Lucien's POV
Ididn't sleep after it happened.
Not because I couldn't.
Because I didn't trust the act of closing my eyes.
Something in me had shifted. Clicked out of place.
Not like breaking a bone—but like finding a loose tile underfoot that hadn't been there yesterday. Like stepping into your own kitchen and realizing the ceiling is two inches higher than you remember.
That kind of off.
It lingered in my muscles. In my breath.
I sat near the window and watched the sun rise like it didn't know I'd left.
And maybe it didn't.
Because according to this world—this story—I hadn't.
I didn't tell anyone.
Kiss-shot had looked at me the second I stepped back inside. She didn't ask what I'd done, just stated it: "You were gone."
I shrugged. Mumbled something noncommittal.
She didn't push.
But I saw the flicker in her eyes.
She noticed more than she let on.
She always did.
But whatever she suspected, it wasn't the truth. It couldn't be. Because not even I understood what had just happened.
And that was the part that scared me.
So I tried to put it into words.
Not out loud. Just… inside.
Somewhere quiet. Somewhere safe.
It wasn't teleportation. It wasn't time travel. It wasn't even like dimensional hopping in the sci-fi sense. There was no decision. No choice.
It felt like I slipped.
Like the world had opened a seam and I'd fallen in, and then been allowed back out.
And where I went—whatever that purple-sky place had been—it wasn't part of this universe. It wasn't a "next" version of anything. It was... parallel, but not equal. Real, but not present.
A waiting room between concepts.
And while I stood there, I had seen something.
Not just flashes of other places—but versions of stories I'd never lived.
A woman in a red suit flying across a broken skyline.
A robot crying in a ruined apartment.
A boy with silver hair looking up at a dying moon.
None of it belonged to me.
But I had touched it.
And now I couldn't untouch it.
That's what disturbed me the most.
Not that I could go somewhere else.
But that I could feel myself dislodging from here.
Not physically.
Existentially.
Like my tether to this place was loosening.
And part of me wanted to pull away completely.
Not because I hated this world.
But because part of me wondered if I wasn't supposed to stay in any one place at all.
"You're quiet today," Kiss-shot said the next morning.
I didn't look up from the spot I'd been staring at for half an hour.
"Just tired," I said.
"Strange," she murmured. "You look sharper when you're exhausted."
She was watching me again.
Like she knew I was hiding something.
But she didn't ask.
Maybe because she knew if she did, I'd lie.
Araragi had taken to wandering the hallways now, too. Restless. Probably trying to come to terms with his half-dead body and the vampire who now existed in a form too small to hate properly.
I didn't get in his way.
He didn't get in mine.
We weren't friends. Not yet. Maybe not ever.
But we were beginning to accept that we were both stuck in the same purgatory.
That counts for something.
Later that day, I walked past the old blackboard in the corner of the room.
The marker writing had faded weeks—maybe years—ago.
But today, something strange had appeared.
A word, scratched faintly into the dust of the board.
"Else."
I stared at it for a long time.
Then wiped it clean without a word.
It happened again.
But this time, I didn't walk into it.
This time, it answered me.
It was late. The cram school halls were quiet. Araragi had finally stopped pacing. Kiss-shot was somewhere else—she'd taken to disappearing now and then, saying nothing, leaving behind only the lingering sense that she'd gone to feed or think or both.
I sat in the library room—what was left of it. A few books still lined the dust-covered shelves, most unreadable. Old test prep guides. Grammar books. Someone's manga left half-finished.
I didn't touch anything.
I just sat there and let my thoughts unravel.
And something in me broke a little.
Not loudly. Not violently.
Just a soft realization:
I wasn't from here.
I wasn't supposed to be anywhere.
I didn't belong to any world at all.
And the moment that thought took shape—
The air cracked.
Not thunder.
Not a tear.
Just a shift.
Like something looking back.
My skin buzzed. My bones ached. The room tilted sideways, even though it didn't move.
I stood up too fast.
The air had become water.
My thoughts turned sideways.
And I fell.
No light. No tunnel. No noise.
Just a sudden landing on stone.
Hard. Cold. Real.
My knees hit first. Then my palms. I hissed, pulling back.
I was kneeling in the middle of a circular pattern—etched into the floor. Red. Arcane. Pulsing faintly.
A magic circle.
The room around me was dim and wide, built from marble and old brick. Candles floated in midair, flickering without smoke.
And then I heard it.
A voice.
Not aimed at me.
"I followed the ritual perfectly," someone muttered nearby. "Why didn't it summon a Heroic Spirit?"
Footsteps echoed.
And then a figure stepped into view—a boy, maybe my age. Blonde. British uniform. Blue eyes narrowed in confusion. His hand gripped a book of spells.
He looked down.
At me.
His eyes widened.
And he whispered:
"Who the hell are you?"
I didn't speak.
Because I knew where I was.
Even before he said another word.
Even before I saw the relics on the table.
Even before the sigil on the wall began to glow.
Fate.
I was in the damn Fate universe.
The boy stepped closer. "You're not a Servant."
"No," I said slowly. "Definitely not."
"You're not a magus either."
"Correct again."
He frowned. "Then how did you get inside my bounded field? That's impossible."
"Yeah," I said. "I get that a lot."
I backed up.
Not running. Just... rebalancing.
The room still pulsed faintly with magical energy. The summoning circle beneath me was cooling now, as if something had gone wrong—or maybe gone right in a different way.
He narrowed his eyes. "You absorbed the mana. You landed on the circle and—"
He stopped.
Because even he didn't understand what was happening.
Neither did I.
But my skin remembered the energy. My body held onto the pulse of it, like heat in winter clothes.
I had taken something from this place.
Not just location.
Not just presence.
Attunement.
And then it happened again.
That same pressure.
That same tug.
The world shivered.
And I was gone.
I landed back in the cram school library with a gasp.
Dust exploded off the shelves. My knees scraped the floorboards. I staggered to my feet, breathing hard.
Nothing had changed.
But everything had.
My body still hummed faintly with the aftershock of magical tension. Like I'd brushed against a thunderstorm and walked away with a piece of lightning in my pocket.
I stared at my hand.
Flexed it.
Something sparked—just faintly—beneath the skin. A feeling more than a light.
Not a spell.
Not yet.
But a seed.
And I knew then:
I wasn't just crossing realities.
I was learning from them.
Absorbing.
Becoming.
And no one could ever know.
Not Kiss-shot.
Not Araragi.
Not anyone.
Because if this was real—if I was really starting to phase through worlds and take pieces with me—
Then eventually?
Someone would try to stop me