It originated—paradoxically—with silence.
Not the comforting kind that indulges after a long day, nor the ominous hush before the storm, but a silence so profound it made the tick-tick-tick of a clock feel like a thunderclap in the vast, still chamber of existence.
Lei blinked. He wasn't sure when his eyes had last surrendered. The air around him didn't crackle with sound, but with an intense, sentient awareness, as if the very fabric of reality had just remembered a deep, hidden shame and blushed with guilt or perhaps profound embarrassment.
He stood on nothing. There was no ground, no sky, no discernible magnitude nor direction—just an unfolding void, threaded with luminous tendrils of something achingly familiar, yet resembling neither mathematics nor magic, but a disturbing, seamless fusion of both. One thread pulsed brighter than the others—an elegant, circular symbol that looked like an ouroboros trapped within the infinite twist of a Möbius strip.
The Seal of Paradox.
He remembered naming it that, or perhaps a shadow-self had. A version of him who hadn't quite been Lei... yet undeniably was.
"Either I've reached the stage where I'm officially a crazy daydreamer..." he muttered to himself, the words feeling foreign, distant, "...or I've finally overdosed on instant noodles and insomnia."
His voice echoed backward, a strange, garbled rewind of his own doubt.
From the shimmering, curtain-thin space, memories—incomplete, unfamiliar—bled through like faulty projections on a cosmic screen. Some were undeniably his: his sister's bright laugh, the acrid scent of cheap ink from countless exam papers, an elder brother's gruff scolding after he'd pulled yet another all-nighter, poring over papers that felt less like assignments and more like mirrors reflecting the simulated reality of his own passing existence.
Others... were not. Battlefields drenched in perpetual twilight, cities floating upside down over oceans of crystalline glass, a monarch with no face whispering a name that clawed at the edges of this very universe.
And then—
Pain.
Not the dull, familiar ache of muscle or bone. This was sharper, meaner, a shearing sensation of identity itself being peeled away, sliced, folded, and rewoven like some monstrous origami crafted by mad gods.
Lei screamed without a mouth.
He opened his eyes.
The faint, lingering scent of ink. A single, trembling candle flame. The fine dust motes dancing in its weak halo.
He was sitting—arms stiff, back screaming a silent protest—at a wooden table so intricately carved it felt alien to his usual spartan tastes. His hands, raw and aching, clutched a black quill, its tip still weeping ink onto the parchment beneath. The word "Neviah" (or perhaps "Neviha") was meticulously scribbled there.
Only... he didn't know how to write in this script. Yet he had done so, effortlessly.
The language hung in his brain like a second soul, fully formed, completely his.
Around him, the room was steeped in a soft, warm glow. An arched window let in the golden, dying hues of the setting sun. Shelves groaned under the weight of rolls of ancient scrolls, leather-bound tomes with arcane symbols, and strange instruments that resembled astrolabes and heart monitors fused into impossible, gleaming contraptions.
"Brother Lei, are you done yet?"
Lei froze, every muscle locking.
The door, a heavy slab of oak, creaked open without his permission, intruding on the sudden, fragile quiet.
In stepped a girl—no older than fourteen. With strikingly piercing gray eyes and a tangle of curly hair tied into a chaotic, endearing bun. She was holding a tray, laden with something suspiciously edible and even more suspiciously steaming.
"You always forget to eat when you're working," she pouted, her voice a familiar, gentle chide as she placed the tray beside him.
"I—uh..." Lei managed, his voice a dry rasp, "...yes, thank you, Serinya?"
"Who else?" She frowned, a genuine crease between her brows.
She rolled her eyes with the practiced ease of a sibling who had honed sarcasm since birth. "You're lucky; you didn't ruin the inkstone this time."
She walked out, the door sighing shut behind her, leaving him alone with the impossible questions. Endless, looping, irritating questions, each one a new knot in the unraveling thread of his identity.
He glanced down.
On the parchment, beneath the word "Neviah," more symbols had been drawn. Writing in a hand that was now unmistakably his.
And not.
To be continued...