced the letters of the sillyboi in front of him.

“Do you think English on your earth is very different from the one on mine?” He questioned.

“Maybe. Why?”

“Because the language doesn’t even remotely resemble what I remember of English. Though I was a terrible student in Japan.”

He turned from the scroll he had been tracing to grab a seat and a stone tablet and pulled out a stick with a sharp edge. He scribbled something down on the tablet.

“Do you recognize this?” He asked, turning the tablet toward me.

Written on the page was the word WATER in all caps.

“Water,” I answered and pushed the stone tablet back toward him. He nodded, then pulled it back to write something else underneath before pushing it back towards me. Underneath, ‘WATER” was written again. “Water again.”

“Do they look the same to you?”

“Exactly the same,” I told him. “They don't to you?”

He shook his head. “Not at all. Even the letters are different.”

I pulled a chair out to drop heavily into the chair across from him.“I didn’t ask earlier-do you know how you got here?”

“I died. Was hit by a truck.”

“I’m sorry.”

He shrugged, though even I could tell he was a little bothered. “I have more friends here than I did there anyway.” I hid a wince. I didn’t have many friends back home either, though I wasn’t looking to make any here.

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“What about you?”

I shook my head. “It was as I told Sera. I went to sleep and woke up here. Although…”

“Although…?”

“Nevermind.”

His eyes were questioning, but he let the subject drop for now.

“We should compare notes. Figure out if our Earths differ–maybe there’s something there we can use.”

We went over what we remembered from our history classes, made difficult by the America-centric and Japan-centric histories we’d been given growing up. There were a few minor differences. After a careful discussion, we ended up attributing them as potential cultural differences rather than world differences (“You have to squat for some toilets?” “You don’t have a bidet?”), and we came to the conclusion that there were only two major differences. One, that his world was from a novel, and mine was not, and two, he had to die to be “transmigrated,” or isekai’d as I like to say, and I did not.

“We can’t be sure of either of those, though.” Sky mused.

The thought alone was off putting, the idea a bit hard to fully comprehend.“You think we’re both characters?”

He shrugged again. “It’s possible.”

“Where someone was thrown into an isekai novel? Who would even write that?” It sounded like a terrible idea. Like something my sister would enjoy.

“Trash of the Count’s Family has a similar premise.”

“It sounds terrible.” I crossed my arms and rocked back on my chair. “I’m not even going to consider that fully. I’m a person, not a character.”

He raised an eyebrow. “I’d say the same. So would Sera and Aeolus, for that matter.” Sky sighed, then continued, “I’ve had a long time to think about this. What if novels are just glances into other worlds? Into other lives?”

There was a light THUD as my chair legs hit the ground.

He went on to explain, “When I first woke up here, I had trouble getting past this subconscious idea that just because this world used to be fictional, I could do whatever I wanted.” He smiled bitterly. “There were times when it felt like none of it mattered because they aren’t real people. That maybe I was in a coma, and this was all some strange dream that would fade when I woke up.”

I listened, silent.

“Do you know what changed my mind?”

I shook my head. “No.”

He laughed up at the ceiling, blinking rapidly. “It was the first time that Aeolus acted differently than the character I’d read about. The Aeolus from the novel I read grew cold after his best friend died. This Aeolus never had that. Before I’d realized it, he stepped outside the bounds of the story I knew, and things I hadn’t even intended to change, changed. The way they interacted with each other, with me, changed. I realized I was treating them like the characters I thought they were instead of the people they are. After that, it was the little things. The way Aeolus snores when he sleeps, how he never stops moving, his heartbeat–the signs of life I’d never paid attention to.”

He turned back towards me. “So, yeah, maybe a story is a glimpse into another world. Or maybe this world really is just a novel. But that doesn’t mean that it’s not very real.”

There was a silent warning there. Frustration built in my chest. “I didn’t even realize that this was Heirs until you mentioned it.” I snapped.

He didn’t so much as blink in the face of my irritation. “I don’t want you to make the same mistake I did. I know you’re confused and desperate to return home. But Hayden-” he reached out to grab my hand, pressing my fingers against his pulse. “Do you feel that?”

BADUM-BADUM. Underneath my fingers, his heartbeat was steady and his skin warm. I jerked my hand away.

Earnest eyes stared back at me as he gave a warning. “Don’t forget.”

‘I like characters more than people.’ I felt the urge to say. What came out of my mouth was a promise I wouldn’t be able to keep. “I won’t.”

Uncomfortable with this strange mood, I joked, “We’d better hope that not every novel is a world.” Thinking of some stories in particular, I finished flatly, “I think we can agree that neither of us want some stories to be real.”

“...maybe not.” He admitted, pale-faced and probably thinking of some of the same horrors I was.

We dropped the topic and moved on to research any magic that may be related to my appearance.

As we did, I asked, “Do you know anything about the disappearances? Are they connected?”

He rolled open a scroll as he answered, “The Sea Serpent king was kidnapping people to build his army of chimeras in the novel. He didn’t become this obvious about it until much later in the original, but the story is changing. Sorry to say, but unless they’re caused by something else this time, you’re probably not connected.”

I was disappointed with the answer but not surprised. Silence fell as we both hunched over, focused on our studies. Occasionally, one of us jotted down useful information from a scroll or book for later.

There had only been a couple of scrolls regarding my type of magic, which we learned was classified here as Temporal magic, to little avail. There was nothing that indicated how I ended up here.

Temporal magic was speculated to be harder to notice but just as common as other types of magic. It manifested in dreams and future visions rather than the physical manifestations of other types. There was frustratingly little else.

When the clock in the room reached noon, we collected our notes and headed back to the inn to meet Sera and the others. The sun hung high overhead, the midday heat increasing the city’s stench tenfold. As neither of us had eaten breakfast and we hadn’t planned on eating lunch together, we stopped for some off. We picked our food up from a restaurant that was open to the street, and, Sky explained, worked similar to a modern fast-food joint. True to his word, we were walking out with hamburger-like food shortly after walking in. We had barely finished when we arrived back at the inn. Sera, Helia, Aeolus, and Azure were chatting amicably outside, and Aeolus was the first to notice us.