Reis regained consciousness slowly, like someone surfacing from a dark depth to a surface he didn't know would hold him or swallow him again.
The first thing he noticed was the ceiling.
Not the ceiling of his room, the one he was used to staring at for hours, that cracked ceiling where patches of moisture accumulated like maps of a country no one knew.
This ceiling was different. Smooth, a pale ivory color, with a small circle of frosted glass in its center emitting a soft light with no discernible source.
He closed his eyes, then opened them again.
The ceiling was still there.
Beneath him, he felt a mattress unlike his old one, whose springs had worn out, every dip reminding his spine of a past of insomnia.
This mattress was firmer, but even, as if someone had measured every angle to fit his back.
He turned his head slowly; his neck protested the movement, pulses of pain cascading from the back of his head to his forehead.
The room was small. That was the second truth his mind registered after the ceiling.
It wasn't the crampedness of his old room, that tightness like a box sealed from all sides.
It was a different kind of smallness, intentional, with clear boundaries: one bed, a small closet flush against the wall, a narrow table beside the bed, and a narrow door leading to what appeared to be a small bathroom.
Everything here had its place, as if chaos were unwelcome.
Reis sat up slowly, facing a wave of dizziness that nearly toppled him sideways. He placed his palms on the mattress to steady himself and closed his eyes until the room settled around him.
When he opened them again, his gaze fell on the small table.
The table was wooden, a dark hue tinged with velvety brown, and its surface was less orderly than the rest of the room.
Scattered books, some stacked atop others, another open to midway pages. Beside them, a small golden card reflecting light, and a dove-shaped pendant hanging from the table's edge by a thin chain.
Reis reached his hand toward the table, but his body suddenly stopped.
That was not his hand.
His heart stopped for a moment, or so he felt. Everything stopped. His breath, his thoughts, even the pulse throbbing in his temples.
This hand was not the one accustomed to hunger, beatings, and cold.
It was smaller than he remembered, yet not gaunt in the way he was used to. The fingers were longer than what a twelve-year-old's should be? No, that was an illusion. But the skin was smooth, free of the small bruises left by sharp book edges, free of the dry cuts that never found ointment to heal.
He raised his other hand. The same.
He looked at his arms. He was wearing a white shirt, somewhat loose, but clean. Truly clean, not the kind of cleanliness where he tried to hide stains by washing them until they faded, but the cleanliness of something that had never been soiled.
Reis shook his hands as if touching something hot and rushed toward the bathroom.
His steps were unsteady, his head spinning as if the room were rotating around him instead of him within it.
He reached the door with a shove, and it opened roughly onto a space smaller than the room itself.
A small bathroom: a narrow shower with a clear plastic curtain, a small basin of gleaming white material, and a rectangular mirror above the basin.
The mirror.
Reis stood before it, his hands trembling at his sides.
He slowly raised his eyes.
His face was there. But it wasn't his face.
The resemblance was deceptive. Like a scene redrawn by another artist after hearing it described.
The same basic features: the slightly pointed chin, the cheekbones beginning to protrude more than they should, yet here not from hunger, but from natural structure.
His eyes were yellow, but not the pale yellow he was used to seeing reflected in dark windows.
They were yellow like the flash of lightning before it splits the sky.
But what froze the blood in his veins was his hair.
White hair falling across his forehead, reaching his brows in soft strands that bore no other color.
Pure white, not like grey, but as if he were born with this color and the world was accustomed to seeing it as something unusual.
Reis raised his trembling hand to his face, and the reflection in the mirror mimicked the exact movement.
He touched his cheek. It was smooth, slightly cool. His fingers trembled against his cheekbone like someone touching something they couldn't believe existed.
He turned his head right, then left. The face in the mirror did the same.
No bruises. No cuts. No dark circles under his eyes like someone who hadn't slept for weeks. No pain hidden behind his eyes waiting for a moment of weakness to erupt.
It was another face. A face that resembled him, yet was not his.
Reis lunged toward the basin, turned on the cold water tap, and washed his face violently.
The water was cold, refreshing in a way he wasn't accustomed to. There was no smell of rust clinging to his hands after bathing at home, no feeling that the water might not return tomorrow.
He washed his face once, twice, three times, until his skin reddened from the harsh rubbing.
When he raised his head to the mirror again, it was the same face.
White hair. Yellow eyes. Renewed features, with no trace of the fatigue that had haunted him for years.
Reis staggered backward, his shoulder hitting the wooden doorframe. He stood there for moments, breathing hard, thoughts crowding his mind like a flock of crows unsure where to land.
He hurried out of the bathroom, returning to the small room.
His steps were quicker than they should have been; his foot caught the edge of the bed, nearly making him fall, but he gripped the table's edge.
He looked at the scattered books atop it.
He didn't know them. Their titles were written in elegant English script.
One book was open to a chapter titled: "Fundamentals of Mana Control."
The other book was thinner, more like a guide, titled: "New Student Guide – The United Grand Academy of Light."
Reis's hand trembled as he reached toward the table.
Beside the books lay a golden card, glossy but not ostentatious, about the size of a palm.
In its upper right corner, a small emblem was intricately engraved: a white sun in the center of a circle, surrounded by seven small dots distributed like planets.
Reis picked up the card. It was heavier than he expected, as if made of real metal, not cheap plastic.
On its face was inscribed in precise letters:
United Grand Academy of Light
Academic Identification Card
Name: Reis
Surname: None /
Age: 12
Nationality: Ertherian Empire
Rank: Student – First Year
Reis trembled.
He threw the card onto the table as if it had burned him; it hit the wood roughly, spinning a little before settling.
He began searching the room frantically.
The small closet. He opened its door roughly, nearly tearing it off its hinges. Inside, the clothes were few, arranged with the precision of someone who didn't own much but took care of what they had.
A complete white uniform: a fitted jacket with narrow sleeves, straight-cut trousers, both made of a soft, somewhat heavy fabric.
On the edges of the jacket was delicate gold-thread embroidery, flowing from the shoulder to the chest before fading.
The uniform was generally clean, but Reis noticed a small, faint stain on the edge of the right sleeve, as if the wearer had wiped something on it and it hadn't fully disappeared.
Beside the uniform were two additional white shirts, undergarments, and a pair of black leather shoes placed neatly on the closet floor.
He closed the closet door and opened it again, as if confirming what he saw was real.
He returned to the table, flipping quickly through the books. Many pages he hadn't read, but some diagrams were strangely familiar: mana circles, energy pathways, geometric shapes overlapping as if dancing on the paper.
He had seen all these diagrams before.
In the game. In the novel.
In the world of Song of Fall.
Reis stood in the middle of the small room, breathing with difficulty. His body was trembling, but he no longer knew if the trembling was from fear, cold, or something else he couldn't name.
He looked around again: the bed, the closet, the table, the books, the golden card, the silver pendant.
Everything here belonged to a world not his own.
Everything here told him he was not in his cramped room in his father's house.
Everything here told him he was not Reis, the child who owned nothing but a cold wall, torn books, and a screen that let him escape to places no one could reach him.
Reis fell onto the bed, on his stomach, his eyes facing the small window above the table.
The view from there was completely different from what he was used to.
There was no neem tree sending its branches toward his old window, no roofs of neighboring buildings hiding the horizon.
There were towers. Towering spires stretching toward the sky like giant fingers touching the clouds. Some were made of glass reflecting sunlight in a cool blue hue, others of white stone carved with a precision that allowed no roughness.
Between them, suspended walkways connected the buildings, thin lines of light along which small shapes moved that he couldn't distinguish.
Below the window was a wide square, centered by a large fountain shaped like a white sun carved from a stone he didn't recognize, water flowing from beneath it. Around the square were low buildings compared to the towers, but vast in expanse, resembling halls or auditoriums. On their walls, large illuminated banners changed their words from time to time.
Reis strained to read one; the words formed and vanished like clouds:
"United Grand Academy of Light – Reception of New Students – Spring of the Thirty-Seventh Year After Unification."
Reis turned his face into the pillow, his cheek pressing against the cool fabric.
"…I'm in the Academy of Light,"
he whispered, barely audible.
"I'm truly in the world of the novel and the game…"
The words came out heavy, like someone uttering something they'd held in their chest for a long time.
He rolled onto his back, staring at the ivory ceiling and the glass circle emitting its ceaseless light.
What should he do now?
This question echoed in his head like a relentless refrain.
He knew this world.
He knew its laws, its maps, its characters, its secrets hidden within the novel's chapters he'd read repeatedly until he'd memorized some pages by heart.
He knew that in this academy, students were divided into classes based on their affinity: Mages and Knights.
He knew mana was the source of power here, and students weren't just fighters but mana-bearers through whose bodies it flowed.
He knew there were hidden things in this academy, things the novel mentioned in scattered chapters, only to return to them at the end.
But knowing a world doesn't mean you know what to do once you're inside it.
And was he truly inside it? Or was all this just…
What? A dream?
Was an exhausted child, beaten and hungry, dreaming he awoke in a different world?
Was this small, clean room, the different face in the mirror, the gold-embroidered academic uniform, merely the delirium of his final moments before losing consciousness?
Reis remembered the blood flowing from his nose. He remembered the cold wall against his back. He remembered the sound of his father's belt cutting through the air before landing on his body.
He remembered that in the end, he no longer felt anything. No cold, no pain, no fear.
Then… nothing. Then this.
Reis lay on the bed for hours.
The light through the small window shifted, turning from bright white to golden-yellow, then to the soft orange that precedes sunset.
And each time the light changed, Reis would rearrange the thoughts in his head, only to find them scattering again like loose papers refusing to stay together.
He heard sounds from outside his window. Laughter, footsteps, calls between students talking among themselves.
Once, he heard a voice calling the name "Kayan" loudly; another time, he heard a discussion about the lecture schedule starting the day after tomorrow.
The day after tomorrow… There was a lecture schedule and other students.
There was a life unfolding in this world, regardless of whether Reis was ready for it.
At some point, he sat on the bed again. He took the golden card in his hands and turned it over repeatedly. On the back, he found a date, an electronic signature, and a small stamp with the same emblem.
Reis.
First-year student.
This was his identity here. Nothing more, nothing less.
He placed the card on the table and took the silver pendant. He hung it around his neck, feeling its light weight on his chest, a silent reminder that he was here.
Then he took the uniform from the closet and held it up before him. It looked like it would fit. He returned it to its place.
Hours passed, and Reis did not leave the room.
He still hadn't dared.
Whenever he thought about opening the door and stepping into the long corridor beyond, whose end he didn't know, his body would freeze.
Not because this world was necessarily frightening, but because he wasn't used to having a place to go without being questioned, or having a door he could open without being beaten for having closed it.
In moments when the fear subsided, curiosity would take its place.
What would happen tomorrow? And the day after?
Would there really be lectures? Would someone ask him to prove he deserved to be here?
And what if they discovered he wasn't this Reis whose name was on the card, but someone else who had invaded his body?
Or was he… this Reis?
He paused at this question for a long time.
Was he Reis who lived in a cramped room with an alcoholic father? Or was he Reis who was born in this world and lived here until now, when suddenly the memory of a child from another world awoke within him?
He closed his eyes and tried to remember anything about this body before he awoke in it. Nothing. Total emptiness. As if his life had just begun when he opened his eyes to this ivory ceiling.
Perhaps that was what happened. Perhaps a child named Reis lived in this world, and at some moment… vanished, or slept, or died, and then the other Reis took his place.
Or perhaps all this was nonsense, and he was just a mad child delirious in his cramped room while his real body still lay sprawled on the floor by the window, blood drying on his lips.
But the pain he felt when he got out of bed that morning was real. The pain in his back, his shoulders, his neck. Not the pain of being beaten, but the pain of a body that had slept in the wrong position, or a body that had undergone something it couldn't explain.
When darkness had fully fallen, and no light came through the window except the faint glow of distant towers, Reis felt hungry.
Real hunger, gnawing at his stomach from within.
He had never felt hunger this way before. His old hunger had been sluggish, resigned, like something that had learned not to ask. But this hunger was alive, demanding to be satisfied.
He looked toward the door again.
Was there food in that corridor? Was there a dining hall? Could he go out and return without being questioned?
He stood slowly and approached the door. He placed his hand on the cool handle.
He stood there for moments, breathing hard.
Then he returned to the bed.
Not today. Tomorrow. Tomorrow he'd think about it.
He lay on his back, eyes open in the darkness.
Above him, the glass circle had stopped glowing, leaving the room in faint darkness punctuated by threads of light from beneath the door and the small window.
In that darkness, Reis thought of only one thing:
This world, Song of Fall, the academy, the golden card, the perfect face in the mirror… all this might be a dream, might be delirium, might be a reality he didn't understand.
But in any case, his father wasn't in it.
There was no sound of a belt cutting through the air, no smell of alcohol clinging to the walls, no fear of a knock on the door, unsure whether it would bring him or leave him be.
Here, he had closed the door himself.
And here, no one would knock on it.
Reis closed his eyes and let himself sink into a heavy sleep, not noticing the quiet tears that had flowed down his new, smooth cheek, fading into a pillow that wasn't his.