Ever since Ivan woke up into this strange hospital, the thought had quietly started to sit at the back of his mind like an itch he couldn't scratch, because...what if he had already been killed by Stanley that night?
What if his real body, bloody and broken, was still lying behind the school grounds, rotting away under the quiet darkness?
It was not an idea he could dismiss easily. Ivan wasn't the type of boy to blindly accept things.
He had always been practical, always the one to question things that didn't make sense.
And right now, nothing made sense.
The more he observed his surroundings, the more unreal it all felt.
There were no traces of the modern world he had lived in.
No one mentioned about power, electricity, or even technology. Instead, people casually spoke about things he had only read in myths!!
Mana flowing through their veins, abilities that decided status, enchanted items traded like simple goods, and dungeons that apparently defined survival itself.
These weren't side talks or fairy tales here, they were laws.
This world ran on them.
The idea was so far removed from what he knew that a cold thought pressed harder into his mind: maybe this wasn't real.
Maybe this was his mind clinging to scraps of imagination while his body lay dead somewhere. Maybe this was a dying dream, or worse, some twisted afterlife.
And then another thought crept in, one he hated but couldn't silence, if I really am dead, then who am I here? What am I supposed to be?
It was terrifying, but also confusing. He didn't feel dead.
His chest rose and fell, his heart still beat fast whenever fear gripped him, and his stomach still twisted when he hadn't eaten. He felt alive.
Yet, the world around him screamed otherwise. Everything contradicted the very foundation of what he thought reality was.
So he kept questioning, over and over again. Was this really happening? Or was this all just in my head?
"Ivan," Luna said softly, shaking his hand as to braeak him from his thoughts.
"Let's go home." The black eyed lady calmly said.
The word "home" used to conjure images of cramped rooms, creaking floors, and the faint draft that never left their walls.
Leaving the hospital behind, the only reaction Ivan had was of shock.
They lived in the heart of the capital, a place Ivan always thought of as bustling and advanced.
Yet the streets outside told a story completely different to the world he remembered.
Different vendors shouted from their stalls outside, but instead of calling out prices for fruits or grains, they advertised enchanted charms and bound scrolls.
One man lifted a cracked dagger from his table, boasting, "Reinforced with Fire Glyphs! Perfect for low-tier dungeons!" Another woman waved a leather pouch that shimmered faintly, explaining to her customers, "this leather pouch is a spatial item made from the very space stones of an high tier dungeon. Prices start from a 100 Gold Coins!"
It was like there was a street market just outside the so called hospital.
Ivan's steps slowed as his eyes wandered past the crowd. At first, he thought his mind was playing tricks on him. But then, just a little away from the rows of shouting vendors and clinking coins, he caught sight of something that made his breath almost stop.
Trees.
Not the artificial moss pillars he had grown up with back in his world, engineered stumps that mimicked greenery but reeked faintly of steel and chemicals.
These were real, living, breathing trees, with bark rough and uneven, roots spreading wild into the dirt, and leaves swaying gently under the touch of wind.
He stopped dead in his tracks, his throat tightening. The boy's hands trembled without his notice. These trees weren't supposed to exist.
Plants had gone extinct centuries ago, their presence in his old textbooks had been nothing more than faded illustrations under the subject "Ancient History." He remembered half-sleeping through those classes, never imagining he would one day stand in front of the very thing scholars declared lost forever.
Ivan stepped closer, his eyes glued to the towering oak-like giant across the street. Its leaves shone faintly under the sunlight, and for a moment, he thought he saw threads of pale blue light running through its branches like veins.
'Was that mana?'
***