The door shut behind me with a soft groan and for a while, I didn't move.
My eyes drifted across the room like they didn't trust it. The walls were too clean. The corners, too sharp. Someone had made sure of that.
Then there was the news pasted on the wall said nothing about my father's death.
I bent my face into my knees and let out the loudest scream I could muster. I kept doing it till I didn't feel that knot in my stomach.
I stood up and walked up to the cot on the bed. From Rin's memory the "true followers of the deities" had brought gifts to fatten the animals in the slaughtee house. Maybe as an act to unify the whole temple they had maid wear different clothes they allowed us to choose first.
I had loved the cloth but anything in this room could be tampered.
I crouched and ran my fingers along the underside. Counted the buttons. One was crooked. I tugged it loose, felt its weight, then slipped it into a small sack
The wardrobe came next. I stepped inside, pushing against the back wall. It went too far for its frame and I smiled. My knuckles tapped every corner of the wood till I hit a hollow spot. It had a crack that could fit half my hand so I push it in. When I eventually pulled out I had a small paper in my hand
I unfolded and immediately sat croosed leg on the floor trying to make sense of the random lines drawn on it. With very small notes written beside it. d2 to e5. e7 to c5 to an
I scratched my head. that was now the knight moved but how did they play out with the lines.
I turned the paper over and over again going to the footnote. It was actually stimulating to find the answer to something you didn't know.
I traced my fingers down a particular line that looked like the corridor path way.
Then I looked up as though inspiration had given me an uppercut.
It was a map.
A map of what though.
It was my second time waking up in this body and it still felt different the environment too. The chill of the room, the scarcity of anything electric and a chorus that got louder as with the vibrations moving through my bones
I sat up and for a while listened to the room breathe.
I pushed my glasses higher up my nose and walked to the bathroom.
I caught a glimpse of myself in the basin's dull reflection — a face I didn't know staring back. Broad shoulders. Hair too dark. A body that didn't belong to me. It was all the more entrenched in my gut how real this was. I wasn't in my mansion and my father was alive. I was in some deceitful establishment somewhere in Tarungi.
I could tell when every single scar on this body had been dealt. The one close to my left eye was three weeks before Rins death.
For a moment, memory flickered — the last thing before the darkness.
Cold flesh.
Bodies stacked like broken dolls.
I gripped the edge of the basin till the feeling passed, till my breathing steadied. Eevn though the water was icy, I let it run down my face anyway.
That was when I saw it again — the watch.
Sometimes it was there sometimes it wasn't.
Exactly where was it always disappearing to?
I blinked, once. Twice.
Then tugged.
It didn't move.
I tried sliding it off, twisting it, even scraping it with the edge of a rusted comb. No give. Not even a hairline shift. It was as if my skin had grown around it.
After a while, frustration replaced fear. I slammed it against the basin, once, twice — metal striking stone. The sound echoed through the tiny room. Nothing. Not even a scratch.
By the time I gave up, my hands were trembling.
The watch face flickered once — faint light under the cracked glass — and then died again.
I stood there a moment longer, dripping, staring at the thing.
Whatever dragged me here hadn't finished with me yet.
I dried off with the coarse towel that hung by the wall, its fibers stiff with old soap. There was a single folded white robe on the chair .
I hesitated before putting it on. Then let out a small breath that was almost a laugh and pulled it over my head anyway.
The door opened with a soft groan of hinges giving way to the sound of dozens of others.
Children — no, recruits — spilled into the corridor. Their footsteps hit the stone in rhythm with the bells, a strange, obedient choreography.
I joined the current quietly, letting my eyes do what my mouth didn't.
Grey robes brushed past orange. Blue parted for red and the people on black were given more space than necessary.
You didn't need words to know who mattered here. The hierarchy announced itself in color, in posture, in the way eyes slid away from the darker shades.
The silence broke the moment the bells stopped. Laughter, chatter, the clatter of feet and broom handles. The world exhaled again.
A boy with a crooked grin shoved a broom into my hand.
"So you're alive," he said, eyes bright with mock relief. "We thought you were hiding from chores."
His name came to me from somewhere — Matthew.
He was one of the few friends I had in this place and I wouldn't really call him a friend he was nice to everybody. The ones of the people that made bullies had in the shadow.
He leaned closer. "Where've you been all these days?"
I blinked once, pretending to think.
Then smiled faintly. "Sleeping, apparently."
He laughed, already satisfied with the answer. "Then come on. Breakfast first. You can tell me everything after."
I followed him down the stairs, each step echoing differently — stone, hollow, resonant. And as the light caught the surface of my wrist again, I saw the faintest shimmer beneath the cracked glass of the watch.
[author] Work is on royal road[/author]