Now freed from the bindings, Reiji stayed seated on the bed inside of the hut.
He stretched his hands, rubbing his wrists where the glowing restraints had been.
"That enigmatic white-haired girl brought me relief to say the least."
He scanned the room again in quieter contemplation.
"But her calmness is skeptical."
His stomach growled.
"This whole thing made me hungry."
He stood up and picked up the meat that was on the ground.
Reheated the meat by the fire to the central hearth.
"At first, it feels like a dream," he murmured.
"But it definitely doesn't act like one."
He finished eating and returned to the makeshift bed filled with soft white animal hair that acted as a mattress.
He ran his hand across the fur beneath him.
"Warm… soft… too real," he whispered.
As the adrenaline wore off, he let out a long breath
"This is not a simulation either."
He felt a sense of comfort.
"This is a good place to figure things out."
Il corpo è misura del tutto.
The mantra in his head became louder.
He clicked his tongue.
"If only this echoes in my head would stop."
He sat cross-legged, leaning back on his hands, thinking through the madness.
The forest.
The knights.
Bobbin.
The little girl.
The voices.
Everything.
He tried to piece together the confusing, impossible reality.
Staring blankly into space.
"What is this place all about?"
He rubbed his forehead.
He shrugged.
"Parallel worlds?"
He thought about parallel worlds he knew about.
In Greek, Norse, Mayan, and Egyptian mythologies.
Parallel worlds or realms exist alongside the mortal world, often representing spiritual or afterlife dimensions.
"The Underworld and Elysium..."
"Norse Asgard and Jotunheim."
"Xibalba."
"Duat and Aether."
He cited each mythology's parallel realms.
"The common term we know is Heaven and Hell."
He swallowed.
"Did I die?"
Moonlight spilled across the hut as he closed his eyes, breathing in the scent of earth and wood.
Then the memory struck.
His father's obsession.
The Vitruvian Man.
His discovery of the difference in the diagram his father found.
Embedded with Algiz, the runic symbol of divination, spellcasting, protection.
"Why am I remembering this all of a sudden?" Reiji murmured.
His hand slid to his face.
"Is my father connected to this world? Was he dragged here… like I was?"
"…Is he actually existing here somewhere?"
Silence swallowed the hut.
Then.
The voices.
Il cerchio non vincola rivela.
It struck again.
But he felt a concern due to the love and compassion behind the echo.
He shoved it.
"Tamashii. Continuation of consciousness afterlife."
He thought.
"It's far from what I had imagined."
His eyes began to feel heavy.
But he continued thinking.
"What will father think?" Reiji murmured.
He remembered his father's enthusiasm as he talked about Da Vinci.
"Now that I'm in this situation, I wouldn't be surprised if my father actually decoded Leonardo Da Vinci's work back in Amboise."
He felt a surge of emotion.
An excitement he felt thinking about the possibilities.
He knew his father's heart.
"I just know there's something more than we were told. Unravelling that even it means the end of my life would be the greatest."
He reminisced about his fathers words.
Until his world turned pitch black.
Dove il tratto è vero, Dio si riflette.
The echo returned.
With it a stabbing pain erupted in his skull.
Whispers he had brushed aside before now crashed through his mind, sharp and suffocating.
The body is the measure of all things.
The shape does not bind—it reveals.
Where the line is true, the divine is reflected.
The Italian voice translated in his mind.
He grabbed his head, fingers digging into his scalp.
Fractured memories, ones not his, forced themselves into him.
Happiness.
Calmness.
Agony.
A grief so deep it hollowed him.
He blacked out, but remained conscious.
He froze in a storm of alien emotions.
Then a voice thundered in his head.
Fallimento, per disegno.
He jolted awake.
He had fallen asleep.
Still lying flat on the bed, he pressed his hand over his chest.
His heartbeat.
Steady.
He felt and understood something he shouldn't.
As if he had stolen someone's life but he remained himself.
He felt connected now.
To this hut.
To this world.
To something unseen.
He closed his eyes again, breath steadying.
This was the moment.
He cited the words.
"Il corpo è misura del tutto…"
The world around him shifted.
Not in sight, but in rhythm.
"Il cerchio non vincola, rivela…"
Awareness spread outward like a quiet tide.
"Dove il tratto è vero, Dio si riflette."
A perfect angle, truth in form.
His eyes snapped open.
"My refusal to acknowledge this resonance ends now."
A glowing blue ring spiraled around his pupils.
"Proprioception."
His senses unfurled like wind through woodgrain.
Through the old hut.
The soft soil molds beneath, and the sound of the forest.
Through roots and ruins far beyond.
It was with an unspoken presence.
He didn't have to see.
He perceived.
But it doesn't end there.
The unfamiliar feeling dissipated.
His very essence rewired, reborn, and redefined.
It wasn't a dream.
It was an awakening.
Morning broke.
The hut door slammed open, shaking the walls as the little girl marched in with Bobbin at her side.
Reiji groaned and rubbed his face.
"That's a horrible way to greet someone in the morning, little girl."
She stared at him with the same cold, blank expression as yesterday.
"You're going to stop with that bully attitude," he muttered.
Then he inhaled deeply and began chanting.
"Forma allineata, precisione assoluta, proporzione divina. Proprioception."
Blue rings flared to life around his eyes. A pulse of energy rippled from his body like a shockwave.
The girl gasped. "Bobbin!"
She whipped into a defensive stance and started casting.
Bobbin stepped in.
"Sekhemu Netjeri, shamru Ani'i—"
The warm morning sun cast a stark contrast to the raw tension that erupted into chaos.
Reiji smiled.
Then the air vibrated.
In the blink of an eye, he vanished.
The little girl stumbled, caught off guard unable to finish citing her spell.
"What did this Earthborn do?" Bobbin wondered.