We stepped into the house, and the moment I crossed the doorway, I knew nothing about my life was ever going to feel normal again. The air felt wrong, heavy in a way I couldn't explain, like the walls had been holding onto secrets for years and had finally decided they were done protecting everyone. Sahasra walked in beside me in complete silence, and I shut the door behind us. The sound echoed through the house, making the silence that followed feel even louder. I could hear my own heartbeat, my own breathing, and the sound of my thoughts slowly unraveling. When we stepped into the living room, I stopped walking completely. My parents were sitting on the couch along with Sahasra's parents, and the moment I saw them, something inside me snapped. They weren't surprised to see us. They weren't confused. They were waiting, like they had known this moment would come for a very long time. Like this conversation had always been inevitable.
I slowly looked around the house, and somehow that made everything worse. This house belonged to my family long before it became mine. It was the house I grew up in before we moved to India, and every corner of it carried memories of my older brother. Memories my parents could never escape. After his death, they could barely step inside this place without falling apart. Eventually, they handed the house over to me because they said the memories were too painful for them to live with. They told me it should belong to me now. And yet here they were, sitting in the middle of all those memories while still hiding even more truths from me. A quiet laugh escaped me, but there was no humor in it. It sounded broken, angry, and exhausted all at once.
I asked them if this was some kind of joke before my anger completely took over. I demanded to know who we were, what this prophecy actually was, and why the fate of an entire world was somehow resting on two eighteen-year-olds who had no idea what was happening to them. My breathing became uneven as weeks of confusion, fear, and anger finally exploded out of me. I pointed at all of them and told them they had known everything from the very beginning. They had watched us get dragged into this insanity and had said absolutely nothing. My voice cracked as memories of the trial came rushing back all at once. I told them I had nearly died that day. I turned toward Sahasra and told them she had been forced to watch every second of it happen. I could still remember the fear on her face back at Dragon Base, the way her hands were shaking, and the tears in her eyes while she watched me destroy myself just to survive. I asked them how they could possibly think silence was the right choice after all of that.
My mother looked seconds away from completely breaking down. My father looked exhausted in a way I had never seen before. Sahasra's parents looked just as guilty, but for once, I didn't care. I was tired of protecting everyone else's emotions while mine were being destroyed. I asked them who our older siblings really were. I looked directly at my parents and demanded to know who Vikram really was. Then I turned toward Sahasra's parents and asked who Sahasra really was. The silence that followed felt endless. No one moved. No one spoke. For one horrible second, I thought they were going to lie again.
Then my father slowly stood up, and my entire body went cold because his hands were shaking. My father had never shaken a day in his life. He looked at me first and then at Sahasra, and when he finally spoke, his voice sounded completely broken. He said that to answer my question, I needed to understand something impossible. He told me that my brother and I were the same person. Then he looked at Sahasra and said she and her sister were the same person too.
For a moment, I genuinely stopped understanding what words meant. I stared at him, waiting for him to explain what he meant, waiting for him to tell me I had misunderstood, waiting for him to laugh and admit this was some cruel misunderstanding. He didn't. My mother completely broke down crying. Sahasra stumbled backward beside me. I screamed at my father, asking him what that was even supposed to mean. I told him he didn't get to say something like that and expect us to understand. I pointed toward the family pictures hanging on the wall, pictures of my brother, pictures of someone I had spent my entire life mourning. I told him my brother existed. He lived. He was real. My chest tightened so painfully it felt like something was crushing me from the inside as I asked him how the hell I was supposed to be him.
The room blurred as tears burned in my eyes. I hated that I was crying. I hated that I felt weak. More than anything, I hated that nothing made sense anymore. Beside me, Sahasra finally spoke, her voice trembling as she said her sister died the day she was born and asked how she was supposed to be her. That question shattered whatever composure remained in the room. My mother started sobbing openly. Sahasra's mother covered her mouth as tears ran down her face. My father looked like he had aged ten years in a matter of seconds. He quietly said he knew it sounded impossible and that we both had every right to hate them, but it was the truth.
I stared at him in complete disbelief and kept shaking my head. I told him no. I told him he was lying because the alternative was far worse. The alternative meant my entire life had been built on lies. The alternative meant I didn't know who I was anymore. Standing there in the middle of the house my parents handed to me because they couldn't bear the memories of my brother anymore, I realized the cruelest part of all of this was that I might have been living inside my own past this entire time without ever knowing it.