When would this end? Was I missing something important? I tried everything I could think of to wake myself up somehow, but none of it worked.

  For her part, Coroban did her best to stop me from going crazy by keeping me updated on the outside world (to whatever extent she could with her limited awareness) and starting conversations about various topics. How quickly we ran out of pleasant things to discuss was an unpleasant surprise.

  “I should have had you give Rosa a message for Frost.”

  She nodded. “That’s a good point. Sorry I didn’t think of it before I stepped out back then.”

  “How did you do that, anyway?”

  “What’s the best way to put it… normally a soul is bound to the body, as one might expect. My original body is gone, so I’m no longer bound to anything, and that gives me a bit more freedom to move.”

  She sighed. “Though only so much freedom. I really thought I’d be able to stay out there for longer… I suppose it’s reassuring for you to know that I can’t, however.”

  Yes, that was something of a relief. “How does that apply to me, though? This isn’t my original body.”

  She stroked her chin thoughtfully. “Is your original body still alive in the other world? Perhaps you’re bound to two bodies at once, and their tug-of-war is putting strain on your soul? Given your age, Helian, I had assumed that was no longer a possibility. But perhaps time flows differently in the world you came from…”

  I had been trying my best not to think about this. “Yes, it’s possible my old body is still alive… though I wasn’t in the best of health. I still don’t know how I got here, to be honest. It shouldn’t be possible in the first place. My world didn’t have magic or anything like it. Our science certainly hadn’t approached the level of traveling to other worlds or manipulating souls; we hadn’t even proved whether they existed or not.”

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  “You know our world from a novel, do you not? That you arrived within this world and not just any world suggests intent, or at least a connection between the novel and your means of travel, I think.”

  I considered this quite often in the past, especially when I first arrived here. How was it that of all possible worlds, I ended up in this one? How was it even possible for a novel to be a real world?

  Had the novel merely resembled the world I now existed in, like peering into it through frosted glass? But if so, how could the plot align so precisely with my fate in this world?

  “You may not want to hear this, Helian, but you should consider whether you truly understood the world you came from. For you to travel from there to here without the aid of science makes me think magic is responsible. Magic may have dwelled in your world all along, without you being aware of it. At one point this world was the same, after all – few understood magic, and one could live their entire life without seeing it first-hand.”

  “Despite the impression I give off, I didn’t have that many friends… and by the end, most of them had stopped visiting. It doesn’t make sense that out of all possible people, a magician would choose me to send to another world.”

  “You seem convinced that no one you knew possessed magic. But having it is no guarantee that one would know how to use it, or even realize it existed. It can be a thing of instinct, something that comes as natural as breathing. Were its effects subtle enough, the magician might not realize they held any power at all.”

  “So, you’re saying someone I knew could have sent me here on purpose.”

  Coroban sipped her tea. “The alternative would be that someone from this world somehow chose you of all people to bring here, despite not knowing you. And then once you arrived, they left you to your own devices for decades. Anyone motivated enough to summon a saintess would not abandon them like that – they would be put to work immediately.”

  I had feared an outcome like that for a long time, though once things settled down, I was able to put those fears to rest. “It sounds as if that happened in the past.”

  “Multiple times. We banned the relevant texts and executed everyone involved.” As she said this, she suddenly looked up at the sky.

  “Helian, we seem to be in a carriage headed westward.”

  To the west? There’s nothing out there! “Why on earth would we be going that way?”

  “I’m not sure, but your wife is with you, so she must have something in mind. Perhaps she’s needed urgently back at the border for some reason?”

  And she’s bringing me along to the border? That’s too reckless, even for her. “We’re missing something.”

  Suddenly, my hand felt very warm.