chapter 1

Chapter 1

Date: January 15, 1990

Location: St. Augustine's Orphanage, London

A steady, muffled sound of rain tapping against the window was the first thing David noticed. He felt disoriented, as if emerging from a heavy fog. He blinked, willing his vision to sharpen, his body heavy and uncooperative. The smell around him was unfamiliar — a mix of aged wood and faint, lingering disinfectant.

Where am I?

He shifted slightly and felt a cool, scratchy sheet beneath him, far removed from the worn but familiar softness of his own bedding. When he moved his hands, they felt smaller. The fingers thin, delicate. He forced his eyes to focus, lifting his hands into view, and he froze. They weren't the hands of a sixteen-year-old boy. They were tiny, belonging to a child no older than six.

Panic gripped him, a tightening in his chest as he scrambled to sit up, his breaths coming in shallow, quick gasps. The room around him was dimly lit by a lone, flickering bulb, illuminating the rows of small beds lined up against the walls. Everything was wrong. This was not his bedroom, not his reality. He searched his mind, frantically, for a memory of how he'd ended up here, but everything was blank.

"No," he whispered, a childish lilt to his voice that made him flinch. He clapped a hand over his mouth, horrified. This couldn't be real. This had to be a nightmare, some twisted dream.

His gaze landed on a cracked mirror hung haphazardly on the wall across from him. Almost mechanically, he slid off the bed, his small, bare feet touching the cold floor, and approached it. The face staring back at him was his own, but younger. Blond hair fell messily over his forehead, and wide, fearful blue eyes stared back.

"No…," he repeated, his voice breaking, hands reaching up to touch his face as if doing so would shatter the illusion. "This… this is impossible."

He forced himself to think logically. There had to be an explanation. Time travel? But that didn't make sense — he'd gone to bed in 2023, a normal orphan kid in a quiet foster home in Liverpool. He hadn't fallen asleep hoping to wake up in 1990. And yet here he was, in a six-year-old body that shouldn't be his, in an unfamiliar room in what felt like another lifetime.

A thought struck him, cold and unrelenting: he wasn't in the same reality anymore. But the question remained — why?

End of chap.