Rin had grown accustomed to the subtle changes. Over the past days, the once-familiar contours of his room had taken on a quality that felt just slightly off—details that did not belong, moments when time seemed to hesitate. That persistent tingle in his fingertips, the soft hum that followed his thoughts, had become his new reality.
This morning, when he woke, the light through the window carried a strange clarity. His computer screen, now nothing more than a dark rectangle, no longer held his attention. Instead, his gaze kept returning to the small stone resting on his desk. The markings were still there, unchanged yet undeniably active. Its surface, smooth and cool, seemed to store a quiet insistence that he could not ignore.
Rin spent the early hours pacing. At first it was just an idle habit—moving in and out of his room as if to shake off a lingering dream. But each time he passed the desk, he caught the stone's faint glimmer. It was as if the object was waiting for him to notice something, to make a choice.
He sat back down and picked it up once more. The stone now felt heavier, more insistent. He turned it over in his hand, trying to catch any variation in the pattern of its carvings. Without warning, a small, barely perceptible vibration ran through his arm—like a signal pulsing in sync with his quiet heartbeat.
Rin paused, holding the stone close as if seeking reassurance in its coolness. An internal pressure began to mount, not pain but a determined pull. At first, it was just a subtle shift: a slight distortion at the corners of his vision, a fleeting moment when the edges of the room blurred. Then it grew; the air itself seemed to thicken, and the steady hum in his mind became a low, rhythmic cadence.
He stood. The room, usually a refuge of isolation, now felt exposed. His skin prickled as if a quiet current had passed over him. Every object in the room—every familiar corner—seemed to strain under the pressure of something unseen.
A sound came, soft and insistent, like a muted whisper that only he could perceive. For a moment, Rin could still rationalize it away. Perhaps it was the wind, or the settling of the building. But the sound carried the unmistakable cadence of a call.
Then, as he lifted the stone, the edges of the room began to waver. The outline of his desk and the furniture around him blurred, as if reality had started to split at its seams. A brief flash—the sound of his own shallow breath—filled the void where his room had been so certain moments ago.
Rin's eyes widened. He tried to take a step back, but his legs felt unresponsive. The stone in his hand vibrated more strongly, a quiet command that he did not understand yet could not resist.
In that moment, everything he had known, all the muted days of routine, began to vanish. The steady hum of his computer, the quiet tapping of the clock on the wall, even the faint sound of traffic from outside—all melted into silence.
He felt himself pulled toward a point beyond the limits of his cramped room, as if the space before him were a threshold. The stone's pulse nearly matched the frantic beat of his heart, each throb marking the arrival at a boundary he could no longer ignore.
And then—without a sound of crash or chaos—Rin disappeared.
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