He lay down and closed his eyes.
Sleep had never come easy. Over the years, he'd collected tricks and techniques like talismans against the dark—small rituals to coax his mind into rest.
"Let's do this," he whispered.
He recalled the method he'd found buried in some forum online, the one that worked more often than not.
"First..."
He started with his toes, deliberately relaxing each muscle group as he worked upward. Cool bedsheets pressed against his palms. His fingers went slack. His calves loosened. His breathing deepened.
In the stillness, he felt untethered—almost floating. Tension drained from his shoulders, his jaw, the fine muscles around his eyes. His body grew impossibly light.
His senses dimmed. Eyes closing. Breath slowing. Consciousness fading.
At last, sleep should have claimed him.
Should have.
Instead—
Weightlessness devoured him.
He was falling through open sky. Wind shrieked past his face, roaring like something alive. Morning sunlight blazed against his tumbling form as he plunged into thick clouds—so dense they felt solid, then suddenly gave way. The next instant was like breaking through ice into freezing water, cold so vicious it threatened to crystallize his blood.
Then—
Everything stopped.
[User entering "Amethyst"]
.....
Darkness swallowed him whole.
A voice drifted through the void—so faint he might have imagined it. But slowly, impossibly, it grew stronger.
Whisper becoming murmur becoming speech.
Human-like voices.
"Is someone... talking?"
He stirred. A hairline crack appeared in the darkness. Light seeped through like water finding a weakness. Blurred shapes moved beyond his eyelids. He forced his eyes open, and the world sharpened—colors blooming, edges crystallizing into focus.
"Where am I?"
Ren lifted his heavy eyelids and saw the impossible.
People in crisp blue-white uniforms chatted in a language that slid past his comprehension like water off glass. Their skin was pale, almost luminous. Their hair shimmered with a blue tint that seemed to capture and bend the light. They stood before transparent walls, watching schools of bioluminescent fish drift past in lazy spirals—like something from a fantasy animation, but real.
Ren sat frozen, his mind refusing to process what his eyes told him.
He could feel everything. The smooth, cool texture of the chair beneath his palms. A clean, neutral scent in the recycled air. The slight pressure of clothing against his skin. Every sensation was solid. Present.
"What is this place? A dream? But why does it feel so—"
He pinched his wrist. Hard.
"Ow!"
Sharp, undeniable pain lanced up his arm.
"Okay, maybe not that hard," he muttered, releasing his grip and rubbing the angry red mark blooming on his skin.
Then the implications crashed over him.
Wait.
It hurt?
How can I feel pain in a dream?
The thought struck with the force of ice water. He blinked rapidly, scanning his surroundings with fresh urgency.
He was in some kind of observation corridor. Transparent walls surrounded him on both sides, revealing an underwater world that shouldn't exist. Purple-pink vegetation and kelp swayed in gentle currents while schools of small, brilliantly colored fish wove through the spaces between like living ribbons.
It was a scene torn straight from a fantasy novel.
Tap!
A slender finger rapped playfully against the glass. The fish scattered in perfect sync, as though controlled by a single mind.
People in immaculate clothing either stood in small clusters or sat at tables like his, using devices that resembled phones but felt subtly wrong—sleeker, more organic in their design. Meanwhile, Ren found himself alone at a white-gold table. Before him lay what looked like a menu, each page illuminated by warm light from small chandeliers overhead. Images of dishes accompanied text in characters he'd never seen.
"A restaurant?" he whispered. Despite his inability to read the script, the layout was unmistakable—photographs of food with what could only be descriptions and prices beneath.
A formal voice spoke beside him.
Ren turned. A tall man with blue hair stood there, dressed in blue with subtle patterns worked into the fabric. He held out a tablet-like device, his expression politely expectant. The words that emerged were melodic but utterly foreign.
"What do I do?" Ren whispered, anxiety tightening in his chest. How could he explain that he didn't—
[Amethyst primary language: loading...]
Sound became muffled, as though someone had wrapped his ears in thick cotton.
"What—?"
Ren squeezed his eyes shut as discomfort prickled across his skull like static electricity.
Then knowledge flooded in.
It poured into his mind like water onto parched earth—no, like water through a broken dam. He felt disconnected from himself, watching from a distance as he learned and absorbed at impossible speed.
A language.
He was a newborn in an alien world, starting from absolute zero. Letters materialized in his consciousness, each one burning itself into his memory. Numbers followed. Then writing—his phantom hand moving across paper that didn't exist, forming characters he'd never seen until this moment. Speaking—his tongue learning to shape sounds that seconds ago would have been meaningless noise.
From complete ignorance to stumbling comprehension to fluid mastery. Years of learning compressed into heartbeats.
The deluge gradually slowed. From downpour to drizzle, until finally the last drops of information settled into place like sediment.
Then, like surfacing from deep water, sound rushed back. He returned to the world of noise and meaning.
The same words. The same person. But this time, he understood.
"Sir? Are you alright?" The staff member's brow creased with concern. "We have a private rest area if you need a moment."
"Yes. I'm fine," Ren replied automatically, startled by his own fluency.
He nodded, hoping his strange behavior hadn't drawn too much attention.
The staff member's expression relaxed. "Good. Have you decided on anything you'd like to order?"
Ren glanced down at the menu on the glowing tablet. Strange delicacies scrolled past—dishes he'd never imagined, let alone tasted.
"Well... let's just pick this one."
After Ren made his selection with vague pointing gestures, the staff member checked a display wrapped around his wrist. "Your order is being prepared. It should arrive in approximately twenty minutes."
He bowed slightly. "Please call if you need anything else. I'll leave you in peace."
As the staff member glided away, Ren exhaled shakily and surveyed the impossible restaurant with new understanding.
Amethyst, he thought. Whatever this place is... I need to figure out how I got here. And more importantly—
How do I get home?
Movement caught his eye—a reflection in the glass. His own face stared back. Black hair and...
His heart stuttered. "My real body?!"
"No way. This can't be..."
He blinked hard, hoping the image would resolve into something else. Because if this were true, his already serious problem might just become a death sentence.
Though the reflection wasn't perfectly clear, he could see enough. See how much he stood out among the blue-white haired people around him.
Ren sank lower in his seat, trying to make himself smaller.
Fortunately, his location offered some concealment—tucked just behind a pillar in the corner. Most of the crowd gathered on the opposite side of the space.
Glancing left and right, Ren breathed a tentative sigh of relief. No one was paying attention to him. By now he'd accepted that he might be caught in some supernatural situation—time travel, portal transport, whatever impossible thing he'd read about online and dismissed as fiction.
But he hadn't expected to travel in the flesh. It wasn't all bad—except that the people here clearly weren't human. He looked like an alien among them. A crow in a dovecote.
Conspicuous.
Similar from a distance, perhaps, but vastly different up close.
What should he do?
Ren's jaw tightened.
"Huh?"
Something flickered in the corner of his vision—a blinking light, like a notification demanding attention.
"What is this?"
He focused on it.
The light expanded into a transparent panel floating in his field of vision, responding to his attention like touching a screen.
The interface was rendered in ocean-blue tones, beautiful wave-like patterns flowing along its edges. At the top, words glowed in luminous azure.
{Amethyst}
{Main mission: Understand this world}
{Rewards: ???}
"This...."
His eyes widened.