THE WRONG GUY IN THE RIGHT GALAXY
Arjun Sharma is not a hero.
He is a 27 year old government employee from Mumbai who has been waiting six weeks for his office chair to be repaired. His greatest daily challenge is whether the dhaba near his office has made fresh dal or is hiding yesterday's leftovers under extra tadka. He has never fought anyone. He has never saved anything. Once he found a lost puppy and instead of heroically returning it he filed a written complaint with the building society asking them to put up a notice.
This is the man the Ancient Prophecy of the Cosmoverse has been waiting fourteen thousand years for.
On a completely ordinary Tuesday morning, while crawling on his hands and knees on a Mumbai footpath looking for his cracked phone, Arjun accidentally steps backwards into a glowing turquoise portal that absolutely should not have been there and absolutely was not his fault. He falls through space, makes uncomfortable eye contact with a fish wearing a hat, and crash lands face first on a lizard-postman in an alien galaxy called the Cosmoverse.
The Cosmoverse is having a terrible time right now.
The Supreme Dark Overlord Malachar the Eternal has been slowly destroying galaxies for three hundred years. His army of Shadow Beasts has wiped out four civilizations. His laugh alone causes spontaneous furniture rearrangement across two solar systems. The entire Cosmoverse has been waiting desperately for the Chosen One to arrive and save them all.
They were expecting someone slightly more impressive than Arjun.
Unfortunately the Ancient Prophecy is very specific. Arrives through Gate Seven. Wearing the clothes of confusion. Carrying a broken seeing-stone. Smelling faintly of regret and missed breakfast. Orders the moon-broth. Twice.
Arjun did all of these things. Including the moon-broth. He ordered two cups.
The Prophecy Department, headed by the permanently exhausted Grix, has no choice but to declare Arjun the official Chosen One of the Cosmoverse. Arjun responds to this news by asking for the contract in writing and finding two typos in the fourteen thousand year old prophecy document within four minutes of reading it.
He is then assigned a guide named Zook, whose sword is on fire for reasons nobody can fully explain including Zook, who is so excited about the arrival of the Chosen One that they crash through a window to make their entrance instead of using the door which was right there and was unlocked.
Together, Arjun and Zook must travel across the Cosmoverse to find the three Ancient Keys that will unlock the only weapon capable of defeating Malachar. Their journey takes them through a kingdom run entirely by dragons who refuse to go anywhere without GPS navigation, a floating city where it rains upwards, a wizard university where no spell can be cast without submitting the correct paperwork in triplicate, and a black market where someone is trying to sell what they claim is the left shoe of a previous Chosen One for an absolutely unreasonable amount of money.
Along the way Arjun discovers that the Cosmoverse's problems are somehow always slightly worse than described, that Zook's sword being on fire is actually the least concerning thing about Zook, and that Malachar the Eternal, Supreme Dark Overlord and destroyer of galaxies, has an enemy suggestion box outside his fortress because he genuinely values feedback.
There is also a prophecy update nobody told anyone about. It changes everything. It also has three more typos. Arjun circles all of them.
The fate of seventeen galaxies rests in the hands of a man who just wants to go home, fix his chair, find a chai stall that has ginger, and eat fresh dal.
The universe, as always, has other plans...
Secret_Name_01 · Fantasi