Alex frowned, with the gears in his mind turning.
A wound.
Not a door, not a gate, not a portal. A wound.
He was sure the choice of wording wasn't poetic embellishment – it was specific, chosen deliberately. He was sure of it. Whoever had written this verse hadn't been speaking metaphorically.
If it were a metaphor, the System wouldn't have translated it so literally. The System, for all its strange translations and sometimes symbolic interpretations, always prioritised functional accuracy.
So if it said wound, it meant wound.
So was he right? What had been wounded?
A realm?
A plane of existence?
Or reality itself?
'Is this what it's referring to? A fracture?'
Alex cluenched his fists, knuckles turning pale beneath his skin.
Reluun, who had gone back to nibbling on his dried fruit, looked up again and raised an eyebrow.
"So what's the verdict, professor brainiac? Any more riddles to fry your neurons?"
Alex didn't respond immediately.
