Sid POV

  Sid stood on a riverbank, blinking as the strange stillness of the place settled around him. Dense gray clouds layered the sky above, dulling the light but not obscuring his view of the opposite bank. It was a welcome contrast to the suffocating haze of the Misty Mountain, where you were lucky to see fifty feet ahead.

  Beneath him, the river crept along in unsettling silence. The serene jade waters didn’t have the liveliness he associated with rivers. There was no bubbling sound, no splashes or ripples, not even the glint of sunlight catching the current. It glided forward like a dream half-remembered, and only the slow journey of water hyacinths proved it hadn’t stilled.

  The scene tugged at something intimate in Sid, familiar yet altered. It mirrored the view of his childhood, but more composed and beautiful, as if showing not what it was but what it could be. He turned to check behind him and saw neat rows of coconut palms in place of his old home.

  A breeze stirred the air. Sid took a deep breath and froze—the scent was familiar, a bit salty, a bit fishy. Like the wind before the first drops of rain hit. The mango tree to his right rustled as the wind plucked one of its fruits and passed it into the river with a muted plop. He watched it drift until the water lilies caught it.

  He stepped closer, searching for a stick or branch to free the fruit, when he noticed a lone figure seated on the moss-covered stairs of the embankment, reading a book as if they belonged to this strange, dreamlike stillness.

  Sid closed the distance with swift, determined steps. Something about the person’s posture—a tilt of the head, the way the book rested on their knee—sent a flicker of recognition through him. As he drew closer, the sense of familiarity sharpened until a cold realization hit. He stopped a few steps short. The reader was himself.

  The doppelg?nger closed the book with a soft thud, his gaze fixed on the far shore. “You’ve been a disappointment,” he said, tone flat, as if reading from a verdict he’d long rehearsed.

  Sid’s pulse quickened. “Who are you?” he asked, voice carrying a faint edge.

  The other didn’t move, didn’t even flinch. His stillness was unnerving, as though he existed just out of sync with reality. Sid stopped beside him, the quiet pressing in like weight.

  He lowered himself onto the step below his doppelg?nger, looking up at him, the reflection that refused to meet his eyes. “Are you the original owner of this body—Siddharth Krishnan?”

  The doppelg?nger’s gaze faltered for a moment. They gave a small laugh but didn’t respond in any other way.

  Sid’s expression hardened. “What’s so funny?”

  After a brief pause, the doppelg?nger let out a sigh. “Hard to believe I ended up such a coward.”

  Sid felt heat rise to his face. “Coward?” His voice trembled between anger and disbelief. The doppelg?nger didn’t respond to his question.

  Sid stared at his double, mind racing. If this thing carried his memories, maybe it also held the key to understanding what had happened to him—to escaping this strange, silent world. He needed it to talk, to explain what was happening. Only then could he find a way out.

  “Why do you think you grew up to be a coward?” asked Sid, rounding his words, so they did not carry the bite he felt, his eyes steady on the other man’s profile.

  “Evidence is sitting next to me.” The doppelg?nger did not bother to meet his gaze as he studied the page.

  “What’s in that book?” Sid asked, gesturing toward the unmarked cover that held no title or sigil; the thing looked less like a published work and more like a diary.

  “A story. Your story. What you accomplished in the past nineteen years.” The doppelg?nger flipped the pages from start to finish, a smirk growing on his face. “Not an interesting read.” He closed it with a soft click of the binding and turned at last to face Sid.

  The sudden attention caught Sid off guard, a brief jolt that passed as he forced himself to keep going. “Why do you think it’s a boring read?”

  “Because it is the life story of a coward,” said the doppelg?nger, voice calm and even, with no hint of provocation, as if they were stating a simple fact.

  Sid felt the conversation tilt away from him, and he recognized the pattern so often found in fiction. The doppelg?nger wants to play the role of a cryptic mentor and wants to make him chase riddles, thought Sid. Let me flip that script for you, dear mentor.

  He looked to the opposite bank where coconut palms leaned over the water, swaying in the breeze, letting the silence work on the other man rather than on himself.

  A boat slid into view along the near bank, the boatman standing upright with feet set wide for balance as he planted a bamboo pole into the riverbed and leaned his weight to push. Dried coconut shells knocked together in a dull clatter on the boat’s hull. Something about that cargo tightened the skin at the back of Sid’s neck.

  The man’s eyes held on Sid with a severity that felt as impersonal as a judgment. Sid did not look away, although the contact left a cool line of unease along his spine.

  Sid turned to the doppelg?nger and found his attention fixed on the boatman, nose wrinkled, lips curling down. Do they know each other, or is he just disappointed with the world? Sid thought, forcing himself to look away. Shifting his gaze to the other bank to distract himself.

  A tiny figure stood there, hardly more than a silhouette at first. Sid realized it was a toddler carrying a bundled stack of clothes. He cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted, hopping in place to make himself visible, but the sound seemed to flatten and drift, swallowed by the river’s strange hush.

  The child lifted his head toward Sid, looked around in a small, uncertain circle, and then hid the garments inside a bush. Sid glanced sideways; the doppelg?nger had not moved, eyes fixed on the open book as if nothing beyond the page existed.

  After hiding every piece of clothing, he turned and wandered away along the bank. Sid felt a predictable hope that someone older might follow, and the quick, quiet recognition that nothing in this place suggested they would.

  Another boat slid into view, this one low in the water with four passengers seated close together. The boatman sat and worked an oar in smooth arcs, and despite the boat matching the first in size, this one cut the distance with far less effort.

  Sid threw up both arms and shouted once more. Across the river, the boatman responded, voice raised and hands carving wide arcs in the air. Yet the river swallowed every sound, so Sid could only guess the meaning behind the silent display.

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  “If you want to talk to someone else, why don’t you check this side of the river?” asked the doppelg?nger, setting his book on the embankment and walking around to pick up stones.

  “I have a feeling there is no one else around here; I will just circle back to you,” Sid said, rising and brushing his palms on his thighs, letting the sarcasm show. “Isn’t that the wow factor you were aiming for?” he added, watching for a flinch that did not come.

  “And where do you think ‘here’ is?” the doppelg?nger asked, the question light in tone and heavy in intent, a small smile pulling at one corner of his mouth.

  “I am not sure, but all this is from my memories; not exactly as they were, more like reconstructions that miss a seam or two.” Sid stretched out his hands.

  “You are right again,” the doppelg?nger said, and he flicked a stone low across the jade surface. It kissed the water and skittered outward, skipping seven times in quick, tight arcs before it sank, the ripples folding back into the quiet as if nothing had passed.

  “Want to play a game?” Sid asked. “We trade questions and answers. No lies.”

  The doppelg?nger didn’t reply, sending another stone skipping across the river, almost making it to the next bank.

  “What is it you want?” Sid asked, the question carrying across the stillness.

  “I will answer that if you answer first.” The doppelg?nger lifted his chin by the smallest amount. He held Sid’s eyes. “What is it you want in this life?”

  “I want to get out of here,” Sid said, the words out before he could test them, a small smirk tugging at his mouth as if to blunt their urgency.

  “You did not answer my question. I asked, what you want in this life?” The doppelg?nger weighted the last three words until they seemed to sit on the stone between them.

  Sid considered the question, understanding the doppelg?nger would not accept a shallow answer. “There were some mistakes I made in my past, some accidents that happened; I would like to prevent them this time. I want to live this life better than my last one,” said Sid, looking around for stones so he could skip them like the doppelg?nger.

  “What were the mistakes you made last time?” The doppelg?nger leaned closer, lips parting in anticipation, eyes fixed on Sid’s face like a reader waiting for the next line.

  Sid steadied his breathing. “Not going with Varun and Pallavi. Running from the Bloody Butcher. Marrying for money. Joining the army,” he said, and each name felt heavier than the last, as if speaking them stacked weight along his ribs.

  Sid could not find a single flat chip to skip, while the doppelg?nger found plenty. He glanced at the water, wondering if the other’s skill made imperfect stones obey, or if the river itself chose favorites.

  “You are saying what you think I want to hear.” The doppelg?nger pulled himself back a fraction, voice cool enough to fog glass. He let the stones fall from his left hand, their clatter dulled by the damp, and returned to his seat on the worn steps of the embankment.

  “I started like that, but I was telling the truth toward the end. My marriage was one of convenience, and when it stopped being convenient, she ended it. I joined the army after my rescue, and it helped me crawl past the Bloody Butcher’s damage, but it stripped the color out of the world while it did. My parents died in a dungeon break, something the army was supposed to prevent, and I was not with them because I was guarding some minister’s son on a date inside the Misty Mountain,” Sid said, and he heard the bark at the end of his sentence and hated it, so he breathed until the air cooled his tongue.

  He walked back to the embankment stairs and took a seat, elbows on the step on which his doppelg?nger sat. “I upheld a system where the elite controlled the path to power through skill crystals,” said Sid, the memory of the Regeneration skill flashing like heat across his palms, earned off duty and surrendered to a rule that bent for wealth, later purchased by a billionaire as a trinket for his grandson.

  “They got what they deserved when the Federation came out.” A brief smile cut across his face before he could stop it.

  The doppelg?nger’s eyes changed, the pity so plain that it felt like a hand on Sid’s shoulder. “You just traded one master for an even crueler one. Tell me what in that exchange makes you glad.”

  “Schadenfreude,” Sid said, not looking away. “They also brought knowledge and made a path where there had been none. The guilds still gated the climb, but there was a way to rise if you kept moving,” and he held the doppelg?nger’s gaze until his jaw ached and the words sounded like an oath.

  “Human guilds existed before the Federation—and you were in one. You like the Federation because it crushed a few people you did not like, people who did not even know you existed. That is a cowardly way to take revenge,” said the doppelg?nger, holding Sid’s gaze without glaring.

  The words stung, especially the last part, because of how true they were. His supposed enemies—the minister who assigned him as a bodyguard to his son and the billionaire who snagged the skill he earned—they moved in circles where he did not register. It had been a one-sided crusade in his mind.

  “That is the third time you have called me a coward.” Sid forced his voice to stay clear. “I avoided risks, yes, but I did not just survive—I thrived. I was a Tier 4 Grandmaster and an assistant researcher at the Federal Institute of Dungeon Studies. You know what Varun got for his bravery; a bullet in the back of his head.”

  “A couple of things,” the doppelg?nger answered, tilting his head the smallest degree. “First, you still miss the point. Bragging about thriving is thin when you had just one skill at Tier 4, and you were a teaching assistant at the Institute, not even allowed to teach classes. Do you believe your younger self would be happy about your achievements? Second, Varun lived more in two years than you managed in nineteen.”

  “I am sick and tired of your mind games. If you have something to say, say it,” Sid snapped, stepping up so his boot scraped the damp stone.

  The doppelg?nger rose as well, taking the higher step so their eye lines crossed at an angle that felt like a challenge. “Now you are ready to listen, because I shut you out for a few minutes. What about the years you shut me out and smothered my voice? Why? Because I kept speaking the truth, which you were not brave enough to face.”

  Wind shoved across the river with a sudden force, salted and metallic on the tongue, the kind that rides ahead of a thunder line. The water lost its glassy stillness and broke into nervous patterns, and the book at the doppelg?nger’s feet fluttered open, pages flipping in the wind.

  Sid winced as he stepped down, putting a little distance between himself and the doppelg?nger. “Who are you?” There was a trace of fear in his voice.

  “I am you, the one who could have been—if you were brave enough to face the truth,” the doppelg?nger said, meeting Sid’s gaze without heat. “When you reflected on your past mistakes, you tuned out my voice; instead of learning from them and improving, you rationalized them by saying, ‘My choices made me the man I am today.’ You preferred lying to yourself over the unpleasant truth—because you lacked the courage to see yourself as the world sees you. You are not special, but you could be. The road to greatness starts with understanding who you are and where you stand.” His voice lost its bite as he finished, the edges rounding until the words felt almost like instruction rather than indictment.

  “What do you want me to do?” Sid’s voice was softer than before, barely audible over the wind and rustling leaves.

  “You should be asking yourself that.” The doppelg?nger’s brows relaxed, a gentle smile on his face.

  “I do not know what I want to do.” The admission surprised Sid with the relief that followed it.

  “That is not a bad answer. You need the courage to find out what you want, to try different things, to think and act in a way only you can. Therein lies the meaning of existence, of life itself,” The doppelg?nger extended his arms, palms up.

  Sid noticed the wind’s voice fade and the world seem brighter; he turned to see sunlight kissing the gentle waves of the river. The clouds had parted, the heavy wind had settled into a gentle breeze, and the mango he had noticed earlier had somehow freed itself and was floating away.

  I will never lie to myself, Sid made a silent promise to himself. The words from an old poem came to his mind: I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul.

  Something clicked at the core of his being, in his very soul; he had felt something similar in his memories, but never with this intensity.

  …

  …

  Traits [1/1]

  ????: Contract [0/1]

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  …

  “Looks like your time is up.” The doppelg?nger had a warm smile on his face.

  “Will I ever see you again?” asked Sid, eyes wide, lips parted.

  “Only if you live your life to the fullest.” The doppelg?nger picked up his book and gave a small wave with it.

  Sid smiled as his form dissolved into drifting motes of light.

  The doppelg?nger’s smile faded, and he looked across the river, where the toddler from before stood watching. Its gaze held such loathing that they seemed like sworn enemies meeting across a field.

  The doppelg?nger smirked, tipped his head, and touched his index and middle fingers to his brow in a mock salute to the child.