The room they give me is round.
No corners. No right angles. The walls curve gently inward like a hollowed seedpod, paneled in something between wood and glass. A skylight opens to the sky overhead—three moons suspended in eerie silence, like punctuation marks on a question I haven't yet learned how to ask.
There's no door.
Just a soft threshold of braided vine that parts when I approach and reweaves behind me when I pass. No lock, no hinge. But it knows when I come and go.
That's the second time this place has responded to me.
The first was the platform. Those faint symbols that pulsed beneath my feet — like someone flipping a boolean flag the moment I stepped on them.
This one's subtler, but no less precise. An environmental trigger with no visible input. No buttons, no speech, no sensors.
Responsive architecture. Autonomous behavior. Sensory binding?
I sit cross-legged on the bed — more of a cushioned alcove grown into the wall — and stare at the ceiling. The moons drift slowly across the skylight as the stars begin to scatter and realign, as if someone's rotating the sky on a track.
Whatever this place is, it's not running on electricity. But it runs on something structured.
I close my eyes.
I try to remember the moment it happened — the transfer, or whatever that was.
There was a power surge. Bright screen. A cold snap, like a vacuum seal breaking inside my chest.
And then… presence. A weightless shove. Not quite physical.
I remember thinking: This isn't a crash. This is a call.
Sometime past midnight — assuming this world has such a concept — I rise and begin cataloging.
First: materials.
The stone of the floor is warm but does not conduct like granite or basalt. There's a subtle grain to it, like polished bone, but it hums with an energy I can't place. Not electricity. Not magnetism. Something more… tonal.
The walls are embedded with soft grooves, like veins running through the structure. Every few minutes, they pulse faintly with a golden hue that travels upward and fades into the roof.
Pulse intervals suggest cyclical energy distribution. Not constant — but predictive. A rhythm, maybe tied to local ley patterns, if such a thing exists here.
Second: light.
There are no lamps. No flames. And yet, a gentle radiance hangs in the air — cool, even, almost passive. Like ambient light from a perfectly calibrated monitor, with no discernible source.
I wave my hand through a beam near the wall. It reacts — dimming slightly, then brightening again.
So it adjusts to motion... or presence. Input-reactive illumination. Another passive sensor?
The question isn't if this world has rules. It's how many.
And whether anyone here realizes they're following them.
I find a shallow recess near the far wall — maybe a desk, maybe an altar — and pick up a shard of crystal resting in its center. It's warm to the touch, angled like a cut prism, but humming faintly beneath the surface.
I turn it slowly in my fingers, watching it catch the starlight. As it rotates, faint lines begin to flicker across the inside — geometric threads like wireframes, forming and collapsing as the angles shift.
Not random. That's data. Or at least, data-adjacent.
I press the crystal gently against the surface of the wall.
There's no visible change.
But a glyph pulses — just once — beneath the crystal's touch. A shape I saw earlier, carved into the village square.
The same spiral.
The one that flickered when the girl conjured fire.
I pull back and sit again, heart beating faster.
This world doesn't just have systems. It has interfaces.
And somehow, I can feel them.
Eventually, sleep finds me — but not for long.
When I dream, it's in numbers.
Sequences. Loops. Nested threads of glowing glyphs woven through a tree that breathes. Every branch labeled, every root responding to unseen queries.
I wake just before dawn.
The moons are gone, but the sky is beginning to lighten — streaks of amber peeling across violet clouds like someone's editing the background.
Outside, I hear distant voices.
They're not alarmed.
Just... expectant.
Something's coming.
I stretch, roll my neck, and stand at the edge of the room. The woven threshold parts again, silently, like it knows I'm ready.
Outside, the air feels charged.
And from the far end of the village square, I see Elder Elara waiting — robed in darker silks now, embroidered with silver that catches the morning light like it's coded in runes.
She isn't alone.
A group has gathered. Watching. Waiting.
She lifts a hand and beckons me.
Input received.
I step forward.