How it all ends...

 Chapter Thirty-Six: The Old Homestead

The day started off with waffles and a whispered invitation.

"You free this afternoon?" Gert asked as she poured a generous glug of syrup onto my plate.

I nodded, curious. "Always, unless someone needs a dragon slain or a cheese helmet polished."

"Good," she said. "There's someplace you ought to see."

A few hours later, I found myself climbing into a wooden wagon padded with old quilts and creaky as a haunted attic. Eva sat beside me, her eyes full of sparkle and a lunch basket in her lap. Gert clambered in last with a grunt and a muttered, "My knees haven’t bent properly since the Regan administration."

Our noble steed? An elderly mule named Mr. Potsticker who had the charm of a retired pirate and the speed of a yawning sloth.

"He gets there," Gert assured me. "Eventually."

The road out of town was dirt-packed and lined with crooked fences and trees shaped like they were mid-gossip. As we bumped along, Eva pointed out every odd landmark like a tour guide with a particularly mischievous streak.

"That rock looks like a duck. That one's the duck's enemy."

"And that patch of weeds?" I asked.

"A memorial to the Great Weeding Tragedy of '97," she replied solemnly. "We don't speak of it."

We all laughed so hard I nearly fell off the wagon. Even Mr. Potsticker brayed once in what I took as agreement.

There was something magical about it—not fantasy magical, just heart-thumping, memory-making magical. The wagon creaked, the sun painted lazy streaks through the trees, and for a moment, I forgot all about the weirdness of not knowing who I truly was.

Gert told a long-winded story about how she'd once danced on a bar table in Albuquerque and had to outrun a goat. Eva shared how she tried to make her own jam once but ended up inventing a paste so sticky it took three weeks to clean off the countertop. I told them about the time I got caught sleeping in a school library and claimed I was researching dream symbolism.

We laughed until our ribs ached.

After an hour or so, the scenery began to shift. Trees gave way to open field. The wind picked up, and Mr. Potsticker slowed to a thoughtful clomp.

We rounded a bend, and I sat up straighter. Before us stood the remains of a once-proud homestead. The house itself was small and gray with weathered shutters and a leaning chimney. A barn sat off to the side, or rather, what was left of it. The wood was scorched, beams collapsed inward, and the smell of old ash lingered faintly on the breeze.

We dismounted. I stepped forward slowly.

My boots crunched on old gravel, and my hand brushed the fence as if it could tell me something.

"I know this place," I whispered.

Gert and Eva watched silently, saying nothing.

But I knew. Somehow, some way, I’d been here before.

And the truth, whatever it was, suddenly felt very close.

Very close indeed.

Chapter Thirty-Seven: Keys to the Past

Gert pressed a small, tarnished keyring into my hand. It jingled with the delicate finality of a bell tolling far off. Three keys, one large and iron-wrought, the others smaller, brass and worn with age.

"Take your time," she said. "We'll be here."

Eva smiled gently and squeezed my arm before stepping back with Gert toward the wagon. I was alone now with this strange sense of home and the creaking weight of memory.

The front door opened easier than I expected. It groaned on its hinges but didn't resist. Inside, the air was musty but not unpleasant—like the smell of a book you once loved, rediscovered on an old shelf.

I stepped into the entry hall, dust motes dancing in the sunlight that slanted through crooked blinds. The wallpaper, faded and peeling in places, was patterned with tiny daisies. My fingers brushed the edge of a photograph still hung on the wall. A family—mother, father, two children.

I turned left and opened the first door.

A girl's room. Pink curtains. A bookshelf overstuffed with horse novels and picture books. On the wall, faded posters of bands I halfway remembered. A plastic tiara sat abandoned on a pillow, and the sight of it sent a tight feeling spiraling through my chest.

Next was the parents' room. The bed was neatly made, untouched. A closet door was cracked open, revealing coats still on hangers. On the dresser, a small bowl of trinkets—wedding rings, an old coin, a cracked marble. I stood there for a moment, silent, reverent.

Then came the boy's room.

As soon as I opened the door, it hit me like a gust of memory-laced wind. Posters of baseball players, model airplanes hanging from the ceiling. A crooked bookshelf with comic books. On the desk, a stack of baking books, flour-stained and dog-eared.

And on the bed...

A hat. Faded blue. Frayed brim. Full of holes.

I stepped forward, picked it up slowly, like it might vanish. Then I put it on.

It fit perfectly.

Something turned in my chest. Something old. Something real.

I sat at the desk and ran my fingers over the books. Bread baking. Rye techniques. Even one with a doodle in the margins: a little cartoon of a loaf with arms and legs waving. My doodle.

This was mine. All of it.

I had lived here. This was my home.

And for the first time in what felt like forever, I started to remember who I really was.

Not Loaf.

Not a fantasy adventurer.

Just... Ry.

A boy who used to bake bread. Who wore a silly holey hat. Who loved his family.

And had somehow forgotten it all.

Tears rolled down my cheeks without fanfare or drama. Just quiet understanding.

I whispered into the empty room, "I'm home."

And for once, the silence didn't feel empty at all.

Chapter Thirty-Eight: Home Again

I stepped out into the sunlight, blinking through the haze of everything I’d just uncovered. The breeze carried the scent of grass, dust, and old wood, and it felt like something sacred. Gert stood by the wagon, talking softly with Eva, both of them quieting as I approached.

I smiled, and for once, it felt like it came from deep within. "Thanks for looking after me, Auntie," I said, my voice a bit hoarse.

Gert blinked hard but managed a crooked grin. "Well, someone had to. You never did learn to fold a towel properly."

I glanced back at the house. "I need to get back to town. I have to talk to Grandpa."

The return trip was slower, not because Mr. Potsticker had lost any of his limited enthusiasm, but because my head was so full. I sat close to Eva, her hand gently looped through mine.

"So," she said finally, "you remember now?"

"Bits and pieces," I admitted. "But yeah. Enough to know that I’m not from another world, just from a life I lost."

Eva studied me quietly. "I didn’t recognize you. Not until now. We went to school together. You were... well, you were Ry. The Ry who brought banana bread to class. The one who gave his gloves to that kid who forgot his during the first snow."

"Seriously?" I blinked.

She nodded. "You were a sweet kid. But you moved away after the fire, right? I heard your family—"

I nodded. "Yeah. That’s when everything sort of broke."

She squeezed my hand tighter. "I’m glad you found your way back. Even if you did think we were all elves and magic bakers."

"Hey, I still think that about Gert," I said.

She smirked. "Everyone does."

"I can’t believe I didn’t know," I added after a moment. "All the clues were there. The smells, the people, even the name of the town. It’s like I was trying not to see it."

"You weren’t ready to see it," Eva replied. "And maybe we weren’t ready to show you."

I looked at her curiously. "You mean Gert and Mr. Barrens knew all along?"

She gave a small nod. "More than you think. But they weren’t about to force it on you. You had to come around on your own."

We passed the creek, where frogs still chirped like tiny banjos, and I remembered building a dam there once with my sister. A pang hit me, but it was gentler now, like a memory returned home.

"Do you remember her? Your sister?" Eva asked softly.

"A little," I said. "She had a wild laugh. She made me eat a bug once. Said it would give me magic powers."

Eva chuckled. "Sounds like someone I’d have liked."

By the time we reached town, twilight had started to settle over the rooftops. Lanterns flickered to life, and the bakery chimneys puffed a final sigh of smoke for the day. As we rounded the corner near the general store, I spotted him.

Mr. Barrens. Standing tall despite his age, cane resting against his leg, one hand behind his back like always. He was talking to Mrs. Kessler, nodding politely.

I stepped off the wagon before it stopped.

He turned to look at me. Eyes narrowing.

Then softening.

"Well," he said, voice quiet. "Look what the mule dragged in."

I swallowed a lump in my throat. "Hi, Grandpa."

He stepped forward and, without a word, pulled me into a hug that smelled like pipe smoke, dust, and home.

Everything came full circle in that moment.

And this time, I didn’t need a dragon or a portal to tell me I was exactly where I belonged.

Chapter Thirty-Nine: The Barrens Banter

We sat on the bakery’s back steps, two cups of lukewarm coffee in hand and a half-eaten cruller resting between us. Mr. Barrens had insisted on getting me a cruller, saying, "No real talk happens without fried dough and caffeine."

He looked at me sideways, a grin twitching at the corners of his mouth. "So, Ry, back from the dead, eh? You didn’t even have the decency to send a postcard."

I rolled my eyes. "I was a little busy thinking I’d been transported to another dimension."

"Ha!" He smacked his knee. "You always did have a wild imagination. Remember when you tried to convince your Sunday school class you were a time traveler from biblical times?"

"I still maintain that Moses would’ve been a good pen pal."

He chuckled, then took a sip from his mug. "So, you remember things now?"

"Yeah. It’s like the fog lifted. The house, the rooms, the hat... even the stupid cracked mirror over the sink in the barn. I remember all of it."

Mr. Barrens nodded. "That mirror always made me look ten pounds heavier and twice as grumpy. Thought about tossing it once, but it belonged to your grandma."

We sat quietly for a second until he elbowed me. "So... Eva, huh?"

I gave him a look. "What about her?"

"Don’t play coy. She’s a catch, and she knows how to keep your delusions in check. Lord knows that’s a full-time job."

"We’re... working on it."

"Working on it? That’s what folks say right before they either get married or buy a goat together. Sometimes both."

I laughed and nearly spilled my coffee. "You haven’t changed one bit."

"Course not. I’m too old and too stubborn. I plan to stay this crotchety until the good Lord calls me up—or until Gert finally poisons my tea."

"She’s too subtle for that. You’ll just wake up one day with lavender in your socks and a pie cooling on your forehead."

He let out a bark of a laugh. "She did that once! How did you know?"

"Lucky guess."

We looked out at the sunset beyond the rooftops. Kids were still playing with chalk near the bakery’s front door, and someone across the street had just turned on a porch light shaped like a chicken.

"You did good coming back, Ry," Grandpa said after a pause. "I was worried you’d get stuck in your own head and never make it out."

"Honestly, so was I."

He gave a nod. "But now that you’re back, there’s one last thing we gotta talk about. Tomorrow, when you’ve had some sleep."

I looked at him. "What thing?"

His eyes twinkled in that grandfatherly way. "The why. Why all this happened. Why you forgot. And why we let you."

I swallowed. The warmth in my chest dimmed just a little, but I nodded. "Okay. Tomorrow."

He stood up and stretched. "Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a very important date with a rerun of 'Murder, She Baked.'"

And just like that, the tension floated away like steam off a cruller. But his words stayed rooted. Tomorrow, I’d get the answers.

Tonight, I just enjoyed being found.

Before he shuffled off, Grandpa turned and added, "You know, your grandma always said you had a good heart. Even when you were knee-deep in imaginary pirate treasure in the garden."

I smiled. "That was valuable soil. I was convinced it was cursed by ancient sandwich ghosts."

"Sandwich ghosts?"

"Yeah, you know. They come back because their last bites were stolen."

He shook his head, chuckling. "Boy, you make less sense the more you talk."

We sat in comfortable silence a while longer. The sky shifted from orange to indigo, and the scent of fresh cinnamon rolls wafted through the alley from the night bakers starting early.

"You staying at Gert’s still?" he asked.

"For now. But I think... I think I want to fix up the old homestead. Make it livable again."

"Good," he said, taking another sip of his coffee. "That place needs some life again. And maybe a new roof."

"And a few less raccoons."

"Don’t talk bad about the tenants. They pay their rent in attitude and muddy footprints."

We both laughed. It felt easy now—like I had stepped back into a world that had been waiting for me. Tomorrow would bring answers.

Tonight, I had home, family, and the last bite of a very good cruller.

Chapter Forty: The Long Way Back

The next morning dawned bright and calm, with the kind of breeze that carries fresh bread smells and sunlight in equal measure. I walked down to the bakery, expecting more pastries and maybe another cryptic joke or two from Grandpa Barrens. Instead, I found him waiting on the bench outside, coat on, cane in hand.

"Walk with me," he said.

We strolled down the back alley toward the ridge overlooking town. He didn’t say much at first—just walked slow and steady, like he was walking alongside time itself. When we got to the overlook, he finally sighed and sat on the edge of an old stone wall.

"You were twelve," he said. "Your mom, dad, and your sister Jenny went out to get ice cream. That night, a drunk ran a red light. Hit them full-on. They didn’t make it."

The wind didn’t stop, but everything else inside me froze. I felt the blood drain from my face.

"You had stayed behind," Grandpa continued. "You were upset because Jenny ate your piece of pie. Silly reason to be mad, but you were twelve. Gert had taken you for a walk to cool off."

I sat down next to him, the world spinning a bit.

"Afterward," he said, voice softer now, "you stopped talking. Completely. Wouldn’t eat. Wouldn’t sleep unless someone sang to you. We got you into a place upstate. Quiet, calm, with a woman named Sister Elenora who ran the program like a country chapel."

I looked at him, my voice barely a whisper. "I don’t remember any of that."

"That’s the thing about trauma," he said. "Sometimes your brain builds a fortress around it. Walls so thick even you can’t tell what’s inside."

He reached into his coat pocket and handed me a worn photograph. My family, standing outside our old homestead. Me in the front, wearing a floppy sunhat full of holes.

I touched the photo and the tears just came. No fighting them.

Grandpa didn’t say anything for a bit. Just let me sit with it.

"When the doctors finally thought you were strong enough, we didn’t know where to start. Gert came up with the idea of easing you back. We’d stage it—slow introductions, familiar faces from your past."

I looked at him, stunned. "You mean... the whole town?"

He nodded. "Some of them. Eva was just a coincidence. She didn’t know who you were at first, but she figured it out fast. Said she liked you better now. Calmer. Kinder."

I wiped at my eyes, still processing. "So how’d I get to town?"

"Ambulance from the sanitarium. You were sedated for the trip. When you came to, you were standing in the bakery kitchen thinking you'd stepped through some portal. We all just kinda... let it ride."

"And no one told me?"

"We figured it was better you get there on your own. You’d always been imaginative. It seemed safer than dragging you into cold facts too fast."

I let out a small laugh, though it came out watery. "I thought I’d been isekai’d."

Grandpa chuckled. "I figured that’s what you were thinking. When you told Gert you were looking for the castle, she nearly dropped her flour sack."

The breeze carried birdsong past us, and we both listened for a while.

"So what now?" I asked.

He looked out over the town. "Now? You live. You fix up that homestead. You love that girl who puts up with your cheese nip theology. You write it all down if you want. Or you just sit and breathe it all in."

I nodded slowly. "I think I can do that."

He stood, joints creaking. "Good. Because I’m getting too old to carry this town on my own. Might be time for you to take a turn."

I stood too, holding that old photograph to my chest.

And in that moment, I didn’t feel lost anymore. Not even a little.

We stayed on that ridge a while longer, sharing silence in the way only two people with a heavy past can. Grandpa told me how the town pitched in—how Gert and Mr. Potsticker were both more involved than I'd ever guessed. Even the kids had been told to treat me like one of their own.

The truth was like a healing wind: a little cold at first, but clean and welcome.

As we started walking back, he told me the story of my dad teaching me to bake bread. How I used to sneak into the kitchen at night to read cookbooks. How my sister Jenny once iced a loaf like it was a birthday cake, just to make me laugh.

"You were always the odd one," he said. "But in the best way."

"Guess I still am."

He smiled. "You’re not odd, Ry. You’re ours."

And for the first time in years, I truly felt like I belonged.

Chapter Forty-One: Rise and Shine

The bell above the bakery door gave a cheerful jingle as I pushed it open, apron already slung over one shoulder. The warm smell of honeyed buns and cinnamon rolls wrapped around me like a quilt. Gert gave me a nod from behind the counter. "You know, Ry," she said, "you’ve finally stopped burning the morning loaves."

"Took me long enough," I grinned, tying the apron properly. "Only cost us thirty-seven bricks of bread and one dented oven."

She laughed. "That poor oven."

I slipped on my gloves and headed back into the kitchen, where everything felt familiar now. The flour bins, the old mixer with its wheezing cough, even the squeaky floorboard by the pantry—it was mine. All of it.

And I didn’t just mean it metaphorically. That afternoon, Grandpa had me sit down in the back office, which doubled as the world's dustiest library. He handed me a manila envelope stuffed with paperwork and a check so big my brain needed a minute to process it.

"It’s yours," he said. "The bakery. The land it’s on. And enough in the trust to fix up your homestead, buy a mule if you're still into that sort of thing, or maybe one of them shiny tractors. But I recommend the mule. Better personality."

I stared at the papers. "Why me?"

He leaned back in his chair, folding his hands over his belly. "Because it’s always been yours. We just had to help you remember that."

I swallowed hard. "Thanks, Grandpa."

He waved it off. "You earned it. You kept this place running while thinking you were in Narnia. That takes guts."

The next few days flew by. I started opening the shop myself. Waking up before dawn didn’t even feel like punishment anymore. Customers knew me by name. One little girl even gave me a crayon drawing that said, "Mr. Ry’s bread is best."

One morning, as I was closing up the register, Eva wandered in. She’d taken to stopping by for her afternoon coffee and apple turnover. This time, she brought flowers. Not a bouquet, just a fistful of wild daisies.

"You look like a man who could use a splash of yellow," she said.

"Always," I replied, taking the flowers. "You, uh, free for a walk?"

We wandered along the edge of town, past the edge of the rye field where I’d once thought the clouds looked like dragons. I told her about the inheritance, about the mule I wanted to name Mr. Crust. She didn’t laugh. She smiled that crooked half-smile of hers.

"So you’re staying?" she asked.

"Not just staying," I said. "I’m living."

The sky had that golden late-afternoon glow, and she stopped walking just long enough to look at me fully. "I’m glad, Ry. Really."

And then, like it was the most natural thing in the world, we kissed. No fanfare. No dramatic music. Just two people, standing in a rye field, pretending the clouds were dragons.

Later that night, I opened my journal again.

"Dear God," I wrote. "Thanks for not giving up on me. Thanks for wild daisies and old ovens and girls who kiss you just because. And if it’s not too much, please help Mr. Crust be strong enough to haul lumber. Amen."

I signed it, then added one final note:

P.S. Tell Jenny I still miss her. But I’m going to be okay.

Prologue: The Portal and the Pie Wagon

The sun dappled through the old apple tree, lazy and warm, falling in golden speckles across the overgrown grass. Ry sat on the porch with his coffee cooling beside him, watching his little boy chase a wiry gray tabby around the yard.

"Tabby Man Junior, get back here!" the boy hollered, wooden sword in one hand and a lopsided colander helmet strapped to his head.

The cat leapt onto the fencepost and blinked at him, unimpressed, then bounded away with a tail flick. Laughter erupted behind the screen door.

"You named the cat after a myth you made up," Eva said, stepping out and brushing flour from her arms. "You realize that, right?"

Ry leaned back in the creaky rocker, the slats groaning beneath him. "Well, to be fair, the myth turned out to be history."

She rolled her eyes but sat beside him anyway, folding one leg beneath her. "He’s got your imagination, you know."

"And your appetite. Kid ate three rolls before breakfast."

She reached out to ruffle her son’s hair as he dashed by again, sword raised. "You think he’ll believe us when we tell him about the... Isekai That Wasn’t?"

Ry chuckled. "Nah. He’ll say we’re pulling his tail. Just like I thought everyone else was when I first got here."

They sat quietly for a few minutes, watching the tabby lead their boy in a grand chase around the stump that once held the old mailbox. A fresh breeze rolled through the valley, carrying the smell of warm bread from the kitchen and lilacs from the hedges. It was almost enough to make Ry forget he’d once thought this was another world.

Almost.

"You ready?" Eva asked, standing and brushing her skirt down. "We’ve got pies to deliver."

Ry nodded, setting his cup aside. The wagon was already hitched out front, Mr. Crust the Second waiting patiently with his big dopey ears twitching every time a bird dared chirp.

As Ry loaded the pies—apple, strawberry, and something new Eva was calling "lemon whisper"—their boy scrambled into the back and plopped down beside the basket of dinner rolls.

"You know," Ry said as he climbed into the driver’s seat, "if we were going to get isekai’d, this would be the day. Sunshine, good bread, a noble steed—"

"—and the legendary Tabby Man Jr.," Eva added.

"And don’t forget," Ry grinned, "we’re on a noble quest. A pie quest."

Their son raised his wooden sword. "To the Kingdom of Buttercrust!"

"To Buttercrust!" Ry and Eva echoed in unison, laughter filling the crisp morning.

They rolled out of the homestead gate and onto the dirt path toward town, bumping along over old tree roots and potholes. The forest whispered on both sides, bees danced lazily through tall sunflowers, and every now and then, Mr. Crust the Second brayed in protest when the wagon shifted too hard.

About halfway down the trail, Ry turned toward Eva, elbow on the bench.

"So... hypothetically, if a portal opened up right now, what would you want our next world to be like?"

Eva smirked. "Oh, easy. One where nobody eats the last cheese nip."

"Impossible fantasy," he teased.

"I mean it. A land of plenty. And silence during movies."

"And well-behaved mules," Ry added, as Mr. Crust farted audibly.

Their son wrinkled his nose. "Ew!"

Just then, the air around them shifted. A coolness swept across the path like someone had opened a window in a stuffy room. Mr. Crust the Second halted, his hooves digging in. The reins went taut.

"Ry..." Eva said, her voice small.

Ry turned back toward the trail—and there it was.

A shimmering oval of silver and blue light, floating a few feet above the ground, right in the middle of their path. It crackled softly, like static mixed with wind chimes. Beyond it... not forest. Not the familiar world they knew. A castle. Floating stones. A sky with two suns.

Ry blinked. Eva grabbed his hand. Their son leaned forward in awe, pie basket forgotten.

"You were saying...?" she whispered.

"I was saying," Ry said slowly, "that this is very on-brand."

The portal pulsed.

Mr. Crust the Second whinnied—but not in fear. In excitement, almost like he knew.

"Do we go through?" Eva asked.

Ry looked at her, then at their boy. He thought of Tabby Man Jr., who had leapt into the front seat and now stared at the light with his ears perked.

"Together," Ry said.

And with a bump, a squeal, and a burst of glowing laughter, the wagon rolled forward—and vanished into the light.

Just like that, Ry got isekai’d again.

Only this time, he brought his family.