Completely frozen, Augustus breathed in slowly as he observed his surroundings. Immediately, he reached for his sword and drew it, throwing the sheath away.

“Show yourself!” Jumping back from the tree in paranoia, he frantically looked around at the immediate environs, trying to glean even the slightest clue that this was all some elaborate illusion–but there was nothing.

The idyllic pastures of his family’s homestead remained as ordinary as ever.

Augustus wasn’t convinced and only became more concerned when he couldn’t find any fault in what he was seeing. Jogging down from the hill he was situated on, he ran across the field towards his family’s manor, his heart beating through his chest.

He was as wary as he travelled, all sensations alike heightened; his muscles shaking with each step, his hot breath, and the warm light on his skin. Augustus expected an attack to come at any moment.

The seconds ticking away, he finally reached the manor’s front door, slamming it open as he stumbled into the foyer in an anxiety-filled daze and sweat on his brow. Passing paintings on the walls and the stairs that led upstairs, he walked into the lounge room, and there was no one to be seen.

It was empty.

“Is anyone there?!” Augustus shouted, almost stumbling on a lounge chair as he walked further into the room.

It continued to remain eerily silent. The type of silence one would hear be it when the wind was dead, standing in an abandoned building, or at the back of a library. Where had his family gone?

And at this point, it was all catching up to him. Who was that man? Where was he? And how was this all real?

Suddenly, Augustus noticed something moving out of the corner of his eye; a shadow.

The shadow slowly creeped around the corner of a door. Augustus adjusted his grip on the sword, he readied the springs in his feet to pounce, and he could already see himself cutting down the attacker in his imagination.

But after seeing a familiar face, Augustus dropped his sword and sighed in relief.

“What are you doing with that thing out?” Her back hunched over and wrinkly skin sagging from her face, Lietta shuffled over, her bones too brittle and old to walk normally anymore.

“Oh, sorry grandma. I thought…” Augustus thought of what to say, but couldn’t find the words to reasonably explain what was happening to him without sounding like a crazy person.

For a moment, Augustus re-evaluated himself and his surroundings, wondering if he really had just suddenly appeared here. He thought back to his nap, and vividly recalled the past few months. He shook his head, striking out a possibility. All that time wasn’t some very long dream or elaborate illusion spell. It had been real.

Then what was he doing here?

Augustus began to doubt reality. He had to go back to the basics. His sense of taste, sight, touch, sound, and smell; they were all the same. He couldn’t find anything different about them.

He felt the wiry cloth of his white shirt scraping against his skin, the sheen of the metal as it reflected light coming in from the room’s window, the balance of his feet against the ground, the warm air, and the lasting taste of sweet apple in his mouth.

Augustus calmed down and sheathed his sword.

His grandmother stared at him with wide eyes in a judgemental silence, her thoughts brewing away underneath the surface.

“Hey grandma, this may sound crazy. But where are we?”

Of course Augustus was asking a ridiculous question. He just had to know for sure he was where he thought he was. What was the time even? It had been the dead of night just a couple of minutes ago.

Asked the question, his grandmother just stared at him blankly.

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“Have you gone crazy, or are you playing some kind of joke with me?” She looked mortified.

“No, I’m being serious.” Augustus mustered up a smile to look genuine.

His grandmother was spooked. Once again, she was silent. But the way she observed him made it seem as if she was looking at some kind of monkey.

“Don’t annoy me with such stupid questions. I’m going back to bed.” Shaking her head, she turned away and left the room.

Maybe it was a stupid question after all? He bit his lip and sighed. No, it wasn’t. It has been perfectly reasonable. If she was in his position, she would probably be asking the same things and questioning the nature of her reality.

Sometimes, people would imagine something happening to them that denied the natures or rules of the universe. Like having a lost loved one being revived from the grave, having someone you hate erased from existence, or going back in time to fix a mistake.

But it was different to actually experience something that wasn’t meant to happen and went against these laws.

None of this could be explained by magic. It wasn’t plausible. But if it was, then were the gods playing games with him?

Tapping his foot on the ground, Augustus marched around the corner and tapped his grandma on the shoulder.

As she turned around he asked, “Hey, excuse me grandma. But where's everybody else?”

His grandma, raising an eyebrow, scoffed at him.

“It’s your brother’s wedding today. Now leave me alone.”

Augustus’s jaw dropped slightly. He realised something.

“Oh…truly? But that was over five months ago, wasn’t it?” Augustus stepped back in front of his grandmother to ask.

His grandmother was silent, her face even more mortified and disturbed than before. Noticing the look on her face, Augustus gave a forced smile and promptly walked away.

“I will leave then,” Augustus shrugged and walked away.

But once outside he mumbled underneath his breath, “At least say something; giving faces to me like that every time I try to talk to you.”

It really annoyed him. It had been a while since he had seen her, but now he remembered the sour, passive-aggressive attitude that always ruined his mood for the rest of the day. Now he had to relearn to remind himself to stay clear of her.

Moving his grandmother aside, this entire situation was ridiculous.

He made it outside and breathed in cool, revitalising air. He looked to his left. There, gathered along the coast of a vast blue lake were hundreds of people. He felt a lump in his throat as he looked. For a second, his hands travelled towards the hems of the pockets on his pants, but he retracted them.

“Fuck,” Augustus swore, looking at the wedding from a distance as it all came back to him.

He. Was. In. The. Past.

Five. Months. Ago.

He couldn’t care to remember the date of his brother’s wedding. In fact, he couldn’t even remember his birthday for that matter. But he remembered that on that day, he and his brother got into a bit of an argument because he didn’t want to get rid of his sword.

That had been the last time he had talked to his eldest brother, Andres. It had only been a small thing. But for some reason it really ticked him off.

For a moment, he really thought about it, the past echoing into his mind…

When it happened, he didn’t go back to the wedding and left to do some training by himself, far away from anyone else. He had been so drowsy that he had ended up napping against the tree, in the middle of the day.

Not saying a thing to himself, he took out his sword from his belt and laid it against the nearby wall.

He’d rather be near other people than alone. Maybe he’d just wake up halfway through and see the face of one of his friends marvelling and laughing at him at the same time, illusion magic circles projected from their hands. Or he would be teleported elsewhere and someone would say, “Well done. You have passed the test.”

He didn’t know what was going to happen next. But hopefully his brother wouldn’t start rousing on him for an apology for having run away before.

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Silently, he entered the wedding.

People were smiling at each other with big grins, drinking occasionally from their intoxicating wine ripe from the Yashtin Vinery, and wearing formal clothery, adorned with buttons and white handkerchiefs.

However, he didn’t do a good job of blending in as he wore leather armour, looking like that of a brigand. It was as if at any second he was going to pull out a knife and ask for all their gold and jewellery.

A few people looked at him out the side of their eyes, but he looked away at any instance he noticed this. Quietly, he brought himself to the buffet and stole some skewers of meat and a piece of bread. Chewing it down promptly, he found himself parched.

He eyed the wine for a moment but looked away the next. Wine woudln’t do. He needed water. He could walk back up to the manor to grab a drink at any time but he didn’t want to leave when he just got here.

At the back of his mind, Augustus knew that one of his familiy members would approach him. The wedding had a lot of people, but it wasn’t “get completely lost in the crowd'' big. Fortunately, most of them were in the middle of conversations that they didn’t dare exit so abruptly to reprimand him.

But at any moment now–yeah, his sister, Sarah, was walking over.

“Augustus, what are you doing here? I thought you ran off!” Wearing a green dress with white gloves and a fully golden necklace around her neck, she placed her hands on her hips.

Augustus looked back at her blankly, wondering how best to respond.

It had been over five months since the argument with Andres. Back then, he had hated his older brother with an intense anger. Such that he didn’t even come back after that. But now, comparatively, he couldn’t care.

For a moment his mind lapsed and he resisted the urge to say, ‘Sorry, I just travelled back in time.’

Meat still in his mouth, he actually replied, “I had a nap.”

“And where have you been? I had to go looking for you before!” Sarah inquired as she got up and in his face.

“You didn’t have to.”

“Well, Mom made me. You knew she would send someone over. You just have to be selfish again like you always are, don’t you?” Sarah crossed her arms and looked at him with an intense judgmental gaze.

Augustus’s originally calm mood turned stale as he stared at his sister, an irate outburst bubbling beneath the surface.

Calmness.

“Sarah, please. I’m sorry.” Augustus forced a smile.

Someone getting angry had been a daily occurrence in the Light family. If it weren’t for his friends at Greyroam having taught him a thing or two, he would’ve commenced a shouting match with his sister.

Shaking her head in annoyance, she turned around and waved him off, “Whatever. Just don’t make a scene, you oaf.”

Augustus nodded, looking at the silhouette of his sister disappearing into the crowd as she rejoined her friends. He felt a strange stillness in his soul for once.

He smiled.