Darkness was all that they saw.
A bubbling liquid echoed in the darkness, accompanied by a man’s voice that seemed to drift from nowhere.
"Hope this potion works."
The siblings were enveloped in a familiar, comforting warmth, distinctly different from the decrepit dimension they’d visited three times before. Despite this reassurance, they sensed something unusual in their surroundings, making them uneasy.
Beyond the bookshelves, fireplace, crates, and brewing stands was a familiar young man with long braided dark hair, chipped emerald eyes, and fair skin. Just by the appearance alone, both Asahi and Aletha recognized who he was.
"Belial?"
This time, it was Belial who greeted them, not Akwan. Asahi hesitated, looking carefully around the room while recalling his last actions; he remembered dropping his bow in that dimension. As recognition hit, Asahi and Aletha exchanged tense glances, realizing Akwan’s theory must be correct.
Every move made in that bizarre dimension rippled into this world, weaving the two realities together.
Questioning what they’d just observed, the Wanderers disregarded Akwan and rushed toward Belial. As they tried to reach him, they saw that Belial had run beyond their grasp. Forced to stop, Asahi and Aletha were drawn into the same recurring event once again.
"Ugh, why are the words so difficult to read? I can’t even see the price!"
Akwan chuckled, hearing carriages pass by behind.
"Ha, yeah. I suppose some of what you were familiar with may have changed completely. Remember, it’s been five thousand years since you left. Of course, your world ought to change." And so in this scenario, Asahi thought he lost control of his own body.
No matter how the world shifted around them, Asahi and Aletha found themselves trapped, reliving the same events for a third time.
. . .
. . .
. . .
The market buzzed with life as carriages rolled by and voices rose in heated haggling. Amid the commotion, Akwan paused, scratched his head, then plucked a starchy treat from a vendor’s stall and handed it to Asahi, their conversation weaving through the lively chaos.
"See, time dilation is..."
As what happened previously, it seemed as if the world slowed down for both Asahi AND Aletha as they tried to look over to the roof. But this time, instead of seeing the long, dark-haired, braided boy or the tall, dark-haired woman, all they were greeted with was silence.
A jolt of realization struck Asahi and Aletha. Their choices in the other dimension had set this strange event in motion.
Now that the problem had been solved, Asahi could finally hear the full answer Akwan wanted to give him.
"...are you listening? Okay, I was just making sure. To repeat, time dilation is an element that occurs when one is too far from the area, thus time works differently. Since you two were outside of this world for ten years, due to the distance you were at, time in this world had fast-forwarded to five thousand years instead of ten years. Does that make sense?"
Asahi slowly nodded his head, his eyes cruising around the area to see if anyone else was around.
(This would be the time someone would attack, but it’s been...) He looked over to the eight-hour clock tower at the center of the street. (Ten minutes and not an ambush is to be seen.)
Weighing the recent twists, Asahi and Aletha revealed their findings to Akwan, only to be swept into two more loops that mirrored their past choices.
Clutching The Forbidden Book, they crept through the eerily peaceful streets, nerves on edge. Aletha flipped to the pages where clues and lists lay exposed, their secrets waiting to be unraveled.
But this time, the book itself had changed—especially the list. Aletha stared in stunned silence, words failing her as she watched the letters shift before her eyes.
"Eh?! What happened?!"
"What is it?" Asahi asked as he leaned over to the book. "Wait, did the page change?"
Suddenly, his eyes flew open in astonishment as glowing sentences began to unfurl down the page, each word shimmering with magic.
Find out what the ingredients mean.
Follow the places where the drawings are.
Use the clues, illustrations, and figures on the page to find the ingredients.
At the sight, Aletha clapped a hand over her mouth, breath catching in her throat, eyes wide with disbelief. Asahi mirrored her shock, both siblings frozen in awe before the mysterious book.
"HUH? H-How?! I... could have sworn I made only three. But now..."
Asahi, equally stupefied, finished his sister’s sentence, his voice matching her disbelief and apprehension.
"...There are eight. Eight things to do, and five of them are missing. I’m guessing that we should follow what the three say, and maybe the other orders would be revealed."
Still reeling, Aletha raised three trembling fingers, her voice barely above a whisper as she tried to make sense of it all.
"Yeah, but I wrote three," She said. "Not eight."
Stunned, Asahi snatched the book from Aletha, uncertainty swirling between them about the true nature of The Forbidden Book. As distant voices echoed around them, Asahi scanned the mysterious instructions, reading one aloud.
"Use the clues, illustrations, and figures on the page to find the ingredients," he said, his eyes turning to the sun. "Isn’t that what we were doing?"
And then momentarily, his vision flashed to the encounter with Dawn, Chip, and Landon.
("All three elements are fragmented together. Only by the help of a force outside would the ingredients be melded back together again.")
His vision narrowed to the empty alleyways, remembering the overgrown buildings in the other dimension.
"The Leaf rests high near a gigantic forest of bristles covered in the luxuriance of green. It is not to be guarded by people, but nature itself."
Memories flickered and stitched themselves together as Asahi and Aletha dashed toward the archway blocking their escape. If freedom was within reach, they would have to seize it with stealth.
This led them to resort to another option, which was listed by none other than Landon himself.
"The Trunk serves as the foundation for the leak. It is to be located in multiple areas where no one was interested in going."
"Multiple areas where no one is interested in going," He retraced, reanalyzing his words. "Do they mean the slums?"
"YES!" Aletha screamed as they dodged the sights of guards running all over the place.
With no time for hesitation, they darted through every opening, making each heartbeat count as they slipped past unseen.
They had abandoned Akwan as if in a rush, and Drimi and Belial were nowhere to be seen. Their fleet-footed footsteps marked all over the hard ground as they sprinted towards the slums. Memories of the catalyst they dropped flashed into their view.
"The position of the dark-haired woman changed," Asahi muttered. "Drimi."
As they continued along the trail, Asahi reached for the Forbidden Book, but suddenly realized it was no longer in his grasp.
His eyes broadened in surprise, noticing the Forbidden Book gone from his grasp.
The golden, magical book—the very artifact that had drawn them into this adventure—had somehow slipped from their grasp.
"Aletha," he said as he searched everywhere for the book. "It’s gone. The Forbidden Book. It’s nowhere to be seen."
Reeling from the sudden loss, Aletha frantically retraced her steps, exclaiming,
"You dropped it!?" She said with a genuine look of stupefaction on her face. "Where did it go? How clumsy do you have to be?"
"I suppose it dropped from my pants..." He said. " When we were in the slums. It must have slipped. I could have sworn it was attached to my person."
At this notion, Asahi and Aletha raced down the stairs from level one of the city, heading towards the slums, retracing their every step.
Time raced forward as they hurried toward the central fountain, a beacon of hope and the heart of Akwan’s domain. But something, or rather, someone had stopped them.
A magenta-haired woman descended the steps, clutching what could only be The Forbidden Book. The siblings ducked into the bushes, watching as her presence seemed to fill the shadows with an almost magnetic force. Recognition flickered in their eyes.id with half-shut lips.
But she couldn’t hear them.
Disbelief washed over them. The very woman who had bestowed the Forbidden Book upon them was now the one who had stolen it away.
Before she turned over to the bushes, a group of males approached her.
Surprised to see her with The Forbidden Book clutched in her hands, they both knelt down to her.
"Mrs. Liora! You’re all right."
Holding onto an eraser, she started to rub it on the pages, as if removing the illustrations from their existence.
They realized. The group of males, the ones that had approached this woman, were the exact same set of thieves they had met in the other dimension.
Confusion churned within Asahi and Aletha as they crouched in silence, carefully studying the unfolding scene above.
"Of course," She said as she slammed the book down on the floor. "Have you seized them? Have you gotten the ingredients?"
As she picked up the book and tried to shred it, she grabbed an ink-covered feather and the written words on the pages. First, she discarded one page and forced it to the ground, then she inked markings all over it, as if on a chalkboard.
(Why is it that now, out of all the places, that she chose to rewrite the book?) Asahi thought. (Did she have a copy? Was she affected by the loops?)
A sense of foreboding awe filled the air as Mrs. Liora, the Librarian, issued her commands to the gathered men.
"Make sure no trace of me is left behind in this presence. We must keep them imprisoned in these pages as long as we can," she said as she kicked the Forbidden Book up the fountain. "Don’t stop searching for them. Got it?"
"Control this space?" Asahi muttered in confusion. "What does she mean?"
Aletha hastily covered Asahi’s mouth as Liora stepped near the bushes.
She looked left and then right, but saw no trace of the wanderers. She then squinted in disgust and kicked Aletha’s leg with her high heels, thinking she was a bush. Aletha tried to scream, but her scream was suppressed by Asahi’s cold hand. Then, something unfolded.
Kept in Liora’s hands was a duplicate of the Forbidden Book.
There were two of them, one on the ground and another on her hand.
"Is that... a copy?" Aletha muttered as she saw two golden books shimmer in the distance. "What is she doing?"
After scribbling on the duplicate and snapping it shut, she slipped it into her pocket. A tidal wave of questions crashed through their minds as they recalled every strange encounter with The Forbidden Book.
(Are these loops actually the pages themselves? Why are there two of them?)
Struck with absolute confusion, Asahi and Aletha looked down at the original copy of the book and muttered.
"Wasn’t she the one who wrote those requests?"
After this, it made sense to them why the requests were made, why they pursued the illustrations in the first place.
It was none other than the Librarian, Liora, who revealed these messages and illustrated the drawings.
Not only that, but it also seemed that the copy and the original text were somehow connected.
As Asahi and Aletha watched, Liora, the Librarian, departed toward the city with the group of males, intentionally leaving the original book behind. They hastily scrambled to snatch the book, seeing more requests written in ink.
"What?!" Aletha said with broadened eyes. "There’s more..."
Find out what the ingredients mean.
Follow the places where the drawings are.
Use the clues, illustrations, and figures on the page to find the ingredients.
Run outside to find Clover.
Find parts of the medals and gems.
Give them to the thieves.
"There are... more requests," Aletha said as she scratched her head. "Wait, so she’s the one who made this? Um, Asahi, I think we have to..."
Trying to grapple with his senses, Asahi scratched his chin and muttered.
"It seems to me that UNTIL these requests are fulfilled, we might be stuck looping these three days constantly," Pushing himself and the book up, he continued as he grabbed Aletha’s hand. "Let’s try it. Let’s use trial and error. Remember Akwan’s analogy? Pawns on a chess board?"
"Yeah," Aletha said while she scratched her head in confusion. "So you’re telling me we are going to do everything possible to get those ingredients? To use the artifacts and place them around like some sort of game?" As she looked to the sun, she scratched her head and mumbled.
"Are you sure that will be sufficient?" Aletha asked as she peered with her gray eyes at the book’s pages.
"I’m quite sure." He replied as he closed the book and put it in his pocket. "Now. Let’s pass the day. While we are resting, we will start anew once we return to the other dimension. And then..."
Looking at the sky, Asahi took a deep breath and spoke.
"... we’ll find a way out of this prison."