Noel opened his eyes into a place he did not recognize. He stayed still, his gaze moving across the darkness around him while his mind tried to catch up. Sothing felt wrong imdiately, not dangerous exactly, but wrong in a way that was difficult to describe. He could think clearly, he could see, he could move if he wanted to, yet his awareness did not feel properly attached to his body. It was as if his consciousness had arrived there first and everything else had followed imperfectly after.
’Where am I? What is this place?’
He looked down at himself. His form was there, but the sensation of it felt distant. He did not feel the weight of his clothes normally, did not feel the air on his skin. Even standing seed strange, as though his feet rested on sothing his body could see but not truly touch.
Noel forced himself to think. The last thing he rembered was clear enough. The chira. The final fight in the valley below the ridge. The last one percent. Then the system window. Then the ascension.
Manacode.
’This has to be because of that.’ There was no other explanation that made sense.
The thought settled, and the next thing he tried ca out almost by instinct. ’Noir? Can you hear ?’
Nothing. No answer reached him. That disturbed him more than the place itself. Noir had been with him for so long that her presence had beco natural, constant, sothing he no longer needed to think about to feel. Now there was only silence, no voice, no reaction, no faint connection in the back of his mind.
Noel exhaled slowly and began to walk. The surface beneath him looked like a perfectly calm sea, dark and motionless, yet it did not feel like water. It barely felt like a surface at all. His steps made no sound and no ripple followed them. Above stretched a black sky filled with stars, imnse and strangely clear. The silence was absolute.
Then, in the distance, he saw sothing. A figure sitting alone far ahead, legs stretched out, body leaning back on both hands, simply staring upward at that endless star-filled sky.
Noel narrowed his eyes slightly and started walking toward them.
The figure did not react as Noel approached. In a silence this complete, even the smallest shift should have been obvious, yet the person remained exactly as they were, legs stretched out, body leaning back on both hands, eyes fixed on the star-filled dark above as if they had not heard his steps at all. Up close the outline was still difficult to read, more because of the blackness surrounding them than because anything hid their shape.
Noel stopped beside them for a second, studying the side of their face. Still nothing. So he lowered himself and sat down next to them.
"Hello?"
The reaction was imdiate. The figure nearly jumped out of their skin, jerking so hard their whole body lurched sideways, one hand slipping against the surface beneath them as they twisted around with wide eyes. "Who the hell got in here?!"
Noel blinked once. "I’m Noel Thorne. I don’t really know how I got here either."
The man stared at him. Not casually, not with simple curiosity, but with open shock mixed with sothing closer to disbelief, as if Noel’s presence there made less sense than anything else in that place. "You’re serious? How the hell did you even get here?"
Noel stayed quiet for a mont, watching him back. The voice felt familiar. The tone did too. And then another thought followed imdiately after.
He knows .
"Wait," Noel said. "You know who I am?"
The man let out a short incredulous breath and looked at him like the question itself was ridiculous. "Of course I know who you are. You’re the one who got farther than all the others. We’ve talked before." He shook his head once, still staring.
Noel’s eyes sharpened as the familiarity clicked into place. The man leaned back again, though not as calmly as before, and pointed lightly at himself. "Noctis," he said. "I’m Noctis, Noel."
The na landed like a stone dropped into still water. Noel said nothing for a long mont. After everything he had been told, after everything he had assud, that was the last na he had expected to hear in a place like this. Noctis was sitting right beside him.
Noel finally found his voice. "What...?" The word ca out quieter than he intended, more reflex than question. He stared at Noctis for another second as if the face in front of him might shift into soone else if he looked hard enough. It didn’t. The familiarity only beca more obvious the longer he looked. "Noctis? I thought you couldn’t appear in the world anymore. I thought that was it. I thought I wouldn’t see you again."
Noctis let out a short breath through his nose, sothing between amusent and disbelief, then tilted his head back to look at the black sky again. "Yeah," he said. "I thought so too. That’s why I told you that. But this isn’t Vaelterra." His voice lost so of its earlier surprise and settled into sothing more natural, though his eyes still flicked back to Noel every few seconds as if to confirm he was actually there. "I didn’t expect this either. You showing up here makes no sense to ."
Noel’s brows drew together slightly. "Then why are you here?"
Noctis was quiet for a mont, one hand moving lazily against the strange surface beneath them before he answered. "Because I can’t leave." He paused. "And even if I could, I wouldn’t risk it. It’d be too dangerous."
For soone like Noctis to say that so plainly made the word feel heavier than it should have. Noel let the silence sit for a second before asking the question that mattered more than any other. "Where are we?"
Noctis looked out across the endless dark expanse with the ease of soone who had spent a long ti staring at it. No mystery in his expression. No hesitation either. "This?" he said. "This is the dinsion where I keep my brother imprisoned."
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