The exam was in three days.
Musashi knew this the way he knew his own heartbeat, the notes on his desk had stopped making sense an hour ago. He'd been reading the same paragraph since nine-thirty. His phone said eleven forty-seven. The coffe his mother had left outside his door was cold.
He leaned back in his chair, and stared at the ceiling, he thought about nothing in particular.
Then the ceiling was gone.
Immediately after, his vision turned black, a low whisper could be heard, he couldn't tell from where yet at times it sounded real, at times sharp, at times imaginary, at times alluring, at times maniacal and at times crazy.
Not understanding a bit of the murmurings, Musashi attempted to find the source of these murmurs, he tried to open his eyes and yet they remained close.
His head was spinning, no to be precise it felt like the entire world was spinning, he was going to explode, his mind was overwhelmed with the sensation. His entire body was getting tighter and tighter and it felt like he would explode any moment.
Just as he felt the climax of this pain, the voices faded away and his surroundings became head clear. He felt his own body going through the same change. He finally managed to open his eyes only to be behold with gray fog.
An endless gray fog which was vague and could not be discerned
"What the hell?"
The fog was like flowing water, dotted with a lot of crimson stars. They were of various shapes, some enormous while other miniscule. There was also a sense of deep depth in each one of them.
Though he could not reach out to them, he extended his hand yet the distance between the stars and him seemed infinite.
The next moment, the gray fog churned, it immensely shocked him. In an instant, a number of towering stone pillars sprouted around him, over was a vast dome which seemed to push the gray fog afar.
The area turned into a magnificent, grand palace.
And directly under the dome, a long bronze table appeared with many high-back chairs on both sides. The back of each chair dazzled and shone faintly, drawing weird symbols which he could not discern.
Atop the bronze table, a deck of cards seemed to appear out of nowhere, no one was holding it yet the deck was floating in the air.
The deck was neatly shuffled by the mysterious force before each of its cards were scattered around the bronze table in a neat arrangement. Then.
[Prisoner of the Golden Headband]: Oh.
A part of the gray fog seemed to have detached from the boundary and formed a shape. The text appeared in it with a crimson glow glowing against the fog, crisp and clean like a system notification. He stared at it.
[Prisoner of the Golden Headband]: Oh, this is something.
He looked to his right. Then up. Then back at the notification.
"What—"
[Great Love Immortal]: It's wearing a school uniform…..
[Prisoner of the Golden Headband]: IT'S WEARING A SCHOOL UNIFORM. I SAW IT FIRST! Wait, what's a school uniform?
[Hope of the Universe]: He looks kind of lost. Is he okay?
[Great Love Immortal]: It sat in that Seat. Whether it's okay is irrelevant.
[Prisoner of the Golden Headband]: No, the boy makes a fair point — he has no idea where he is. Look at his eyes.
[Great Love Immortal]: I see it.
[Prisoner of the Golden Headband]: Six hundred cycles, and the Seat picks a student. I want to be offended on behalf of the cosmos, but I find I'm not.
[Hope of the Universe]: Should we say something? Help him?
[Great Love Immortal]: No.
[Hope of the Universe]: Why not?
[Great Love Immortal]: Because we don't know what it is yet. Kindness offered too early is just information surrendered for free.
[Prisoner of the Golden Headband]: What he means is — if you help him now and he turns out to be nothing, you've wasted it. And if he turns out to be something, you've shown your hand.
[Hope of the Universe]: That sounds like a lonely way to think.
[Great Love Immortal]: .....
[Prisoner of the Golden Headband]: Say something! Do something! Pick a card! No wait, first say something cryptic, Fool, Mr fool! then pick a card—
[Hope of the Universe]: Man!! Im itching to fight him. I bet he is strong.
[Great Love Immortal]: Don't tell it that. You'll make it overconfident.
[Hope of the Universe]: Isn't confidence good?
[Great Love Immortal]: Not unearned confidence, no—
[Prisoner of the Golden Headband]: UNEARNED IS THE BEST KIND—
"SHUT UP."
The grey fog swallowed the words. The notifications hung in the air for one suspended moment.
Then.
[Prissioner of the Golden Headband has been muted for 5 minutes]
[Great Love Immortal has been muted for 5 minutes]
[Hope of the Universe has been muted for 5 minutes]
Silence.
It settled against the ears like a hand pressed gently over them. Musashi stood in it and breathed. Once. Twice.
He looked down at himself
He was, in fact, wearing his uniform.
He was wearing them out of laziness, not having bothered to change them when he got back from the university. Wait!
Right.
What do I know:
'One , I was at my desk. Now I'm not. Either this is a dream detailed enough to feel like dying, or I'm actually dead, or something else entirely. All three have the same practical implication: I have no reference point.'
'Two, the seat. Something called me The Fool and treated it as a title, am i in some sort or throne room?'
'Three — no it was obvious what had happened, this was clearly a transmigration, the whispers, this gray fog, the system like messages. Even the titles of the three sounded like they belonged in some kind of novel Also…. They said pick a card.
He turned.
He walked to the nearest edge and reached toward the first.
The fog's interface bloomed above it, soft and immediate:
[A world of blood-deep power and grief worn like armour. Peace here is not the absence of war , it is the pause between them. The shadows cast by the dead are longer than those cast by the living.]
He pulled his hand back.
Next.
[A world where the boundary between living and dead has thinned to a membrane. Cursed energy flows from human grief. The powerful consume or are consumed.]
He moved down the table.
[A world of equivalent exchange. To gain, one must give. The laws are mathematical. The cost is never only material.]
[A world of colossus beings. The greatest threat wears a human face.]
[A world of grades. Monsters, slayers, and those who send both.]
He stopped.
Beneath his hand, when he reached for the next card, the notification read:
[Hesitation is defeat. Thus is the law of this world. A world without a ruler. Oh, how heartless are thy, to abandon such as this. The old orders are fracturing. What fills the gap is not yet determined.]
He read it twice.
Not yet determined.
He picked up the card and turned it over.
A serpent, rendered in ink so dark it seemed to absorb the grey light around it. Coiled, with its head raised, patient. He felt intimidated just by the depiction, as if it waited for everything else to come to it. Just for it to never let them go away.
Below it, a single word.
THE SERPENT.
The five minutes ended.
[Prisoner of the Golden Headband]: And he found it. A fracturing world. A vacancy waiting to be filled.
[Hope of the Universe]: He picked well.
[Great Love Immortal]: He picked logically. Whether that's well remains to be seen.
The fog began to move.
[ANCHOR WORLD SELECTED: THE SERPENT]
[CHRONICLE PROTOCOL: INITIALIZING]
[Sefirot : Dormant]
[Fable : None]
[True Name:]
[Calculation Complete : Unknown Variable. Insufficient Data]
[First Head of the serpent has been cut]
Musashi looked at that last line for a long moment.
Unknown variable, he thought. That's the nicest thing anyone's ever called me.
The grey swallowed him whole. Before his consciousness was gone, he heard a distant yet persistent sound
The fool who belongs to no era
The sovereign untitled by the gray fog
The one who was not, and has never been, only human.
A nameless being with no origin
Epigone of the lord of Mysteries