Journal - Date: [Illegible]
I don't know how many days have passed since I returned. The clock insists it is Tuesday, but my body swears I am lying. Every time I close my eyes, I see two moons. Every time I open them, I miss the one that isn't there.
They say humans cannot feel homesick for places that do not exist. That the mind rejects impossible memories the way the body rejects a transplanted organ.
Then why do I still smell moonflowers?
- G.S.
...
The world returned in fragments.
First: texture. Damp grass against his face, each blade pressing into his cheek like insistent little fingers. This was not the soft, luminescent grass of the Silver Palace gardens - the kind that glowed under the twin moons and whispered songs when the wind passed. This was ordinary grass, terrestrial, devoid of any magic — and for that very reason, devastatingly real.
Second: sound. Children laughing somewhere in the distance, their shrill voices cutting through the fog in his mind. The hoarse bark of a dog. The low, constant hum of urban traffic, a mechanical symphony that did not exist in Stellarum. There was no clinking of armor, no crystalline song of the mage-lights that illuminated the castle corridors.
Third: pain.
Ah, the pain.
It wasn't physical - not exactly. It was something more fundamental, as if someone had hollowed out a vital organ and left a bleeding void where it belonged. Every heartbeat sent ripples of absence through his body, reminding him of something — someone — who was no longer there.
Gabriel Santos opened his eyes.
The sky above him was a pale, washed-out blue, so different from the deep indigo of Stellarum that for a moment he simply lay there, blinking, waiting for reality to correct itself. A single moon would appear soon when night fell. Just one. As if the universe had forgotten the other, or decided that one was enough.
It wasn't enough. It never would be.
He stood up slowly, muscles protesting not from physical exhaustion, but from the muscle memory of a body that expected to be stronger, faster, more present than this. His hands — the same hands that had wielded the blade of light, that had channeled mana through battle runes, that had touched her face one last time - were just ordinary hands now. No warrior's calluses. No battle scars.
Clean... Whole... Empty.
The Santos Municipal Park stretched around him with its banal familiarity. It was Tuesday, early afternoon, and the park was moderately busy with the common life of a Brazilian coastal city. A mother pushing a stroller. Teenagers cutting class, sitting under a tree with hidden cigarettes.
An ice cream vendor with his white and blue cart.
Gabriel recognized it all. He had grown up here. He was twelve when they climbed that tree over there — he and Mariana, before everything got complicated. He was fifteen when he had his first real fight in that corner, defending a younger boy from bullies. He was seventeen when he sat on that specific bench and decided he needed to leave Santos, to go anywhere that was different, special, important.
Be careful what you wish for.
"Hey, man, are you okay?"
Gabriel turned his head too slowly — a tactical error, his instructor would have said; always maintain peripheral awareness — and saw a middle-aged man in running gear, standing a few meters away with a worried expression.
"I..." Gabriel began, and his own voice surprised him. Weaker. Younger. Lacking the command tone he had developed after three years of shouting orders on battlefields. "I'm fine. Just... fell asleep."
Asleep? Is that what happened? The word seemed insufficient to describe the process of being literally dismantled at a molecular level, having one's soul ripped from one reality and brutally replanted into another.
The runner didn't look convinced, but he nodded and continued his route. Gabriel stood there, swaying slightly, trying to remember how normal humans behaved when they weren't processing dimensional trauma.
That was when he saw it.
His reflection in the window of a nearby snack bar.
Gabriel Santos was twenty-two years old. Messy dark hair, in need of a cut. A face his mother called "handsome in a normal way" — no scars, no hard jawline developed from years of training. Dark brown eyes that no longer sparkled with that silver tint that appeared when he channeled mana.
This was Gabriel. Just Gabriel.
Solmere - Tactical Commander of the Royal Guard, Knight of the Bridge, the right hand of Queen Luna - did not exist here. Could not exist here.
Because this world had forgotten that magic was real.
...
"Will it hurt?" he had asked, holding her hand while the Circle of Return glowed around them with impossible light. Ancient runes searing the air, reality fraying at the edges.
Luna - no, Queen Lunaris Stellara, Blade of the Twin Moons, Sovereign of Stellarum - squeezed his hand with a force that could have broken bones if she weren't holding back with such delicacy.
"It will hurt in ways for which you have no words," she replied with that brutal honesty that was one of the things he loved most about her. "Because you will return knowing exactly what you lost. Knowing it was real. Knowing you were complete."
Silver hair falling over tense warrior shoulders. Eyes the same silver hue as the moons that had named her, now glistening with unshed tears. She was wearing full armor - she always was in those final days, with the war approaching - but in this moment, she looked more vulnerable than he had ever seen her.
"Why me?" Gabriel whispered. "Why do I have to go?"
"Because you never fully belonged to this place, Solmere." Her voice cracked at the edges. "And now that the Shadows are awakening, your presence here is making the barrier between worlds bleed. You are the Bridge. And bridges must be anchored on both sides."
"And if I don't want to go? If I stay?"
Luna let go of his hand. The gesture was small, but it felt like a stab wound.
"Then Stellarum will fall. And in the process, we will drag your world down with us." She turned away, not wanting him to see her face. "Go, Solmere. Live a real life. Forget us. That is what the ritual was designed for."
"I will never—"
"You will." She cut him off, and now there was steel in her voice - the Queen, not the woman. "The anchoring spells will blur the edges of your memories. Turn them into dreams. In a few months, you will convince yourself that all of this was just the imagination of a creative mind. It is kinder that way."
"I don't want kindness. I want to remember you."
Finally, she turned. And her face — oh, her face. Luna was crying. The Queen who never cried, who had faced armies without blinking, who had made decisions that broke entire kingdoms, was crying.
"Then remember," she whispered. "Remember every moment. And when remembering becomes unbearable, when the longing is a knife that pierces you every morning, know that I feel the same. That every time I look at the sky and see two moons, I think of how you are seeing only one. And it is because of me."
The Circle was complete. The runes singing that high note that precedes the impossible.
"Luna, I—"
"No." She placed a finger over his lips. "Don't say it. Because if you do, I won't be able to let you go. And I need to let you go. For both worlds. For all of us."
And then she pushed him.
Gabriel fell through collapsing realities, through folding dimensions, through everything that was and could have been. The last thing he saw was Luna on her knees at the center of the Circle, the silver glow of her eyes intensifying until it was impossible to look at.
The last thing he heard was her voice, piercing the impossible:
"You were the best of us, Solmere. Never forget."
And then: nothing.
And then: grass against his face, in a park in Santos, Tuesday afternoon, where magic did not exist and twin moons were merely the delirium of a tired mind.
...
Gabriel blinked, returning to the present. How long had he stood there, staring at his reflection? Minutes? Hours?
His phone vibrated in his pocket. The sensation was strange — he had grown used to communication crystals that glowed when messages arrived, not this mechanical, inelegant vibration.
It was his mother.
Mother: Where are you? I've called three times.
Mother: Gabriel, answer me.
Mother: If you don't answer, I'm calling the police.
He typed with fingers that felt clumsy:
Gabriel: Sorry. Took a nap in the park. Heading home now.
The reply was instant:
Mother: "Nap"? It's 3 PM on a Tuesday. Shouldn't you be at work?
...Work, right. He had a job. In the real world. In the life of Gabriel Santos, who had graduated four months ago in Business Administration, who worked at a local tech startup, who had plans to "maybe do a master's" and "travel more" and all those things twenty-two-year-olds do when they aren't busy saving alternative realities.
Gabriel: Took the afternoon off. Not feeling well.
He wasn't lying. He didn't feel well. He felt as if his heart had been ripped out and replaced by a cold, empty hole that no amount of normalcy could ever fill.
Mother: Want me to make some soup?
Something broke inside him. The simple, unconditional kindness of the question. His mother didn't even know what was wrong — how could she? — but she offered soup anyway. She offered maternal comfort against enemies she couldn't see or understand.
Gabriel: That would be nice. Thanks, mom.
He put the phone away and started walking. Not toward home, not yet. His feet led him instinctively through routes he had known since childhood, but everything felt slightly wrong now. The colors were too dull compared to the saturated hues of Stellarum. The sounds were too harsh, lacking the musical quality that even common conversations had there. Even gravity felt different — he moved more heavily here, as if this world wanted him less.
Or perhaps it was he who wanted this world less.
Gabriel stopped in front of a local craft shop. He hadn't planned on entering. But something in the window caught his eye — a simple silver metal keychain, hanging among tourist trinkets. The shape was too familiar to be a coincidence: a stylized sword, with proportions he recognized, that his muscles recognized from thousands of hours of training.
A sword that should not exist in this world.
Gabriel pushed the door open. The bell tinkled — a cheerful, common sound that contrasted grotesquely with the somber purpose that had brought him here.
"Can I help you?" asked the attendant, a woman in her fifties with a professional smile.
"That keychain in the window," Gabriel pointed. "With the sword."
"Ah, yes! It's pretty, isn't it? I designed it myself." She picked it up, placing it in the palm of his hand. "Inspired by European medieval weapons. Do you study history?"
The metal was warm against his skin. For a second - just one impossible second - Gabriel swore he felt it pulse.
[System Recognition detected]
[Item: Stabilization Replica]
[Function: Memory Anchor]
[Status: Dormant/Partially Active]
Gabriel blinked. The words had appeared in his vision as translucent, floating text — the same System interface he had used in Stellarum to coordinate battles, manage tactics, and monitor allies.
It wasn't possible. The System didn't work here. This world didn't have enough mana to sustain its activation.
Unless...
"The bridge you opened cannot be completely closed," Luna had said, that last night before the ritual. "Part of you will always be anchored in Stellarum. And part of Stellarum will always be anchored in you."
"Sir?" The attendant was looking at him with growing concern. "Are you okay? You've gone pale."
"How much?" His voice came out more controlled than it should have, considering his entire world had just remembered it wasn't as solid as it pretended to be.
"Fifteen reais."
He paid. He left the shop with the heavy keychain in his pocket, feeling its impossible heat through the fabric of his trousers.
The sun was beginning to set, staining the Santos sky with shades of orange and pink. In a few hours, a single moon would rise - pale, solitary, as incredible as it had always been.
And somewhere, in a world this world had forgotten, twin moons were rising over a palace where a silver-haired queen gazed through a scrying basin, searching for a face she had sent away.
"I will find you," Gabriel whispered to the transitioning sky, to the moon yet to rise, to the memory of silver eyes that haunted him. "I don't know how, I don't know when. But I promise, Luna. I will find a way back to you."
The keychain in his pocket pulsed once, warm and reassuring, as if to say: I know.
Gabriel began to walk home. To his parents' house, where his mother would be making soup, where his father would ask about work with well-meaning paternal concern, where his younger sister would likely tease him for being "too dramatic again."
To the life of Gabriel Santos, which was real and solid and happening now.
But in his mind, a voice sang — the voice of a queen transformed into a lullaby memory:
"There shall come he who is the Bridge,
From the world that forgot,
With no crown upon his ridge,
But himself, the anchor of his lot..."
And for the first time since waking up in that park, Gabriel Santos — who was once Solmere, Commander of the Bridge, the man who held a queen while she cried — smiled.
It was a small smile. Broken. But it was a start.
Because bridges exist to be crossed.
And he had always been very good at building paths where no one else saw a possibility.