Sylas didn't know how much he had slept. By the time he had woken up, nothing changed at all.
It was still day. The same quietness present in the room. Feeling a little bit better, Sylas tried to move.
Looking around, he saw at his right the small stool Anna had sat on, together with a small empty bedside table.
At his left, the black wooden door stood tall at the side of a full length mirror with simple wood details.
Now that Sylas was able to take a good look at it, he could see that the door was big, bigger than a normal door should be. Besides that, it was a normal hospital room… a normal ancient hospital room actually.
Sylas couldn't find any of the normal equipment a hospital would normally have. No monitors, no oxygen supply, not even a bottle of water.
He pushed himself up, sitting on the bed.
Thankfully, his head didn't hurt this time. Feeling confident. Sylas tried to get out of bed and look through the window. He was anxious to know where he was.
Without too much thought, he threw the blankets off and stepped onto the ground… or at least, he tried.
Before he realised, he was suddenly falling, face down on the floor.
Sylas was utterly confused. What just happened?
He picked himself up from the floor. Looking at his legs, he felt goosebumps all over his body. His legs shrunken… no, his entire body had.
It was hard to find balance with his stupidly small legs, but he somehow managed to at least not fall.
'What is this? Why am I a child? What is happening?' Various questions passed through his mind.
With a strong sense that something was wrong, Sylas stepped forwards. His steps were slow and deliberated, as if he was learning how to walk again. Soon, he finally got to the window.
'What fuck is this…'
Outside, the ocean stretched far and wide. Each way he looked, the blue would follow. Except for the many islands scattered in all directions, there was nothing else.
Bridges, made of white delicate silk connected all of them together. In the distance, they looked frail, but Sylas could see many people coming and going through them, the bridge supporting their weight…but it wasn't the bridges that surprised him the most.
It was the many boats that sailed between them.
Except for the lone kayak someone was using, all the other vessels seemed to be sailing by themselves. Of course, one could think it was the wind, hitting sails and propelling them forward. That could be true, if not for the small detail that many were going in the opposite direction too.
How could the wind blow in two directions at the same time? It doesn't make any sense.
Somehow, a name came to Sylas's mind.
'Weave?' Then pain came back with all force.
Sylas fell to his knees. His eyes trembled, and he felt dizzy. His empty stomach turned. After a few agonizing moments, the pain faded enough for him to stand again, too afraid to look at the window again, Sylas turned and walked to the mirror.
A scrawny boy dressed into a black tunic looked back at him. His skin was pale as snow, probably derived from bad nutrition. A curly black hair that was overgrown was hidden behind bandages wrapped around his head.
He was a child, no more than six years he could tell, at least based on his height. But what really caught his attention was his eyes. Golden. Not hazel, not amber—pure, glowing gold. And behind the irises, faint threads pulsed like living silk.
He might have studied them longer, but the black door swung open.
"What are you doing?" Anna said as soon her dark eyes hovered over Sylas. "You should be resting. Not walking around."
Sylas got a little embarrassed for being caught like that. His ears turned slightly red.
"I'm fine. Really."
Anna eyed him up and down with her penetrating gaze, before sighing.
"You are impossible, you know that?" She shook her head, "Fine. If you say so… Then, I guess you are good to come back to the temple, right?"
"Sure… I guess?" Sylas said, unsure of what temple she was talking about.
Anna raised an eyebrow.
Was her little brother really wanting to return to the temple on his own accord?
She studied him for a moment, as if confirming it was really him, before saying:
"You know that you are a day short of your studies, right?"
Sylas froze.
"What?"
His mouth hanging slightly open as if his mind couldn't catch up to the words he just heard.