"How about it, Mr. Roland?"
He spoke softly, his voice like water flowing beneath a sheet of ice—calm and cold.
"Now, do you have a better understanding of just how sensible my proposal was?"
He didn't wait for a reply.
It seemed he was certain Roland was incapable of any meaningful response at that moment.
He simply raised his hand elegantly and gave a crisp snap of his fingers.
SNAP.
The sound was crisp, yet it struck the dead-silent hall like a clap of thunder.
In an instant, the surrounding light, air, and even time itself seemed to be violently twisted and yanked back by an unseen force.
Roland felt an intense vertigo and weightlessness, as if his very soul was about to be stripped from his body. His vision filled with chaotic fragments of light and shadow, and an illusory, rewinding hum echoed in his ears.
When he "awoke" once more—or rather, when his Perception was forcibly shoved back into the node of "the present"...
