The rejected crown (book 1)

Back again

Ezra

Ezra awoke with a sharp gasp, his lungs filling with air in a jagged, painful intake. For a moment, all he could do was lie there, his body stiff and disoriented, struggling to grasp the fragmented images swirling in his mind. The book, Giovanna, the battle, the forest—all of it felt like a dream, something too real to be fiction, yet too surreal to be possible.

He blinked rapidly, trying to clear the fog in his vision. His surroundings were nothing like the dense woods where he had last found himself. The air smelled sterile, tinged with the faint scent of antiseptic. He was lying on a hard surface, cold beneath him, and the faint hum of machines filled the air. Ezra sat up slowly, his head pounding, and as his vision sharpened, he saw the sterile white walls of a hospital room.

A wave of panic surged through him.

What had happened? How had he gotten here? The last thing he remembered was the book—the history—or was it a prophecy?—and then... darkness. His mind raced, but his body felt disconnected, heavy and uncooperative. He ran a hand over his face, feeling the unfamiliar roughness of a beard that hadn't been there when he had fallen asleep. He was no longer in the world of rebellion and castles, of betrayal and war.

He was back.

Back in his own time.

His breath quickened. This couldn't be real. He couldn't have been unconscious for that long, could he? The memories of the other world—Giovanna's defiance, the rebellion, the chaos—clung to him like a second skin. He felt as though it was all still happening, that any moment he would return to it. But the hospital room, the sterile air, the beeping monitors—this was reality. His reality.

The door to his room creaked open, and a nurse stepped inside, her eyes immediately falling on him with a look of surprise.

"You're awake," she said, her voice calm but laced with confusion. "You've been in a coma for nearly five years."

Ezra's mind went blank. His heart slammed against his chest, and the room seemed to tilt around him. Five years? He opened his mouth, but no words came out. Five years?

It couldn't be true.

"Your family's been notified just now, though they've... well, they weren't aware of your condition all this time," the nurse continued, her tone measured, as if she was giving him news she had delivered many times before. "You were in a private lab, hidden from public view, part of some... research project."

His eyes widened. A lab? He didn't understand. What did she mean? "Research project?" he managed to croak, his voice hoarse.

The nurse nodded. "It's not unusual, given your situation. There were complications when they found you. Your family wasn't informed because the lab considered it a private matter—something to do with the circumstances surrounding your... accident."

Accident. Ezra clenched his fists, feeling his nails dig into his palm. Accident? What accident?

"You're free to go soon, once they finish with your evaluations," she added, before walking out of the room, leaving him to process her words.

Ezra's mind was reeling, each detail sharpening with every breath he took. Five years. Five years lost. He tried to focus on anything that would bring clarity, but his thoughts kept veering back to the world he had left behind—the world of rebellion, magic, and battles. Had it been real? Was it truly just a hallucination brought on by some unknown force, a side effect of whatever experiments they had done on him? Or had the world he'd known been real, and he had somehow crossed over into this one?

And Giovanna—where was she? Had everything that had happened in that realm been erased, as if it had never existed?

A pang of loss gripped him. He could still hear her voice in his head, accusing him, blaming him for not understanding. "You didn't ask me, Ezra." Her words burned, more vivid now than they ever had been in the midst of the battle.

But he couldn't stay here. Not like this. He needed answers—he needed to know what happened. Five years—he had lost so much time. The world, his world, had moved on without him.

He swung his legs off the bed, ignoring the disorientation that washed over him. A sudden, overwhelming need to escape gripped him. He didn't belong here. Not in this sterile room, not in this reality, not now. He didn't want to know what his family had been told about him, or how they had coped without him.

As he moved towards the door, the sterile quiet of the hospital room pressing in on him, he had one thought that broke through the haze of confusion: The book.

The book that had started it all.

Ezra stopped in his tracks. The memories of its strange, shifting pages, of the prophecy that had felt too real, returned to him in a rush. He needed to find it—needed to understand what had happened, what had gone wrong.

He couldn't—no, wouldn't—believe this was the end of his story, he still needed to help others, and convince giovanna to not give up so easily.

Without a word to anyone, Ezra left the hospital room, his feet carrying him through the cold, unfamiliar corridors. He had no destination in mind, no plan except to find the answers. The world had changed. But what if... what if his journey wasn't over?

What if the real battle was only just beginning?