I. A Difficult Choice

The people of the kingdom were dressed in all black as the royal funeral procession marched through the streets. Six guards, with their shoulders squared in solemn unity, carried a jet black coffin draped in white and gold silk. Behind them, Adrian rode expressionless on a white steed, a mask stretched over the storm within.

The crowd parted in silence as the procession marched further, their eyes searching for grief within Adrian, for anger, for anything they could. But he gave them nothing. His blank gaze pierced forward, past the weeping faces, the flowers tossed in the way, past the world itself.

She was just an illusion… That's what Diana said.... So why do I feel so...

The thought refused to finish itself, lodged like an uneven shard of glass in his throat as the procession arrived at the cemetery gates.

The land of the dead stretched for miles, a sea of headstones shimmering under the harsh rays of sunlight. Adrian followed his servants and the coffin until they made their way to the destined sight, dismounting and walking to the open grave where his servants lowered his deceased beloved.

With trembling fingers, Adrian brushed back the lid for one final look. Her body lay still, but not cold, at least not in his mind. He leaned in to get a closer look, the faint smell of the intoxicating perfume she had always worn hitting him like a ton of bricks. He lifted her hand, once pressed warmly against his chest, letting it slip out of his grasp as it fell with a thud under its own weight, confirming her eternal slumber. He touched the bite mark near his neck and it throbbed under his fingertips like it remembered her lips.

If she was an illusion, then why did her scent still linger? Why did her body carry weight? Why? Why did his heart twist with such unbearable agony?

Memories with her flung him further into the abyss. Nights she lay silently awake beside him, the way her hand sometimes paused as she bathed him, trembling before resuming, the sadness in her expression whenever she thought he wasn’t watching.

“Do it,” 

Adrian ordered, voice flat, and so they did, burying her without delay. He turned away, the white steed carrying him far from the hole in the ground, though his heart never left it.

Time unraveled strangely after that. The woman, now in spirit, lingered with him. Her smile was ever present. When he soaked in the baths, it was as if her phantom lips brushed his bite mark until it burned red again, and when the torchlights flickered, he swore her shadow was standing in the corner of his chambers, looking at him with a prepossessing grin.

The woman's only daughter, grown now, slipped seamlessly into her mother’s place. She washed Adrian, tended to his every need and gave him everything he could ever ask for in body and spirit alike. Adrian accepted it, because what else could he do? The rhythm of devotion and sacrifice was the air the kingdom breathed. His people adored him as a god among men, the eternal king who never aged. Yet in quiet moments the unease grew.

This world is real. Diana was wrong.

He told himself when the weight of their devotion warmed him.

This world isn’t real. Diana was right.

He told himself when his knife bit deeply into the flesh of his victims, their screaming overtaking his mind with each new sacrifice.

All of it conspired and soon Adrian was a hypocrite of the highest order. That was, until one fateful night when a swaddled bundle lay before him on the altar; a newborn baby, its tiny chest rising and falling. Adrian’s blood ran cold.

No… not this…

The torchlight flickered violently as he staggered backward, nearly tripping over his own robe. Sacrificing children had been hard enough but this was different. A newborn was innocence incarnate, untouched by the world. To spill its blood was damnation.

His hands trembled violently as the chamber walls pressed in. The chanting of priests became a deafening roar. His heart pounded in his ears but he could not do it as he turned and fled.

Through the winding corridors of the castle he stumbled, teleporting at a breakneck pace. At last he was in his chamber, where the daughter of that woman rushed to him. She gathered him in her arms, her voice trembling as though she feared him breaking into a million pieces.

His breathing slowed in her embrace, though his heart never steadied. He clutched her desperately! The exhaustion from all the panic and tormented thoughts dragged at his body as he slipped into a forced and fitful sleep.

That was when the voice returned.

“Adrian.”

His chest constricted as though invisible hands squeezed his heart. The world warped, folding in on itself, colors bleeding together into a collapsing vortex. Every smile, every scream, every sacrifice , decades of his life, all compressed into a single heartbeat. Panic spliced through the very fibre of his essence as the torrent dragged him under.

Adrian gasped awake, choking for breath. His vision blurred. His hand wandered until it brushed cold metal. Glasses.

…Glasses? Since when did I need these...”

He thought as he put them on and his vision returned to him, along with a shocking revelation. His eyes split open into a horrified stare as he realised what had happened. He was suddenly back in his capsule room again, the unmistakable wailing of the obnoxiously loud train outside rattling the realisation into him. The same tiny coffin welcomed him back with open arms.

Harsh sunlight streamed through peeling walls, the bite mark still burning faintly. Reality pressed down, harsh and unyielding. The other world, the silk of the woman, her wicked grin, the bite mark, the hum, the candles... All lingered in his mind like a ghostly echo.

He was back.

No… no, no…

He fell to the floor, fists slamming against the boards until his knuckles split. He pressed his forehead against the door, eyes wild.

"Not gone. Not yet."

The whisper curled through his skull, soft as a lover’s touch.

A knock shattered the moment.

“Adrian! It's Max! I called you yesterday but it seems like you didn't get the message!! Rent is due, now! Pay up, or get out by tonight!”

The voice of his landlord? The world outside pressed in.

He called yesterday? That can't be right...

Adrian thought as his head fell to the floor, tears falling faster, mind reeling.

I was gone for decades...

He thought, caught between two realities, one impossibly vast, the other painfully banal, and neither letting go.

He raced for his bedside table and grabbed his phone to see the date and time, leaving him terrified. It was as if no time had passed at all.

Decades had unfolded in the other world. Yet here, in his depressing reality, barely a day had passed