"Good," Petania said from somewhere behind the shimmering veil of light. "Now, you'll start to feel a pull—like you're being drawn in. Don't fight it. Just let it happen."
Her calm, clinical tone barely reached me through the rising vibration in the air.
And then, just as she warned, I felt it—
a strange sensation tugging at my chest, as if invisible hands were pulling me into a current.
My surroundings wavered, edges softening, colors bleeding into one another.
It was like being caught between waking and dreaming—half-asleep, half-aware.
The hum of the circle deepened, and the machinery around me roared to life. Whirring gears, hissing mana conduits, and the faint static of magic fusing with technology all blended into a single, rhythmic pulse.
My eyelids grew heavy.
The world tilted.
And in the next instant, everything went white.
The light swallowed the laboratory, the sounds of Petania's voice fading into a distant echo—
