The woman smiled, but after glancing at Leon’s chilling gaze, it turned nervous. She broke his gaze and said, “You are in a human body right now, a young boy of about twelve years of age. A spell such as the one we cast, to bring your soul to our time, requires a vessel to contain the soul. Our sorcerers searched for a body that would accept your soul, and this boy was the result.”

“How could you know that this body would accept me so easily? Souls can only be bound to vessels matching their very precise frequency. Is there a spell that allows you to find out what this body’s frequency is?”

“It’s not a spell, exactly. It’s due to something called a Minal, a tool with a spell cast onto it. There is a spell to detect the frequency of a soul or body, but it has a high cost, and a function that most people never need to use. This tool, and others with different spells, was created for the sake of efficiency. Your soul’s frequency was recorded when you were still living, as we found out through intact and legible records from your time.” 

Leon processed the new information he received. “So then, I suppose you just used that Minal on any person you could until you found someone with a matching frequency?”

“Yes, you would be correct.”

“What happened to this boy, then?”
The woman didn’t respond. It was a question that’d been brewing in Leon’s mind for a few minutes now. He suspected the answer already, and it made him uncomfortable and uneasy. He hoped the woman would have a different response to the one in his mind. 

“The boy… decided to sacrifice himself for a greater cause.”

Leon didn’t say anything in response. Her response was as he feared. The corners of his lips turned down as he thought about this. Some part of him doubted that a boy so young, one likely with a family and friends and dreams, would so willingly decide to go to his own death. He knew the type of people these robed figures must be — scholars with knowledge and survival occupying the top two spaces on their list of priorities. He’d worked with such people for years, had been such a person. He still was, even now, but even he had lines he didn’t cross. However, this wasn’t a simple matter of right or wrong. Sacrifices indeed had to be made if it meant averting a global catastrophe. Then again, that only went for sacrifices that could be mourned, in a world still intact one month from now. As sad as it was, the boy’s sacrifice was in vain. Leon wouldn’t be able to help them stop the upcoming catastrophe. He’d just die alongside the rest of humanity, the way he should have long ago. 

Leon hadn’t been paying much attention to his surroundings as he walked. He was too immersed in thought. Now, he looked to his right, and saw scenery that stopped him in his tracks. His eyes widened as he looked out the long wall of floor-to-ceiling windows that lined the corridor. The view they showed was a city, stretching to the edges of the horizon. Tall buildings that touched the clouds were all around him, structures of black metal, stone, and stretching glass windows. Along the black metal were many angular lines of neon purples, blues, and greens. Some of the tall buildings had outcroppings and terraces at various floors that featured vibrant green gardens. He looked down, and saw more buildings on the ground, but not nearly as tall as these vertical, man-made mountains. They were the same size as most of the buildings from his time, no more than two or three stories tall. There weren’t many of these short buildings directly around the very tall ones, but the farther out you looked, the more crowded the ground became. 

He was about to turn, but then something flew past him, and Leon whipped his head around to catch what it was. He saw it, but he still couldn’t tell. Something… some kind of vessel? It was square on the bottom, but had curved corners on the top. It’s bottom edges were lined with something glowing and purple. He furrowed his brows. The woman cleared her throat and Leon startled, having forgotten her presence. She walked forward, then stood to his left and gazed out of the window. “What flew past us just now is something we call a Rahdal, a vessel imbued with a spell that can act independently of humans. They are in charge of security. If they detect any foreign or unregistered presences within the vicinity of this building, be it on the ground or in the air, they capture them and send an alert to humans working in our security center.” 

Leon was amazed. To think such advanced technology, now fused with magic as well, could exist. His mind raced as he thought about this from every angle he knew of, wondering how it could fly (did it have something to do with the glowing purple lines? Or was it another spell?), how humans were able to invent such a thing, what other inventions and advances have been created, and are possible to create, with such incredible technology. He hadn’t felt this way since he was a boy, and had received his first book, one that described in detail an ancient civilization that had long since fell to ruin. It had inspired him to become a scholar and researcher in the first place, to discover what else was out there, and how much he could learn about it. Leon had stepped into another world, not simply another time. He had already known that, but it wasn’t until he looked out of this window that he fully understood the implications of that truth. 

He turned from the window and began to walk again, the woman following behind him. The rest of the way to his rooms was spent asking her questions about the current world, it’s technology, and more. He was excited. More so than he had been in many years. 

The door to his rooms closed behind him, the door not one that swung forward and backward, but slid in and out of the wall. It was fascinating. When the woman left, Leon closed and opened the door several times, pressing an “open” button on an interactive screen to the left of the door, marveling at the way it the seems blended perfectly with the wall when it closed. The walls were white, and the edges that met the floor were lined with more glowing lines, but these were blue, and not purple. When he looked around the room, He saw a long white table facing the wall at the front of the room. It had one chair, and the wall it faced had a larger version of the screen next to the door. Across the room was a large bed, the sheets also white, with a small table next to it that had something flat and rectangular lines at the bottom with the glowing purple material. He walked over to the wall across from the door and looked around it. There was no artwork on it, which he found disappointing. Did the people of the future not appreciate such things? He hoped they did, but he had no way of knowing at the moment. 

He walked over to the screen in front of the desk and tapped it, flinching back when it lit up and displayed various things. He stared at it. Something felt off. Now that he was alone, and his mind wasn’t racing a mile a minute, the feeling that he was missing something grew stronger. He’d felt it since the moment he appeared here, and he was sure it applied to many things, but the more he stared at the mirror, the more prominent that feeling became. It was at the tip of his tongue, he knew it was something obvious, something he should have detected already…

He narrowed his eyes at text on the screen. There was a clock that told the time, and a square at the bottom right that showed the weather. It also had “mineral pollution levels” displayed in another corner, with a bar graph whose X value depicted the days of the week, and the Y value depicting a percentage. Today’s mineral pollution level, apparently, was 36%. Leon didn’t understand what mineral pollution was, but no pollution was good, so he was puzzled at the bright smiley face beneath the graph that said the levels were low today. Have fun at the park and the beach! 

Suddenly, it hit him. The language! He couldn’t believe it took him so long to realize. Two thousand years passed! There is no way the language spoken in his time was similar in any way to the language spoken in the current era. It had to have evolved and changed drastically over such a long period of time, so how did all of those robed figures speak his language? He studied the text written on the screen to confirm what the language was, but to his surprise, it wasn’t the language he knew. It had traces of it, such as in certain parts of words, or in the ways some of the letters and characters looked, but it was entirely it’s own language, different from the one he’d spoken his entire life. Leon knew languages other than his native one, but they were mostly ancient ones he learned to help in his research. This was a modern language. 

What did those robed figures do? Was it a spell? Maybe it had to do with the boy’s body he was now occupying. He would have known this language, after all, having been born and raised in this era, and likely this country as well. Did he understand this language because his body’s brain had already learned it? He was unsure. He looked at the screen on the desk, searching for a way to contact the robed individuals to ask them about it. He looked around, but didn’t find anything, so he decided to go out and find one of them on his own. 

He approached the door and pressed the open button, but the door didn’t comply with the given command. It remained shut. He looked down at the glowing blue lines that lined the corners where floor and wall met, and to his surprise, they weren’t glowing. He began putting the pieces together, and just before he came up with a conclusion, something flashed on the screen next to the door. 

All Nexa systems in the building have temporarily shut down. Please stand by.