Noah remained frozen as a small brown-haired boy hopped down from his seat, ran toward him, and tugged at his sleeve with bubbling enthusiasm. The boy introduced himself as Sam, his voice as bright as a freshly lit oil lamp. Noah replied half-heartedly, but before Sam could drag him toward the center of the crowd, the robed woman from earlier called out to him with a gentle tone that hid a firm undercurrent.
She led him into a room lit by short candles. Once the door closed, the woman lowered her hood and stated her name: Olivia Hill. In that room, with slow but unwavering movements, she explained that this building was not merely a shelter. It was a gathering place for children who had brushed against powers that did not belong to the ordinary world—Candidates of the Divine.
Her gaze halted at Noah's index finger. That faint burn mark, along with the unnatural cold clinging to it, was the clearest proof that Noah had stepped into the Selection Room. Not everyone who entered came out with memories. Not all returned in a condition humans could understand. Noah could only admit that his memory had been severed without warning.
Olivia seemed to understand without needing many words.
But their conversation stopped abruptly when a piercing scream ripped through the walls—one not born merely of fear, but raw, primal panic.
Noah and Olivia rushed out almost at the same time.
In the middle of the hall, a small child was moving in a way no human body should. His muscles hardened and swelled, bones stretching with sharp cracking noises that made the other children scream and retreat. Sam, voice trembling and broken, explained that he had seen a figure in a black cloak slash the child before vanishing without a trace.
The transformation was fast. Too fast.
Within seconds, the small child had twisted into something that resembled a failed experiment between flesh, shadow, and nightmare.
Olivia acted without hesitation. A black rose shot from her hand and exploded into a cloud of mist that obscured the creature's sight. Through the haze, she chanted a spell that sounded like echoes from a realm with neither sky nor ground. The creature's body spasmed violently, as if the sound dug into the deepest parts of its existence.
Noah moved on instinct. His head rang, his thoughts trembled, but his eyes locked onto a revolver behind a display case. Without knowing where the courage came from, he shattered the glass and grabbed it. The old gun felt heavier than it should—almost as if something was sealed inside its cylinder.
He fired.
The gunshot blended with the monster's roar and the strange whispers drilling into his skull. Each bullet made the creature jolt—not only from physical wounds, but from echoes that seemed to come from another world. Noah nearly lost consciousness from the pressure, but he forced himself to fire the last round.
With that final shot, the monster's body shrank, dissolved, and returned to the form of an unconscious child.
Olivia hurried back into her room and prepared a potion. Its ingredients were both chaotic and meticulously placed: morning dew water, powdered dragon shell, sacred tears, night-tree sap, dust from a night butterfly's wings, mandrake root, and moon petals. When mixed, the concoction released a sharp smoke that blurred the air.
She gave the potion to the child.
The change came slowly: wounds fading, breaths stabilizing, and color returning to the boy's face like a sheet of paper being wiped clean of stains.
Silence filled the room.
Noah stared at his own hands—the cold revolver still in his grip—and at the subtle tremor running through his body that he could not stop. Something inside him had changed—not only because of the Selection Room, but because of his own actions.
For the first time since he arrived in this world, he felt a fear that was real.
Fear… and a faint call he did not understand.
As Noah tried to grasp what had just shaken him, something—a whisper that shouldn't exist—crept back into his mind. Not loud, not even a whisper, more like a distant echo rising from behind the walls of his thoughts. His body stiffened. His awareness stretched in every direction, searching for its source. Nothing. There was no one. But he still felt watched.
Cold fear flowed through him like water down his veins.
Noah ran. He didn't know where—perhaps this place had no real direction—but his steps kept pushing him away from something that wasn't chasing him yet still felt close. His voice broke, a formless scream. His hands clutched his head as if trying to tear the sound out of his skull. Veins along his arms stretched and glowed faintly like stray strands of light. His eyes turned white, not from brightness, but from something covering them from within. And then everything collapsed.
He fell, or vanished, or both.
When his eyelids lifted again, the world that greeted him was unlike any he had ever known. Beautiful—if one considered beauty something that stops your breath not from awe, but because the body does not know how to react.
The world was like a mirror broken yet unshattered. Trees reflected themselves in the wrong direction. Stones cast shadows that did not obey their shapes. Every step Noah took felt like pressing down on a surface that reflected him—but not the version of him he recognized.
He touched the nearest tree. It did not move… until it did. Slowly lifting off the ground, twisting its body as if searching for a new angle of reflection. Impossible to explain. Unnecessary to explain. This world did not demand explanation.
In the distance—or perhaps very near—someone stood, staring at a sky that didn't truly have a top. Noah tried to approach, but the distance shifted every time he blinked.
He touched a second tree.
All the trees around them bowed at once—as if clearing a path, hiding something, or simply mimicking one another for no reason.
When Noah took one more step, the figure was no longer in front of him.
He was already behind him.
"Welcome," the voice said, too sharp to be calm yet too soft to be a threat, "to the world of illusions. The place where your power takes root. A world that accepts anything you desire… and anything you wish to avoid."
Before Noah could think, the figure pushed him.
Not hard. Not gently.
Just… pushed.
Noah tumbled into a ravine that shouldn't exist. The air didn't catch him. The world didn't catch him. He fell through shards like glass, each surface reflecting versions of himself that were wrong, incomplete, inhuman.
And when he struck something—whether the ground, the sky, or the boundary of that world—his consciousness snapped back.