Kael stepped up to the terminal gate and handed over the coins.
No student discount.
He kept his hood covering his whole body.
.
"They can’t know I’m from Arcadia Academy. Not here."
Once the paynt was made, the gate opened with a soft click, and he walked through—alone.
The path ahead was narrowed as I got deeper and deeper..
At first, it seed like just another old road...
But with each step, the world seed to shift.
The deeper he walked, the darker the sunlight beca, like clouds were swallowing the sky from above.
The air grew heavier, and the bright noise of the city faded behind him.
Even the signboards, once clear and glowing, now flickered and blurred—like they were being erased by the shadows around them.
Kael glanced at his watch.
His eyes widened.
"What? "
"...The ti... is it running faster?"
The seconds were spinning faster. .
Then he realized—
"This place... it’s not normal."
He calculated the speed of the seconds compared with that world.
The ti in this strange path flowed three tis faster than the real world.
"That ans,
He stopped walking for a mont, standing still in the twilight.
"Does this arc even exist in the novel?" he murmured.
He searched his mory, flipping through every plotline he knew—but nothing ca up.
No na.
No ntion.
"It feels like I crossed into a different realm..."
He looked ahead, where the path twisted and faded into a fog.
Curiosity.
Possibility.
"...This place... wasn’t written about. Which ans—whatever lies ahead... even the original characters never saw it."
Kael took a deep breath, tightened his grip on his bag, and continued walking forward—
Into the unknown.
After one hour of walking inside, one hour in that place, he reaches the place, known as QUIETING.
Inside the Quiting, sound disappears, only your own thoughts are heard.
Then... the shadows began to move.
At first, they were just faint shapes in the mist—blurry outlines with no faces.
But slowly, they took form. People. Or at least, they looked like people.
Figures appeared around him—walking aimlessly, so kneeling, so crawling.
They whispered softly, their voices twisted and broken.
"Help ..."
"I want to get out..."
"This is it... it ends here..."
The voices echoed from all directions, mixing into an eerie, broken sound:
"Bsbsbs Ssssssss..."
One of the shadow reached out toward him—but the hand passed through his shoulder like smoke.
They weren’t real.
It was an illusion!
Lost spirits, trapped in this strange place.
Echoes of failure.
Despair made flesh.
Kael didn’t say a word. He rarely did anyway. Quiet by nature, he simply observed, cautious and alert.
Then—on his right side—he saw sothing that made him tense.
A figure stood still, facing him.
Not just any figure.
It was himself.
The other version of himself.
His height. His face. His clothes. Even the scar on his palm—it was all the sa.
Like a mirror with no glass.
The other Kael simply stood there, unmoving.
Kael narrowed his eyes. He wasn’t fooled.
"This is an illusion," he whispered under his breath.
But instead of fading, the other Kael spoke.
"You’re chasing sothing you don’t understand," it said calmly.
"You think knowledge is enough to change fate?"
Kael remained still.
"I know what I should do", he replied.
Then, he stepped forward—and the mont he did—
A massive pressure slamd into his head.
Like his mind had been struck by thunder.
He dropped to one knee, grabbing for breath as pain stabbed through his skull.
Everything began to spin—the shadow world, the voices, the other version of himself.
And in an instant—(just one second)
FLASH.
He was gone.
Kael opened his eyes.
He was back.
Standing alone at the terminal, the faded green signboard still glowing faintly in the distance behind him.
His heart was still pounding. His forehead was drenched in cold sweat.
He had no injuries. No wounds.
Sothing inside him had shifted.
He stared at his shaking hands and whispered:
"...What was that place?"
Was it a trap? A test? A mory?
He didn’t know.
But one thing was certain.
That was not part of the original novel.
"The mont I talked back... I was here."
Kael stood at the terminal, still catching his breath.
The world around him had returned to normal—bright skies, people walking past, the distant hum of city life.
But his mind was still stuck in that strange, shadowy world.
His eyes narrowed slightly.
"But why?"
"Does that an... I wasn’t supposed to talk to them?"
He replayed the mont again in his head—the shadows, the lost spirits, the strange version of himself.
He had held it together through the illusions. He didn’t speak, didn’t respond.
But the mont he opened his mouth and spoke to his reflection...
Everything ended.
"So if I speak to them... either I’ll be sent back, or maybe even worse—I’ll get trapped there forever."
Kael’s expression turned serious.
"Those spirits... they weren’t real. They were probably tests."
He reached into his pouch and pulled out the small watch he always carried.
His eyes widened slightly as he checked the ti.
"Only twenty minutes have passed since I went in?"
He frowned.
"But inside... It felt like a full hour."
That confird it.
"Ti moves differently there. Just like I suspected. One real-world minute equals three minutes inside."
His heart beat a little faster.
"That’s... actually good. That ans I can spend more ti exploring that place without wasting much ti in the real world."
He looked back toward the narrow path, where the green sign "Liberation of Failure" still glowed faintly in the distance.
Most people would have walked away.
Most people would’ve taken this as a warning to never return.
But Kael was not like most people.
He adjusted his cloak, eyes fixed on the entrance.
"If I stay calm and don’t talk... I can go deeper. I can understand the missing piece of fragnts."
"I need to try again."
Without hesitation, he stepped forward once more—toward the illusion, toward the path no one else dared to take.
Because sotis, the key to power...
Was in the places everyone else was too afraid to enter.
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