Chapter 12.The World,An Illussion

Chapter 12:

The World, an Illusion

The moment the man's fingers touched his forehead, the valley ceased to exist.

Errin was no longer standing on solid ground. The sky above him was not the sky of the valley, nor was it the heavens he once knew. It was an endless void—black, shifting, filled with glimmers of light that pulsed and flickered like dying embers.

He fell.

Or perhaps he rose. There was no gravity here, no up or down, only the sensation of movement without direction. The stars around him twisted and reformed, their patterns unfamiliar.

Then—

A voice.

"This world is an illusion."

Errin gasped as the void around him bent. Images flickered—cities he had never seen, people he had never met, landscapes that belonged to no world he remembered.

"Or perhaps..." the voice whispered, shifting as though spoken by a thousand tongues at once. "...you are the illusion?"

His breath caught. The thought coiled around his mind, seeping into the cracks of his newly returned memories.

Had he truly lived the life he remembered?

Or was it a dream? A false past, woven into his consciousness like a story he had merely imagined?

He tried to grasp onto something real, something certain—but there was nothing.

No valley.

No sky.

No self.

Just the echoes of his own thoughts, unraveling.

"Who am I?" he whispered.

The voice did not answer.

Instead, the world twisted again, and suddenly, he was standing in a place both familiar and strange.

A great palace loomed before him, its spires reaching beyond the sky. Golden banners fluttered in a wind that did not exist. The halls stretched endlessly, lined with faceless figures dressed in robes of blue.

And at the heart of it all—

A throne.

Empty.

Waiting.

Errin staggered forward, heart pounding. He knew this place. He had ruled here once.

Or had he?

"This world is an illusion."

The words rang louder now, as if spoken from every shadow.

"Or perhaps you are."

The faceless figures turned toward him.

And for the first time, he felt afraid.