The words lingered in the candlelit air like smoke.
They coiled around Orion's chest and throat, tightening until each breath felt borrowed. He stared across the endless table at the figure before him—no, not a man. Not truly—and struggled to find his voice.
"Th… threshold?" Orion echoed at last.
The word scraped out of him, dry and thin. "What threshold? I was just… reading. I fell asleep in the library. This is—"
He stopped.
The denial rang hollow even to his own ears.
The mist.
The endless table.
The vanished books.
None of it belonged to any dream he had ever known.
The figure inclined his head, the gesture equal parts courtly and mocking.
"Allow me to introduce myself properly," he said smoothly, "since you have stumbled so far."
His voice rolled over Orion like velvet wrapped around steel.
"I am Zhang Han Lu—King of the Devoured Isle. Devourer of Fate."
[SFX: DUMM… DUMM…]
The titles landed with deliberate weight, each syllable pressing down on Orion's chest.
King.
Devourer.
They were not metaphors.
Orion felt that truth settle deep in his bones.
Zhang Han Lu leaned forward slightly. His robes whispered against the table, silk brushing polished wood.
[SFX: SHHH—RUSSS]
The arcane symbols embroidered into the fabric caught the chandelier light and pulsed once—
Like a heartbeat.
"You have stepped into a place your mortal stories only glimpse through cracked doors," Zhang Han Lu continued. "The Athaeneum Between. The Library of Unwritten Ends. The root from which every tale of transmigration and isekai springs."
He gestured lazily toward the mist-ringed expanse and the half-seen shelves beyond.
"Call it what you will. It has… hungrier names."
Orion's knees weakened.
He grabbed the back of the nearest chair, fingers digging into velvet as if it might anchor him.
"You're saying…" His voice wavered. "You're saying I got isekai'd? For real?"
A faint huff escaped Zhang Han Lu—almost a laugh.
Cold.
"Your crude terms amuse me," he said. "Yes, boy. You have been severed from the mundane thread of your former world and dropped into the weave of something vaster."
He spread one pale, long-fingered hand.
"Here, imagination is both architect and executioner. Thought shapes stone. Fear births monsters. Desire twists paths into nooses."
The mist seemed to stir at his words.
"This is dangerous territory," Zhang Han Lu went on. "Few who cross the threshold endure long. Cruel fates await the unprepared—the devoured, the forgotten, the rewritten into footnotes of someone else's legend."
[SFX: LOW, DISTANT WHISPERING]
Orion's pulse roared in his ears.
"Then send me back," he blurted. "Please. I don't want any of this. I just want to go home."
Zhang Han Lu's smile thinned.
"Home?" he repeated softly.
He savored the word like spoiled wine.
"The door you passed through seals behind each traveler. Your old life is almost certainly ash on the wind by now. Time flows… strangely between realms."
He shrugged lightly.
"Perhaps minutes have passed there. Perhaps centuries. It hardly matters."
The words struck harder than any blow.
"You are here," Zhang Han Lu said. "Your only path is forward. Survive. Adapt. Grow familiar with these halls and the echoes within them. Master what stirs inside you—or be mastered."
Orion shook his head, frantic, useless.
"No. This is a dream," he insisted. "Some lucid thing. I'll wake up with a crick in my neck and Mrs. Delgado telling me we're closing."
Zhang Han Lu's chuckle came fully this time.
[SFX: LOW, DARK LAUGHTER]
It raised the hairs on Orion's arms.
"Very real, I assure you. Were this a dream, you would already have conjured escape. But you stand here, small and trembling, because reality has teeth at last."
Silence fell.
Heavy.
The chandeliers stilled. Even the mist seemed to pause, listening.
Zhang Han Lu studied Orion for a long moment, obsidian eyes unreadable.
Then—unexpectedly—he leaned back in his chair with a sigh that might have been boredom.
Or pity.
"Yet…" he murmured, almost to himself, "you remind me of someone I once was. Ignorant. Defiant in petty ways. Curious enough to reach for forbidden pages."
Orion blinked. "You… what?"
Zhang Han Lu's gaze sharpened again.
"A whim, then," he said. "Rare for me."
He rose in one smooth motion.
[SFX: RUSTLE—WHOOM]
The robes settled around him like night folding its wings. He was taller than Orion had realized—imposing, regal, every inch a king shaped by conquest and ruin.
"I will grant you a measure of guidance before I depart and leave you to your fate," Zhang Han Lu continued. "Consider it… an indulgence."
The word indulgence dripped with menace, as though mercy itself were a blade he enjoyed turning in his hand.
Orion swallowed, heart caught between terror and desperate hope.
"Guidance…?"
Zhang Han Lu stepped around the table, closing the distance with deliberate slowness.
With each step, the candles flared brighter.
[SFX: FWOOOSH—FWOOOSH]
His shadow stretched long and jagged across the floor, swallowing chairs, swallowing space.
"Indeed," he said softly. "But listen well, boy."
He stopped before Orion, presence crushing, inescapable.
"In this place—"
His obsidian eyes bored into Orion's soul.
"—even gifts come with prices."