Sylas stepped fully into the room, gesturing for Aster to follow him. He pointed toward the far side of the space, where a neatly made mattress waited beneath a large window.
"That one's yours," Sylas said, offering a reassuring nod. "The corner bed. It's probably the quietest spot in the room."
Aster carried his exhausted body over to the designated bed, the soft mattress practically begging him to collapse right then and there.
Sylas turned back to the other two occupants, his gaze shifting between the fifteen-year-old boy and the towering young man by the window.
"Be good to each other and try to make friends," Sylas said, his voice carrying the calm authority of an older brother. "Aster's had a rough first night, so give him some space to breathe."
He then caught Aster's eye, giving him a small, parting smile. "Get some rest for now. Don't stress too much tonight. Tomorrow morning, I'll come back, find you, and properly explain how everything works around here."
With a final nod, Sylas stepped out into the corridor and quietly pulled the heavy wooden door shut behind him.
The click of the latch echoed in the sudden silence of room 291. Aster sat on the edge of his bed, his heart thumping against his ribs as the fifteen-year-old and the giant of a man stared at him, waiting for someone to speak first.
The silence stretched for a moment, thick and heavy, until the large man leaning against the window frame shifted his weight. His massive frame blocked out half the moonlight, but his expression wasn't hostile—just deeply curious.
"So..." his deep voice rumbled, echoing slightly in the room. "Your name is Aster?"
Aster blinked, slightly startled, before nodding. "Yeah. Aster Risnoah. Sylas just dragged me out of the woods."
The big man let out a low grunt, stepping away from the window. He extended a hand that looked large enough to crush a skull, though his grip turned out to be surprisingly controlled. "Kaoru. Good to meet you, Aster."
"Good to meet you," Aster muttered, shifting his weight on the edge of the mattress. He glanced over at the lower bunk, where the fifteen-year-old boy was still quietly drawing. The boy hadn't looked up, his expression completely neutral and detached.
"That's Fleur," Kaoru said, gesturing toward the teenager. "Don't take his silence personally. He's just a quiet kid."
Fleur finally paused his pen, raising his eyes to give Aster a brief, calm nod. "Welcome," he said simply. His voice was steady and remarkably grounded for someone so young, carrying none of the frantic energy Aster felt buzzing in his own veins. After that single word, Fleur went right back to his work.
Aster looked between the two of them, the lingering question in his mind finally slipping out. "Are you guys... like me? Are you also Chosen?"
Kaoru nodded once, a somber look crossing his features. "Yeah. We are. Dragged out of the void, just like you."
"How long have you guys been stuck here?" Aster asked, looking back and forth between them. "A few weeks? A few months?"
Kaoru let out a dry, humorless huff and leaned back against his bedpost. "Hm..almost four years."
Aster froze. The word years echoed in his head like a gunshot. "Four... years? You've been here that long?"
"Nearly four," Kaoru confirmed, his eyes tracking the floorboards. "Fleur and I dropped into this world around the same time. You survive long enough, the days just blur together. This place becomes your normal, whether you want it to or not."
Aster sat back against the wooden frame of his corner bed, a heavy weight sinking into his stomach. Four years. These weren't terrified newcomers like him; they were veterans who had somehow managed to stay alive in a world of tooth-filled flowers and two-headed giants for nearly half a decade.
He looked over at Fleur again. If the boy had been here for four years, that meant he was only eleven years old when he first arrived. No wonder he was so calm. The horror of this world was the only thing he really knew anymore.
"Go to sleep, Aster," Kaoru said softly, breaking the heavy silence. "Don't try to figure it all out tonight. Your brain will fry."
Fleur quietly set his pen on the bedside table, pulled his blankets up, and lay down without another word, staring blankly at the wall.
Aster pulled his own thick blankets up to his chin, his mind spinning with a thousand new anxieties. He stared out the window at the distant, amber lights of the village, completely overwhelmed. Tomorrow, Sylas would come back with answers. But tonight, surrounded by the quiet, steady breathing of Kaoru and Fleur, Aster closed his eyes and tried to force his racing mind to rest.
Once Aster closed his eyes and sleep.
The sheer weight of the night's terror—coupled with the exhausting walk through the forest—had taken its toll. Aster didn't just sleep; he dropped into a heavy, suffocatingly deep unconsciousness.
But as his consciousness sank further into the dark, the dreamless void began to twist.
Familiar voices fractured the silence—voices from his previous life, sharp and agonizingly clear. He heard his friends laughing, calling out his name, their tones shifting from casual banter to frantic, distant shouts. In the blackness of his mind, their blurred shadows stretched toward him, hands reaching out from a world he had just lost, trying to pull him back.
"Aster! Hey, over here!" "Aster, wait up—"
The shadows dissolved into smoke just as he tried to reach for them, leaving him completely alone in the dark.
Slowly, the heavy fog of the nightmare began to fracture.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________
"Aster... Hey, Aster. Wake up."
Through the echoes of his past, a different, much more grounded voice drifted into his mind, calling out to him from the real world.
Aster gasped softly, his eyelids feeling like they were glued shut. His muscles ached as if he had run a marathon, and his chest felt tight from the lingering panic of the dream. He blinked hard, squinting against the bright morning light pouring through the large window of room 291.
As his vision blurred and then finally focused, the ghostly shadows of his friends vanished entirely. Instead, he saw a figure standing right beside his mattress.
It was Sylas.
The silver-haired man was leaning slightly over the bed, looking just as calm and composed as he had the night before. He wore a fresh set of clothes, and the tired smile on his face was a sharp reminder that the nightmare of yesterday wasn't a hallucination. It was entirely real, and a brand-new day had officially begun.
"Morning," Sylas said softly, stepping back to give him some room to breathe. He tilted his head, his expression shifting to one of quiet concern. "You look like you just went through a war. Did you just have a heavy dream, or what?"
Aster wiped the cold sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand, letting out a long, shaky breath to steady his racing heart.
"Just a dream," he muttered, his voice still thick with sleep. "Nothing I can't handle."
Sylas studied him for a quiet second, clearly sensing there was more to it, but he chose not to pry. Instead, he gave a slow, understanding nod. "The first few mornings are always the hardest. Your brain takes a while to accept that your old life is on the other side of a closed door."
Turning around, Sylas picked up a neatly folded pile of fabric he had set on the edge of the nearby desk, along with a small wooden washbasin containing a bar of rough soap and a clean, coarse towel.
"Here," Sylas said, placing the items at the foot of Aster's bed. "I brought you a set of fresh clothes. They're standard issue for the newcomers, but they'll fit better than what you wore out of the woods. There's a washroom down the hall to the left. Go clean up, get the forest grime off your skin, and meet me downstairs when you're ready. We have a lot to talk about."
Beneath the water, the world was perfectly still. Aster closed his eyes, letting the numbing cold press against his eyelids. He forced his mind backward, past the glowing words in the void, past the suffocating darkness, searching for the exact moment everything had ended.
How did I get here? he thought. How did I die?
He tried to picture his final moments in his old world. He remembered the voices of his friends from his nightmare, but when he tried to pin down the actual event—a car crash? An illness? A sudden accident?—his mind hit a blank, solid wall.
The harder he pushed to see past that wall, the more the memory resisted.
Suddenly, a sharp, white-hot spike of pain pierced right through his temples.
Aster gasped, breaking the surface of the water as he sat up violently. He gripped the edges of the wooden tub, his teeth gritted as a blinding headache throbbed behind his eyes. It felt as if his own brain was actively punishing him for digging too deep, guarding those final memories like a locked vault.
He leaned his head against the cool wood of the tub, panting heavily as the water dripped from his wet hair. The pain gradually began to recede into a dull, lingering ache, leaving him with a chilling realization.
Whatever had happened to him in his previous life, this world wasn't going to let him remember it easily.
Aster squeezed his eyes shut until the throbbing in his head finally faded into a dull, manageable ache. Realizing he wasn't going to get any answers from his own locked memories, he pushed himself up and stepped out of the wooden tub.
He dried off quickly with the coarse towel and grabbed the fresh clothes Sylas had left him. The outfit was simple but sturdy—a dark, durable tunic, heavy trousers, and a pair of leather boots that fit surprisingly well. It felt utilitarian, built for movement and survival rather than style, a stark contrast to whatever he had been wearing when he first arrived.
Once dressed, Aster took a deep breath, ran a hand through his damp hair, and stepped out of the washroom.
The heavy stone corridors of the building were busier now than they had been a few minutes ago. People in similar practical attire passed him by, some giving him brief, curious glances before moving on with their day. Aster navigated his way back down the labyrinth of hallways and descended the grand staircase into the massive lobby.
It didn't take him long to spot the silver hair. Sylas was leaning against a stone pillar near the entrance, looking out over the bustling room with his arms loosely crossed over his chest. He caught sight of Aster approaching, and the captain gave a welcoming nod, straightening up to meet him.