The lock clicked.
I straightened too fast. My chest objected. The frame I'd been half‑holding as a reflex shattered, leaving a sharp, momentary pain in its place.
"Arin?" my mother called softly. "You awake?"
"Yeah," I said. My voice came out rougher than I'd intended.
She stepped inside, shook rain from the edge of her dupatta, and shut the door behind her. She looked more tired than she had that morning — the kind of tired that settled around the eyes and didn't leave even when you slept.
Her gaze went to me, automatically. Checked the rise and fall of my chest, the colour of my face, the way I was sitting.
"You look…" She searched for a word, abandoned the attempt. "You didn't go out?"
"No," I said. Technically true. I had gone inward.
"Good."
She moved to the stove, relit the burner, set water to boil. The rituals of the end of a shift. Then, after a moment, she reached into the bag hanging from her shoulder.
"I brought something," she said.
My attention sharpened.
She pulled out a thin, battered book. The cover was creased, the edges softened by many hands. The title was half‑worn but still legible under the strip of tape holding the binding together.
INSTITUTE OF INTER WORLD STUDIES GENERAL TRACK
FOUNDATION PRACTICE COMPENDIUM
(Second‑ Edition)
My throat tightened.
"Where did you get that?" I asked.
"A stall near the factory," she said, not quite meeting my eyes. "Old textbooks, manuals. A man who collects whatever students leave behind when they drop out or… move on."
"How much?" I said.
"Not much," she said quickly. "He was clearing space. Wanted to get rid of the old syllabus copies."
"Ma."
She sighed.
"Fifty," she admitted. "Rupees. He gave a discount because some pages are missing."
Fifty rupees. Two and a half entry fees to the library. A week of small compromises in groceries and medicine.
"You shouldn't have," I said, automatically.
"You asked for syllabus," she said briskly. "Coaching we can't do. Book, we can try. It's not complete. But…" She placed it on the table beside the stove as if it was something fragile. "You always said a path is a path."
I stared at the book.
The cover showed the Academy's stylised emblem — the rising tower. Inside, pages bulged where notes had been scribbled and erased, where someone had underlined a section on "Basic Fog Incursion Phenomena" and circled dates for practice tests.
Some other candidate's ghost clung to the margins, in faint pencil.
"Thank you," I said.
She shrugged, uncomfortable.
"It's nothing, Just paper." She busied herself with pouring tea. "Don't study too much tonight. Your body—"
"—needs rest," I finished with her.
She glanced back. The corner of her mouth twitched.
"Exactly."
We drank in companionable silence. The book sat between us, its presence heavier than its weight.
"Ma," I said, after a while.
"Hmm?"
"If I pass," I said. "When I pass, The Institute has better medical facilities."
"You already told me that," she said. "This morning."
"I know," I said. "I just… wanted to say it again."
She looked at me for a long moment.
"You think books will fix everything," she said softly.
"They won't," I said. "But they might fix enough."
She reached out and smoothed a wrinkle in the book's cover with her thumb.
"When your father left," she said, "people told me to remarry. Find someone with a stable job. They said a woman alone, with a sick child… that was not a life." Her mouth twisted. "I told them a library card was a better investment."
"You didn't have a library card," I said.
"I had the idea of one," she said. "Sometimes ideas are just credit you have not been allowed to spend yet."
She stood.
"Sleep," she ordered. "You look like you lost a fight with a staircase."
"Bridge, actually," I said.
She snorted.
"That too."
When she turned away to wash the cups, I let my hand drift to my chest. Focused. Felt for the outline of the frame.
It was easier this time.
Not painless. Not stable. But easier.
The Archive's window hovered just at the edge of vision, numbers and warnings and irritations flickering.
[Null Craft– Progress: 3%]
[Body Status: Still Critical.]
I cracked open the compendium with my free hand. The pages smelled of old paper and the faint chemical tang of cheap ink. Diagrams of structures I have never seen in either life , lists of exam sections, sample question formats.
UPSC had Paper I: General Studies, Paper II: Aptitude, Essay, Optionals. This world had its own versions. Different content. Same shape.
"Two exams," I murmured. "One for the world, one for the body."
[Only one of them has an answer key,] the Archive said.
"Which one?" I asked.
A pause.
[Trick question,] it said. [Neither.]
I smiled.
"Then we will write our own," I said.
Outside, the rain thickened. Inside, under the ticking fan and the thin light of the old holo‑panel, I traced lines on a page with one hand and lines in my lungs with the other, and for the first time since waking in this life, the future felt less like a wall and more like a question worth attempting.