PRESENT DAY

Pain was the first thing I knew—sharp, insistent, clawing at the edges of my consciousness. My head ached with a steady, brutal throb, each pulse behind my eyes like a drumbeat heralding the start of a march to nowhere. I blinked into the darkness, the blackness thick and stifling, pressing in on me from all sides. Where am I? The question flared in my mind, a desperate, gnawing thought. What happened?

Fragmented memories cut through the fog: angry voices, the stink of sweat, the scrape of a blade against stone. A shout, a struggle, a flash of pain at the base of my skull—then nothing but emptiness. I groaned, forcing my body to move, the rough chill of stone biting into my palms as I pushed myself upright. A prison, I realized, my stomach sinking. I was in a cell. The walls seemed to close in as I felt my way across the floor, the surface beneath my fingers damp and cold.

My hands traced the confines of my prison—six paces by four, offering too little space to lie down. Ancient stones formed the walls, their surface pockmarked and uneven, slick with generations of condensation and grime. Something scuttled away from my touch in the corner where the walls met. In the ceiling, far above my reach, a narrow grate allowed slivers of weak light to filter through, casting faint shadows. The metal bars were thick with rust, their original colour long lost to time and decay. The cell door was solid wood, save for a small window at eye level, now sealed shut against the darkness beyond. Near the floor, a slight depression marked where countless prisoners before me had worn a groove in the stone, pacing their confines like caged animals. The musty air carried whispers of their desperation, their stories forever trapped within these walls.

The air was foul, thick with rot and decay. Each breath I took was a struggle against the gagging stench. Panic flared, rising like bile in my throat, and I could feel the walls closing in, pressing against my chest until it seemed I couldn't breathe. A faint but persistent sound echoed in the darkness—the deliberate drip of water, each plop a hammer blow in the silence. It drove into my skull, scraping across my nerves, fraying them bit by bit.

I hummed to fill the silence and push back against the oppressive darkness. My voice was weak, shaky, a poor imitation of the old rock ballads I used to play back on Earth. "Knockin' on Heaven's Door." My fingers twitched, aching for the feel of my guitar, for the strings beneath my hands. The guitar held a deeper meaning than being just an instrument; Now my fingers found only the stone, and I recoiled at its touch, cold and unyielding.

A squeak cut through the silence, and my heart lurched. Rats. Of course, there were rats. I drew my knees to my chest, curling in on myself, trying to make myself as small as possible. Fear clawed at my chest, my breath coming in shallow, ragged gasps. "Breathe, Brendan," my voice rasped in the darkness.

I hummed again, this time a different tune—"Wonderwall" by Oasis. A song I'd played a thousand times, one that had always brought me comfort. My voice wavered in the stale air, but I pushed on, letting the melody fill the void. For a moment, I could almost pretend I was back in my room, the walls covered in posters, my guitar slung across my lap.

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"Shut it, outworlder!" a voice called out from somewhere down the corridor, low and mocking. "Your noise is worse than the rats!"

The spell broke, reality crashing back in like a tide swallowing the shore. I was still here, still trapped in this cell, still lost in this strange world where my music had somehow awakened something inside me—something they called magic. My hands shook, and I clenched them into fists, feeling my nails dig into my palms until the pain grounded me. My fingers brushed against a small piece of metal I found in the wall. I worked it loose from the wall and hid it away. It lacked grandeur, but carried meaning. A chance.

Footsteps echoed in the corridor, heavy and deliberate, and I stiffened. Keys jangled, metal scraped, and a sliver of sickly yellow light cut through the darkness as a window in the cell door slid open. The light stung my eyes, and I squinted against it.

"Dinner time, outworlder." The tray clattered through the opening, spilling half its contents onto the floor.

I crawled toward the tray, my body stiff and aching, every movement a struggle. A grey sludge, with a pungent odour of mildew, was all that passed for a meal. My stomach churned, hunger and revulsion twisting together into something almost unbearable.

"Wait," I called out as the guard turned away. How much time have I spent here?

He paused, then laughed, the sound cold and empty. "Time works different here, boy. Could be days, could be years. As for a trial..." He shook his head. "Spies don't get trials. They get forgotten."

"But I'm not a spy!" My voice broke, desperation bleeding through. "There's been a mistake—"

The window slammed shut, cutting off my pleas. I slumped back against the wall, the tray of slop forgotten. A mistake. It had to be a mistake. I wasn't supposed to be here.

"A mistake, he says." The voice was a rasp, rough and low, from the cell beside mine. "We're all here by mistake, aren't we?"

My throat was dry, each word catching like sandpaper. "Really... really, I'm innocent," came the response.

“Innocence means nothing in this place. The things they say we've done - half of them are lies. But here you are, waltzing in with your strange magic, stirring up trouble, making promises you couldn't keep.”

His voice dropped to a menacing whisper. "Listen closely, boy. If I ever get the chance, I'll wrap my hands around that skinny neck of yours and squeeze until that golden voice of yours is silenced forever. You and your kind have no place here."

"Three months," the words barely audible over the endless dripping and my cellmate's ragged breathing. "Three months ago, my biggest fear was having a panic attack during a school briefing." A laugh bubbles up from my throat, harsh and hollow, echoing off the stone walls like broken glass. "Now I'm locked in a cell on another world, with magic in my veins and a death threat from my neighbour."

The piece of metal bites into my palm, its pain anchoring me to reality. It's small, a tiny flicker of hope in a world of despair, but it's real, something they haven't stolen from me. Like my music. Like my voice.

I hum again, softer than before, weaving a melody I'd started crafting when I first discovered what my songs could do in this strange world. The notes drift through the darkness like fragments of light, each one a reminder that I'm still me. Still Brendan. Still alive.

The oppressive black still presses in, but as the music flows through me, something else stirs. A spark of defiance, burning low but steady, like an ember refusing to die. As my fingers tap the metal shard, keeping time with the music, a glimmer of hope surfaces. A way out.

As the last notes fade into shadow, I close my eyes. The question is unavoidable, as natural as the rising tide: How did a guitar-playing dreamer become trapped on a distant world? The answer lies three months in the past, in memories of summer sunshine and the simple joy of playing music with my friends. Before everything changed. Before I grasped the full potential of my music.

Before it all went wrong...