I was in Seclusion for so long that everyone forgot about me [Arc 1] Chapter 1 – Ennui and Tea

Arc 1 – Resurgence

I tapped impatiently on the glass table, annoyed, my fingers making sharp little ticks against the surface while I stared into the abomination of a drink in my hand.

“Parsnip and ginger. Blurg.” I pulled a face. “Who the fuck ca up with this flavor?”

I frowned into the cup. “Am I really running this low on my stocks?”

My eyes wandered lazily towards the old oak tree standing nearby—its wide branches casting a soft, dappled shadow over the grass beneath the artificial sun. And slumped against its thick trunk, just where she always was, sat a girl.

She looked almost peaceful if you didn’t pay too much attention. Coal-black hair just brushing her shoulders. A simple white robe. Her body was held upright by the long, plain sword buried straight through her chest. Her eyes were still open, blank and dry.

I grinned. “Still not much of a talker, huh? Though I keep wondering if you can hear or not. Do you rember when we first built this place?”

My tone turned casual, almost affectionate. “It really has been a long ti.”

Absentmindedly, I took another sip of the tea and instantly regretted it. Again.

How could sothing taste both sweet and earthy in the worst possible way? Like soone had boiled root vegetables in spicy bathwater and called it a blend. Or worse—like a bored alchemist’s idea of punishnt tea.

I pulled the cup away with a grimace, stared at it, and muttered, “That’s just offensive.”

Still… I couldn’t really act surprised. After all, I’d been here for what? Seven, eight millennia now? Maybe nine. But not more than ten, I hoped. Void, I hoped.

With a sigh, I stood up from the simple garden chair, carefully placing the porcelain teacup back on its saucer like it hadn’t just tried to kill my taste buds. Around , the leaves drifted lazily in the artificial breeze, each fall slow and deliberate. I let myself get lost in the rhythm for a few seconds—just enough to feel the weight of ti pressing in again.

“Well, I guess that’s an early end to our tea ti,” I murmured, glancing back at her open, empty eyes. “I’ll co back once I find sothing drinkable.”

My fingers twitched.

For just a breath, I considered removing the sealing sword. My hand even started to lift. The thought flickered—and was gone just as quickly.

I shook my head. What the hell was that? I must’ve been more bored than I wanted to admit, if I was even entertaining that kind of idea.

But that was boredom for you. The slow, creeping kind. The kind that gnawed at your logic one idle hour at a ti. Finishing my collection of books once again really had gotten to this ti, huh?

Slowly slouching out of the sub-space I affectionately called The adow—even if it didn’t really have a na—I briefly wondered what to do next… but barely bothered thinking. The answer was always the sa.

Back to the library.

Again.

Like always.

It took about thirty minutes to cross the open grassland, my boots brushing through the swaying green. Eventually, I reached the only real landmark in sight: an oval-shaped wooden fra, old and interwoven with wild vines, standing alone like a half-forgotten relic.

The mont I got close enough, the fra shimred, and a translucent portal flared to life, revealing a white hallway on the other side.

I stepped through.

The world shifted. Endless white stretched ahead—blinding, sterile, and eerily quiet. A few other portals were scattered along the walls like doors, but I barely glanced at them. I never bothered redesigning this space. My atrium, if you could call it that, had stayed the sa for millennia. Normally, I’d just teleport around. But today? I felt like walking. Not like I was short on ti anyways...

But even then, the entry area of my domain could lead to the most important parts of it. There were only five passages in total—each one anchoring a different sub-space.

The domain itself existed in so kind of space-ti fold, tucked away from the outside world. The only real connection was the entrance door—etched into the middle of the hallway that otherwise stretched endlessly in one direction.

The door was made of green pinewood, wrapped in ivy like sothing pulled straight out of a children’s fairytale. The sa design on the other side. When I first built it, I nearly styled it to look like a wardrobe—just for the joke. But, well… no one else here would’ve gotten it.

I continued down the corridor to the second portal on the right—my favorite, and probably the largest sub-space I brought with when I left the world behind:

The Endless Library.

Crossing the threshold teleported straight to its heart—a wide, open circular space centered around comfort. Tables. Reading chairs. Shelves. The scent of parchnt and ink. The soothing hum of preservation glyphs.

Above it all floated a massive, colorless crystal that gave off the perfect kind of light: soft enough to relax, bright enough to read. Comfortable. Intentionally so.

Of course, this was only one of the reading areas. The main one. The others were tucked away—hidden nooks only I knew. Not that anyone else had ever entered this place. No visitors. No interruptions. Just .

One might think I’d get lonely. But really, how do you miss sothing you never had? There might’ve been a ti when that wasn’t true. If there was, I don’t rember it. Probably erased it. On purpose..

So it is what it is.

Anyway.

True to its na, the library went on forever—or at least, it looked that way. Every hallway led to more hallways. Every level branched off again. Floor after floor, row after row of tall mahogany shelves—each one filled to the brim. Floating crystals drifted through the air, casting warm light across the books like little orbs of focused calm.

But appearances were just that—appearances. The corridors weren’t truly infinite. Just cleverly looped and folded through space. Still massive, of course. It had taken thousands of years just to finish the parts I cared about. The rest? Well, that was soone else’s problem. Or it would be, if there was anyone else.

When I first built it, the library held exactly forty-three thousand, five hundred and sixty books. Last I checked, it was sowhere around twenty-five million. Give or take.

If you lined all the shelves up, you’d get over two hundred miles of book spine. Add a little mirrorfold magic and space expansion for good asure, and there you have it—The Endless Library.

I stood there for a mont, letting myself appreciate it. Just a little.

The feeling didn’t last long.

What good was a place like this when I was the only one who would ever see it? I looked down at my hands and laughed quietly at myself.

“So much for not getting lonely,” I muttered.

I ignored it. I always did.

Instead, I wandered off, casually dodging every shelf that looked like it might contain anything political, moralizing, or economically preachy. I might be bored, but I wasn’t suicidal. I hadn’t buried myself in here just to read about the sa miserable structures I ran from.

After what could’ve been twenty minutes or twenty days, I sank into a beanbag—deep, dark erald—like a forest had swallowed it whole. A soft whumph echoed in the silence as I exhaled and sank, just a little more, into the quiet.

I cleared my throat and recited aloud—because why not?

“When the children have been good,

That is, be it understood,

Good at al-tis, good at play,

Good all night and good all day,—

They shall have the pretty things

rry Winter always brings.

Naughty, romping girls and boys

Tear their clothes and make a noise,

Spoil their pinafores and frocks,

And deserve no Winter-box.

Such as these shall never look

At this pretty Picture-Book.”

I blinked.

...I didn’t rember having that one.

It felt… off. Familiar, but twisted. Like soone had taken sothing real and nudged the words just a little sideways.

I didn’t open the book again. I just tossed it over my shoulder into the chaos of unsorted literature and grabbed another one. Hopefully sothing less cursed.

This next one was thick, worn, and promising. I flipped to a random page.

The Girl Without Hands…

Nope. Next.

Of the Mouse, the Bird, and the Sausage.

“Seriously?” I muttered, pinching the bridge of my nose.

Alrighty. One more try.

The Wishing-Table, the Gold-Ass, and the Cudgel in the Sack.

Huh. That sounds… readable.

It was a story about three brothers who each got a magic item from their craft masters: a table that summoned feasts, a donkey that dropped gold, and a sack with a stick that beat up thieves.

Naturally, a greedy tavern keeper stole what wasn’t his, so the youngest brother tricked him and beat the crap out of him with the magic stick until he gave it all back.

And the whole shitshow only started because their father kicked them out for trusting a talking goat over all of his own children—then suddenly decided he loved them again once they ca back with gifts and status.

“Charming,” I muttered. “So the moral is... win your father’s love by being materially useful? Or maybe—don't believe everything soone says. Especially not goats. Deep stuff.”

I turned the book over in my hands. ‘Tales from the Silva Hercynia’, wasn’t that the old mountain range where the witches made their ho? Mhm, another question for another day.

I set it down and reached for a different one. But as I flipped the first page, sothing felt wrong. My fingers slowed. I exhaled deeply.

I just… wasn’t feeling it anymore.

The ennui had crept in again, dull and heavy, sinking into my ribs like fog. As I began to close the book, sothing caught my eye—thin black cracks crawling up from my wrist, threading between the joints of my fingers like spiderwebs of ink.

I groaned. “Really? Now?”

With a flick of my hand, I summoned a flask—deep red glass, plain and smooth. I popped the cork and drank. The contents slid down like warm syrup. A familiar comfort.

Still, I noticed sothing. The engraving—the stock number—was lower than expected.

“Ugh. Seriously?”

I could feel the effect kicking in already. A fuzzy warmth curled into my skull, and I stood up with a jerk, flinging my arms out wide.

“Huh? What? Did you just ask the exact contents of this versatile elixir?” I shouted to no one in particular. “Wunh-wunh, national secret! But let tell you—this thing’s fucking delicious.”

I turned in a slow circle, letting the sound linger.

“Oh, the taste when it ets my lips… that honey-thick warmth crawling down my dry throat… that sweet heat curling in my stomach like a soft blanket on a soul that forgot how to sleep. Yes, naps can be exhausting, don't look at like that!”

My voice rang through the shelves.

Then silence.

No applause. No groan. No chuckle.

Nothing.

I slumped slightly.

Goddess, I hated being alone.

But that was the thing, wasn’t it?

The liquid helped. It always did. It was warm, comforting… a little too comforting.

Even as delicious as the stuff was, it was also addicting. Worse, I didn’t technically need it to survive—but I couldn’t live without it. Not anymore. Not really.

It wasn’t food, and it wasn’t dicine. Not in the normal sense. It was… . And now it was almost gone.

That didn’t sit well with —especially since this would definitely qualify as a life-changing dilemma. I wouldn’t drop dead without it. Luckily, I’m not that fragile. I’d just… stop being . Quietly. Slowly. All at once.

So no, I totally wasn’t about to start murdering people over it or anything. I was still a decent person. Mostly. Kind of. People probably rembered as a ruthless but generally polite force of nature.

...Right?

Anyways, I ignored the fact that I’d caught myself talking to myself. Again. Happening more often. Probably fine. Heh. Funky sentence.

Back on track: I needed to restock my dru—dicine. Rationing was clearly not an option. So… what now?

Technically, I had ten years left of supply. But ten years ant nothing to . And knowing myself, I’d absolutely forget to refill before it ran out. Because ti literally didn’t an anything here. Not really. Not anymore.

Still… sotis I rembered. The mortal . The one who used to dream about immortality. I just couldn’t tell how long ago that was. Most of my mories were shards now—blurred edges, fading colors, cracked glass full of repressed thoughts and too many feelings I’d filed under irrelevant. I couldn’t even say for certain why they got that way.

Well… that wasn’t entirely true. I just didn’t want to deal with it. Not now. Not yet. But it still influenced . Twisted through every choice, every mont. Whether I admitted it or not.

And yet, in the end, I always circled back to the sa truth: I hadn’t really changed at all. That sa hunger was still there. That gnawing need for more.

I started laughing—loud, sudden, sharp.

Only for a few seconds.

Then it was gone. The quiet crept back in like nothing had happened.

“One vial wasn’t enough, huh?” I muttered, summoning another and downing it in one go.

If anyone saw right now, they’d think I was perfectly sane. ...If they ignored the muttering. And the talking to myself. And the potions. And the plants. And the books. And the blades. Did I ntion myself?

Everything was perfectly fine!

I groaned and summoned a few more vials—just to be sure. One after another, I downed them until the edge started to blur and my thoughts finally dulled. Sothing had been bothering for a while now, and no matter how much I drank, I couldn’t quite shake it.

But whatever it was, sothing was wrong—either with the dicine, the domain, or… .

But the dicine couldn’t expire. It wasn’t supposed to.

So what the hell was happening?

As I pondered the possibilities, I found myself already wandering—drifting through the shelves without even realizing it. I passed one of the many cozy nooks I’d set up around the library, each decorated in its own chaotic but lovable way.

Plush havens. That was what they were. Little sanctuaries stuffed with bunnies, sharks or foxes—whatever struck my fancy at the ti. No master bedroom in this domain, after all. I usually just passed out in one of these spots.

Might be too childish for most beings, but I liked it. It felt… hoy.

“Ho, huh?” I muttered. The word felt old. Hollow. Just another relic of the oblivion inside .

I reached down and picked up one of the larger plushies—a vaguely shark-shaped body pillow—and held it in front of .

“Ya know,” I said to its stitched little face, “I’ve never really been free. Not truly. But in these corners, in these stupid fluffy nests, I felt freer than I’ve ever been since coming into this world.”

I smiled, small and bitter.

“Funny, isn’t it? Caging myself made feel free.”

I gently set the plushie back in place with its soft little brethren. Then, with a flick of my fingers, I teleported back into the atrium.

Ti to check on the dicine.

Just to the left of the Endless Library’s portal stood another entrance—one leading to my workshop. Not as big, not as grand, but still extensive enough to house all my other tools, projects, and half-failed ideas. And, more importantly, my storage area.

Not that any of it mattered to anyone but .

What I did in that space was nasty, dangerous, and probably illegal across several planes of existence. Magical inventions. Ritual vestiges. Stuff that got you thrown off councils and hunted by divines.

Back in the early years, I spent a lot of ti there—building, crafting, experinting. But that faded. Over ti, it all started to feel… pointless.

Why make sothing when you could just imagine it?

That was the catch of it. In this domain, I could think of a thing and pop—there it was. But imagined objects were hollow. They worked, technically, but they weren’t real. A clock might tick, but the gears were empty. It only functioned because I expected it to.

I once tried to create an animal. Just a simple one. It died in seconds.

That particular failure occupied my thoughts for decades. In the end, I concluded that images couldn’t live. Not really. Not unless crafted with care. With thought. With weight.

But that led to another question: if the animal died… why didn’t the clock break?

After thousands of tests, I figured out the basics:

First, because the clock was dead to begin with. Second, because it only perford one simple task—telling ti. It didn’t strain itself. Any more complexity, and it would collapse. Ask it to count hours? Fine. Ask for minutes and seconds? It shattered.

And that was just chanics.

Magic was much worse.

A magical clock might not even have gears—it could run off ti magic alone, with only a stone or mana core inside. But that ca with its own ss. Ti magic was fickle. Deep. Borderline cosmic.

I smiled faintly at the mory. Back when I still cared enough to try. When trying mattered.

Yes, my domain granted endless creation. But the laws that shaped it? Even I didn’t understand all of them.

I let out a breath, already tired of thinking.

Nowadays, I barely touched the workshop. Most of my attempts to recreate my dicine had failed—every single one, in fact. The theory seed sound. But the mont I created a vial here, it ca out flat. Tasteless. Ineffective.

My suspicion? The mana in this place. Sothing about the environnt rejected the formula. I ant to test it more… but after failing thousands of tis, you kind of stop caring. Maybe I’d try again in a millennia or two.

Walking through the portal, I really wished I could just create it. Just think it into existence and be done with it. But even when I tried—when I spawned it here—it ca out wrong. Tasteless. Ineffective. Completely useless. It nearly drove crazy, back in the beginning.

I stepped up to the racks and scanned the rows—bottles neatly aligned, glowing faintly in their places. “It’s less than I thought,” I muttered grimly.

Scratch the ten-year estimate. With how the effects had been dulling lately, I might have far less than that. Still so ti, sure. Enough to work with. But if I didn’t act soon, I’d regret it later. And regret, well… regret was a pain in the ass.

I checked a few vials. No clouding. No change in color, taste, or scent. Everything looked fine.

Was I imagining it? Maybe. But I wasn’t taking chances.

I downed a few more, just to be safe.

Before returning to the hallway, I rummaged through so of the nearby boxes—my so-called ‘tea cabinet’. I grimaced at the assortnt. Every label sounded like a poorly translated alchemical mishap. Harpy’s Thorn. Root Whisper. Ginger-Fire Parsnip Supre…

Right. I’d been had. Should’ve known better than to trust that smug harpy rchant.

Grumbling, I grabbed a box at random.

I had only just stepped back into the adow when that wave of lancholy hit —sharp and imdiate.

A reminder. A dreadful reminder of what this place was always ant to be: a cage.

Whenever I returned, that sa heaviness settled over . Sadness, thick and familiar. Like the air here rembered everything I tried to forget.

And with it ca the voices. Old thoughts. Echoes. Faint and fragnted—never loud, never whole, but always there. Whispering. Pleading.

“Free us. Let us live. Love us again. Hate us again.”

I snorted. “Pathetic. Do you think these little tricks still work on ? If you wanted love, you shouldn’t have done what you did. If you wanted life—you shouldn’t have questioned my—”

I stopped and took a breath. Let the silence wash over again.

It didn’t matter. They were long gone. Remnants of guilt and grief, stretched into shadows. Just mories. Just pain. Just leftovers I hadn’t managed to erase.

Or maybe I chose not to. Sa difference.

Trying not to let it bother , I returned to my table and dropped the box of tea beside the cup. The silence stayed blessedly intact. The tuned-out voices didn’t push further. I watched the clouds drift slowly overhead, pushed by a gentle spring breeze that didn’t exist.

And for a mont, I could almost pretend it was peaceful.

Outside again, I wandered a little farther down the hall. My eyes fell on the final portal—the one I never used.

The black one.

It didn’t shimr like the others. It didn’t glow. It just... ate light. Its fra writhed, coated in so slow, shadowy sli. The surface of it pulsed like an open wound.

My breath caught. “Mhm… should I?”

I tilted my head. “Yeeeaaah… no. Definitely not the ti for that. Might never be the right ti.”

My gaze lingered. “Unless…”

I shook my head. Hard.

“No. Never again. I won't dream of it. Not again. Just… fuck.”

And without another word, I turned away—vanishing from the hall with a blink, leaving that part of sealed behind once more.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Teleporting around my domain while trying to solve my ever-growing list of problems was more exhausting than I’d expected. Thinking rationally? Ha. That was the real magic.

On one hand: I had to restock. No avoiding that.

On the other: the outside world.

It wasn’t that the tea had gone bad. It was that all the good tea was gone—only the weird leftovers remained.

The dicine, too. It hadn’t stopped working… but it was dimming. Slipping. Like its grip was loosening, just a little more each day.

And then there was the boredom. Slow. Constant. Like pressure building behind glass. Sothing was wrong. Subtle—but shifting. Off-balance.

And going out there? That wasn’t just inconvenient. It was exposure. A fracture waiting to happen. A risk with too many variables.

So no—it wasn’t a question of what I wanted. It was about which choice hurt less.

I threw my arms into the air, spun once, and dropped into a lodramatic pose in front of a fox-shaped chanical doll I’d been tinkering with.

“Oh, poor ,” I moaned, one hand over my brow. “What ghastly future awaits this tender, suffering flower maiden? What cruel twist of fate have I wrought upon myself?”

The doll did not respond. Rude.

“Well,” I muttered, straightening up, “no evidence, no cri. And I always clean up.”

No matter how spotless my nonexistent record was, I knew one thing for certain: my stability was directly tied to my comfort level. And without my liquid comfort?

I had maybe a few days before things started getting weird again.

Another sigh slipped out. “I really need to go outside, huh?”

Ugh. My head was starting to ache from all this internal compromise. There was no way around it. I’d have to leave.

But before I went anywhere, I needed to prep. That ant reorganizing my inventory, relocating key items so I could access them externally if needed—space magic to the rescue. A must-have for any self-respecting hermit with hoarder tendencies.

Technically, it was only a a sub-branch: storage magic. And technically-technically? It was almost as difficult as ti magic. Not that I was a prodigy in either. I was… functional. Which was good enough.

They weren’t my primary fields anyway. Still. Convenient. Necessary. And definitely worth flexing now and then.

I gave the fox doll one last look, patted its head, and blinked into the storage chamber.

After prepping most of what I’d need for the outside world, I let my gaze wander around the workshop, passing over shelves of oddities, tools, and things no one but would ever call inventions.

Most of them were toys, really. Born from boredom. Stupid things made just to pass ti. But not the one I was staring at now.

In the center of the room, suspended in the air, floated a crystal encircled by nine tal rings. Each ring spun in a different direction at a different speed, the farther out they were, the larger they grew. They absorbed energy from the crystal, stored it, and then fed a portion back in—just enough to keep the cycle going. The crystal pulsed steadily, emitting waves of magical force.

It looked elegant. Efficient. Perfect, even.

It wasn’t.

Most of the radiated energy was spent just keeping the crystal from imploding everything nearby. And a portion of the output had to be redirected back to its origin just to prevent total system collapse.

What little power was actually stored? Just enough to light a fire. In maybe… five thousand years.

“Behold,” I said, throwing my arms wide, “my greatest creation: a very expensive, ti-consuming way to light a campfire.”

I sighed, placing my hands on my hips. “Incredible. My poor ego.”

But if I was honest with myself, the issue wasn’t the invention. Not really. It was that fucking crystal. That thing wasn’t from here—not from this domain, not from this world.

Possibly not even this universe..

One of my older experints in dinsional magic had revealed sothing… out there. Sothing between layers of reality. A realm of raw, chaotic energy.

So I did the most logical thing—I siphoned so of it. Got the crystal.

I called it the Abyss Stone, even if it wasn’t technically a stone—black, hungry, barely stable. I nad the whole unstable ss I built around it Abyssal Depths. Overly dramatic? Maybe. But it fit. There was sothing in that crystal—sothing old, eldritch, familiar. And, well… it just sounded cool.

I stared at it a mont longer, then shrugged.

“h. Maybe soone out there has solved the consumption issue by now.” I tossed the entire construct to the rest of my supplies. One more thing to maybe, probably, definitely not regret.

That covered most of the essentials. I shouldn’t need much more. Just one last issue I hadn’t solved yet.

Before I left, I moved the outside location of my erald door to a secret place—a cavern buried beneath a temple ruin. I rigged it with wards, hidden passages, and a bunch of other totally innocuous features to keep it safe. You know, nothing suspicious at all. Just your average cursed sword, sealed wall, and protection glyphs summoning elentals.

It worked. Mostly. The problem?

To the right people… it was screamingly obvious. The door itself couldn’t be reached directly, but the temple above it? That was just sitting there. Sa with the cave. I’d even left a sword in a stone as bait. Thought it’d be funny.

And honestly, it wasn’t even that hard. You didn’t have to be a chosen one. Just break the damn stone. Pull the sword. Boom—part of the cave wall opens. Secret path appears. Drama ensues.

And even if you managed to get all the way down here, you couldn’t just waltz in. The overgrown entrance was locked. Obviously.

“Duh, what did ya expect? Of course it would be,” I said to myself at the rather obvious conclusion. “Didn’t wanna have any creepy old fat pigs near .”

But then I paused. “…Buuuut, you could’ve at least tried to knock. Maybe I’d have opened it.”

My voice caught slightly. Then rose—sharp, accusing, “Even I know how to be polite, okay? So why the fuck did nobody ever co to find ? If you'd really been my friends, you would’ve looked for .”

The words hung in the air a mont too long, echoing back at with no rcy—because deep down, I knew the truth. No one ca.

And that was my fault—

—Mine alone.

I groaned and rubbed my temples. “Calm down, . Calm down.”

After a few steadying breaths, I got back to the point.

The real problem was this: Dismissing the door was simple. Summoning it again from the outside, however, was a lengthy process. The entire ritual was slow, imprecise—took days to finish. While I was gone, the entrance would remain exposed, unguarded. Vulnerable.

Yes, I had wards in place. They’d alert if anyone tried sothing stupid. But I couldn’t just teleport back on a whim. One of the domain’s quirks: its outer edge created an anti-teleportation field. A safety net. A curse. A double-edged pain in the ass.

Ironically, that was another way soone could find . Just teleport around the world and notice the one spot where it didn’t work.

Brilliant in theory. A bit risky in practice.

I doubted anyone could break through. My wards were dense. My glyphwork was brutal. Anyone trying would probably vaporize before they made it halfway my domain.

Still… better safe than screaming later. But for now?

It was what it was.

Clearing my thoughts and with nothing else left on my list, I faced the inevitable.

“Ti to go out.”

I opened the door.

A rush of cold, musty air t like an old slap to the face. Stale stone, mineral rot, and damp magic filled my lungs. Sowhere ahead, water dripped steadily onto rock. A deep, rhythmic pulse.

The cave stretched out in jagged stone. Impure magical gemstones jutted from the walls, half-subrged, casting fractured light in greens, reds, and blues. A warped spectrum, like a shattered aurora bleeding out beneath the rock.

I breathed in. I breathed out. Again and again.

One step forward.

The ground was uneven—hard and cracked.

I walked a few paces out into the cave mouth, then stopped. Turned around. Closed the door behind . Sealed it with a flick of my hand and a locking gesture so old I barely rembered designing it.

And then—

Pain.

My head snapped back like sothing struck it from within. A sudden, concussive pressure—like a shield being hamred against the inside of my skull.

I stumbled, caught nothing, and hit the floor hard.

“W-what the—what is this?” I choked, eyes wide. My voice ca out in a whisper, thin and stunned.

My hands went to my temples, but there was no relief. No clarity. Just weight. My head felt heavier by the second.

Sight—blurring.

Thought—slipping.

And then—just before everything went black—

A voice.

Not my own.

Cold. chanical. Detached.

[System ssage: Attempting to integrate unknown being “03”]

[Please remain on standby]

[Processing...]