With the faint understanding he had gained, Shad Darc finally began to recognize what the strange sensation felt like.
If he had to describe it, the closest word he could find was cold.
Extremely cold.
Yet it wasn't the kind of cold that came from the air or touched the skin. It existed somewhere deeper, beyond anything physical.
It felt as though he had been submerged at the bottom of a perfectly still ocean. There were no currents, no movement, and no disturbances. Only an endless, undisturbed silence.
Absolute stillness.
And within that stillness was an overwhelming sense of calm.
Peace.
A strange, almost indescribable peace—the kind Shad had desperately wanted for a long time.
Now, somehow, it was within his reach.
"Ah..."
A faint smile touched his lips.
"This feeling... How peaceful."
He closed his eyes and allowed himself to experience it for a few more moments.
If only he could hold on to it forever.
The thought surfaced naturally, but Shad dismissed it just as quickly.
There was no such thing as absolute or everlasting peace while one was alive. At least, not in the way he understood the world.
The only permanent escape he could imagine was death.
He pushed the thought aside.
That wasn't important.
What mattered was understanding the sensation.
The more he examined it, the more convinced he became that it was connected to the forest. However, the forest alone couldn't explain everything. There was another factor involved, one he had yet to identify.
He needed more information.
More observation.
More understanding.
Only then could he determine what was truly happening.
As Shad focused on the sensation, his mind suddenly went blank.
Again.
This time, however, something had changed.
The state of emptiness had intertwined with the strange sensation, and the two seemed to merge into something entirely new.
Oddly enough, the resulting feeling wasn't unfamiliar. It didn't feel alien or threatening.
It felt welcoming.
Almost familiar.
As though he had experienced it countless times before and was only now becoming aware of its existence.
His thoughts faded until his mind became completely empty, yet his other senses remained intact. For some reason, he could still perceive what was happening around him and within his own body.
The cold.
The stillness.
The peace.
Everything existed together, without conflict or separation.
Then, instinctively, Shad drew in a long breath.
The moment he did, the state collapsed.
It felt as though an invisible force had pulled him out of an endless depth. His thoughts returned, his awareness sharpened, and his ability to reason came rushing back.
But something had changed.
He now understood the sensation more clearly than before.
It resembled being submerged in the deepest part of an ocean. At such a depth, the pressure should have been unbearable, yet Shad felt none of it.
There was only cold.
Stillness.
And a silence so complete that even the idea of movement seemed distant.
He frowned.
Can an ocean truly be this calm?
The question made little sense. Water was supposed to move. Currents existed even in the deepest places, and pressure was an unavoidable consequence of depth.
Yet the sensation within him possessed none of those qualities.
It was something beyond a physical experience.
Something spiritual.
Something supernatural.
The realization caught him off guard.
Shad had never completely rejected the possibility of supernatural phenomena. His former work had exposed him to enough unexplained events to prevent him from dismissing possibilities simply because they contradicted ordinary understanding.
Still, he hadn't expected the supernatural to feel like this.
"Well..."
He released a quiet sigh.
"Maybe I'm not wrong."
After a brief pause, he added, "Or maybe I'm exaggerating the entire thing."
Another sigh escaped him.
"Either way, it doesn't matter yet."
Shad lowered his gaze to his hands.
"It'll only matter once I understand what's actually happening."
His expression hardened.
"But first, I need to understand this first layer."
He didn't know what the sensation was, where it came from, or why he could perceive it. Trying to answer questions beyond his current understanding would only lead to speculation.
I can't fully understand something I know almost nothing about.
He closed his eyes.
So I won't waste time trying to comprehend what I haven't learned yet.
One thing at a time.
With that decision, Shad began organizing everything he had discovered.
The first thing he understood was that the sensation wasn't ordinary. It wasn't a physical response caused by the environment, fatigue, or meditation. Something extraordinary was taking place.
The second was that it appeared to be connected to the forest—or to something within it. He couldn't determine the exact nature of that connection, but he was certain it existed.
The third was that the sensation seemed tied to his subconscious.
Shad couldn't explain how or why, yet the connection felt too consistent to dismiss. Something within his mind appeared to respond whenever he entered that state of emptiness.
He set the question aside. He would return to it once he had gathered enough information.
The fourth discovery was the most interesting.
The sensation felt like a form of energy.
Not physical energy, at least not in the way he understood it. It felt more like an internal source of power, something that existed within him and gave him a sense of strength he couldn't properly explain.
"Damn."
Shad rubbed his forehead.
"Just where am I?"
He lifted his head and looked beyond the enormous branches overhead.
The night sky stretched across the gaps in the canopy, filled with countless stars. Their light shone through the darkness, but something about them seemed unfamiliar.
Shad narrowed his eyes.
"The night sky..."
He continued studying it, trying to identify what had caught his attention.
It didn't look artificial. Nothing about it suggested that the stars were projections or some kind of illusion.
But it still looked wrong.
Then he noticed the difference.
"I see."
His eyes narrowed further.
"It's not that the sky looks fake. The stars are simply much larger than the ones I'm used to seeing."
He continued observing them.
Then his expression shifted.
"Wait."
His gaze moved across the sky, tracing the arrangement of the brightest stars.
Nine of them stood out from the rest.
They were enormous, far brighter than the surrounding stars, and arranged in a near-perfect circular formation.
Nine stars.
A ring in the night sky.
Shad stared at them for several seconds.
"Weird."
He kept looking.
"This is so weird."
Eventually, he turned away.
There were already too many unanswered questions in his mind. He had no reason to add another one before understanding the problems already in front of him.
His gaze fell toward the ground.
The bear-like creature was still beneath the tree.
But this time, it was looking directly at him.
Shad stared back.
The creature's expression was difficult to interpret. Its red eyes held something that almost resembled anticipation, though he couldn't be certain.
Whatever it was feeling, its behavior had grown increasingly unusual.
Shad exhaled quietly and closed his eyes.
Then he began reviewing everything that had happened since he first awakened in the forest.
The unfamiliar environment.
The mysterious voice.
The creature.
The chase.
The enormous tree.
The meditation.
The sensation.
The emptiness.
The nine stars.
He examined each event in sequence, searching for connections and inconsistencies. He still had no clear answers, but the chaos in his mind had begun to organize itself.
For the first time since arriving in this world, Shad felt that he had gained a faint understanding of his situation.
It was only the first step.
But it was enough for now.