There had been no warning.

One careless remark. One fight won. One ancient sorcerer thoroughly insulted.

Then reality shattered.

Jean Grey woke in a modest apartment in the Capitol with memories that didn’t belong to her flooding her mind alongside the ones that did.

Logan found himself working deep in the lumber camps of District 7, waking every morning with phantom aches where adamantium claws should have been.

Ororo lived in District 11 among endless fields, unable to summon even the faintest breeze no matter how desperately she reached for it.

Remy drifted from district to district as a gambler and card shark, surviving on charm alone now that every card he touched remained painfully ordinary.

Rogue spent months terrified of touching anyone out of instinct before realizing there was nothing left to steal.

Their mutations were gone.

Cerebro didn’t exist.

The X-Men had become ordinary people in a world that had never heard the word mutant.

At first, each believed they had simply lost everything.

Then the dreams began.

Faces they couldn’t place. A mansion nestled in New York. Battles against impossible enemies. Laughter around a dinner table that no longer existed. Eventually those dreams became memories, and memories became certainty.

This wasn’t their universe.

The curse had only one rule.

“Find one another, and your path home will reveal itself.”

It sounded easy.

It wasn’t.

Panem was vast. Travel between districts was heavily restricted. Months passed before the first reunion, and even longer before the next. Jean found Logan first. Logan tracked down Ororo. Remy practically stumbled into Rogue after one of his schemes went spectacularly wrong. Each reunion brought relief—and another painful realization.

Someone was missing.

Scott Summers.

No matter where they searched, no matter which district they investigated, there was no trace of him. It was as if he had never existed.

Until Reaping Day.

Standing shoulder to shoulder with hundreds of terrified teenagers and young adults, a young man with familiar ruby-tinted glasses listened as his name echoed across the square.

Scott Summers.

Male tribute.

The moment Jean saw the televised broadcast, the truth became painfully clear.

Scott had never been cursed alongside them.

He hadn’t been standing beside the others when the sorcerer cast his spell. Instead, the magic had rewritten his entire existence to fit this world. He hadn’t merely forgotten the X-Men—he had never known them at all. His memories were genuine to him. He had been born in Panem. Raised in Panem. Every joy, every hardship, every friendship belonged to a life the curse had created.

To Scott Summers, they were strangers.

To the rest of the team…

He was family.

Now the clock was ticking.

The only way back to their own universe was to reunite every member of the X-Men. But the final piece of the puzzle was about to be locked inside an arena built to ensure he never came back out.