Chap­ter XX brings the pro­tag­o­nist back into the heart of Mar­t­ian civ­i­liza­tion, only to find him­self more dis­con­nect­ed than ever. While the peo­ple burst into cel­e­bra­tion at the return of Princess Heru, he feels a strange dis­tance from their joy. Their enthu­si­asm seems shal­low, focused on flow­ers, music, and pageantry rather than the loom­ing real­i­ty of con­flict. The pro­tag­o­nist, once hailed as a sav­ior, is now bare­ly acknowl­edged. His con­cerns about the ene­my remain unspo­ken by the crowd, swal­lowed in the fes­tive haze. As he walks through the dec­o­rat­ed streets, the gap between his expe­ri­ence and theirs grows larg­er.

To cope, he turns to the dis­trac­tions that Mar­t­ian life offers—wine, laugh­ter, and dance. For one night, he joins them in their for­get­ful­ness, try­ing to erase the bit­ter­ness of feel­ing for­got­ten. But the next morn­ing, sobri­ety returns with a weight. The hero looks at the city with clear­er eyes and feels the hol­low­ness of their joy. Heru, though res­cued, is now prepar­ing to con­sult a cer­e­mo­ni­al globe to deter­mine the tim­ing of her roy­al mar­riage. The act, root­ed in Mar­t­ian cus­tom, feels for­eign and absurd to him. Though he first reacts with a surge of jeal­ousy, the emo­tion quick­ly fades into a strange, creep­ing indif­fer­ence.

The apa­thy of those around him begins to shape his own thoughts. He watch­es the peo­ple gath­er in the palace square with vacant expres­sions, their antic­i­pa­tion more about rit­u­al than real­i­ty. Even Heru seems dis­tant, wrapped in the dream­like order of tra­di­tion. Then chaos erupts. With­out warn­ing, Ar-hap’s army crash­es into the city, scat­ter­ing flow­ers and crowds in equal mea­sure. Pan­ic spreads, and the cel­e­bra­tion col­laps­es into screams and smoke. The hero, jolt­ed from his trance of res­ig­na­tion, moves instinc­tive­ly. The bat­tle arrives not with hon­or, but with ambush.

With­in the palace, destruc­tion reigns. Yet in the eye of the storm, Prince Hath sits still. His calm is not courage but defeat. When the pro­tag­o­nist pleads for action, Hath explains that fate has already cho­sen Heru’s path and that resis­tance is unnec­es­sary. Such fatal­ism infu­ri­ates the hero. With fire climb­ing the palace walls and ene­mies seiz­ing the city, he turns from words to action. He races through halls in search of Heru, push­ing past guards and rub­ble, deter­mined to free her from this col­lapse. Even­tu­al­ly, he spots her—held by slave hands, being led away like a prize.

In that instant, clar­i­ty returns. Heru, frag­ile but proud, meets his gaze as he tears her free from her cap­tors. The moment hangs sus­pend­ed between destruc­tion and escape. Around them, the palace groans under fire and falling stone. But the urgency fuels his every step. He pulls her through shat­tered doors, through smoke-choked cor­ri­dors, past the frozen nobles who can no longer dis­tin­guish brav­ery from blind­ness. Out­side, the city is bare­ly rec­og­niz­able.

In the chaos, some­thing unex­pect­ed appears—a mag­i­cal rug, famil­iar and strange. It lies draped over debris, glow­ing faint­ly, hum­ming with pow­er. The same object that once flung him from Earth to Mars now calls again. Heru, weak and silent, is laid gen­tly beside it. He hes­i­tates only briefly, torn between love and sur­vival, between stay­ing to fight a lost cause and return­ing to a life that feels dis­tant. Then he makes the wish—simple and des­per­ate. He wants to go home.

The world spins. The air thick­ens. And then every­thing stops. He awak­ens on a stone step in New York, cold pave­ment under his hands, noise fill­ing his ears. The city, uncar­ing and vast, embraces him with its usu­al indif­fer­ence. Mars is gone. The palace, the bat­tles, the stars—all replaced by the hard, famil­iar out­lines of his own world. No fan­fare greets his return. No one knows where he has been. But some­thing inside him has changed.

Back on Earth, real­i­ty feels small­er. Yet with­in him remains the mem­o­ry of a dis­tant red sky, a princess with vio­let eyes, and a peo­ple too gen­tle to fight their fate. He can­not tell any­one where he was. Not in a way they’d believe. But as he ris­es and walks down the street, he knows that part of him will always belong to that oth­er world—a place where dreams were real, and where he once mat­tered deeply, even if only for a moment.