Lucien's POV.
I didn't mean to leave.
Not this time.
I didn't seek the doorway. I didn't push reality.
I was just sitting in the stairwell, listening to the wind crawl through broken windows, thinking too long about nothing in particular.
And then I blinked—
And the world folded.
Not like a door opening.
More like someone turned a page in a book I wasn't reading.
I landed on concrete.
Again.
Of course.
My hand hit pavement. My ribs barked at me from last night. Or this morning. Or whatever time meant.
I was in a city.
Big, dense, vertical.
Futuristic, maybe.
Neon bled into the sky like a wound that refused to clot.
Everything around me buzzed with mana—or something like it. It was subtle, like the entire place ran on ambient magic instead of electricity.
I stood slowly, brushing my hands off.
The air smelled like metal and ozone.
Cool.
This one was new.
I walked for an hour.
No one looked twice.
Everyone had places to be. Magic tech in their ears. Robes mixed with suits. Concrete towers laced with glowing scripture.
This wasn't the Nasuverse.
This was something else.
A setting from another world's manual.
Somewhere that chewed through fate and turned it into currency.
I liked it immediately.
Not because it was beautiful.
But because it didn't care I was there.
Eventually, I stopped in front of a glass building.
There was a mirror across the front.
I stared at myself.
Black hair, messy from sleep and lack of concern.
Hazel eyes that always looked like they were halfway to saying something they wouldn't.
Same face I remembered.
But I didn't recognize the posture.
The weight.
I didn't stand like someone just passing through.
I stood like someone who had nothing to return to.
"You're doing it again," I muttered to my reflection. "Brooding like a main character in a dead franchise."
My reflection didn't laugh.
Figures.
I kept walking.
Wandered into a district lit by floating glyphs. A marketplace, maybe. There were spell components, glowing knives, talking cats in cages—I didn't ask.
One booth caught my eye.
Crystals. Clean-cut. Vibrating slightly.
The woman behind the stall—half-elf, maybe—looked up as I approached.
"You don't belong here," she said immediately.
"Trust me, that's my whole personality."
She narrowed her eyes. "You're not from here."
"Define here."
She didn't answer.
Instead, she reached beneath the counter and pulled out a coin—old, silver, etched with something that shifted when I blinked.
"Take this," she said.
"I don't have money."
"It's not for sale."
I stared at her.
"I didn't ask for it."
"You didn't have to."
I took the coin.
It hummed in my palm like it recognized something.
Or maybe it pitied me.
Same difference.
I nodded once.
She didn't smile.
Just said, "Don't stay too long. You'll fray."
I left the market.
Found a rooftop to sit on.
Watched the magic in the sky pulse like a sleeping god's heartbeat.
And finally—
finally—
I let myself feel it.
The exhaustion.
The ache.
The emptiness.
Because no one here knew me.
No one here needed me.
And for the first time in a while, I wasn't pretending to be okay.
I was just existing.
Sad.
Tired.
But here.
And honestly?
That felt like progress.