Leo opened his eyes to flashes of multicolored lights. The walls around him were pitch black and the only things visible were the streaks of red, blue and yellow zipping by.

What’s happening, where…where am I? he thought as the wheels in his head slowly turned once more. It felt like he was brushing away age-old cobwebs as his mind struggled to make sense of its surroundings.

He swished his hand through the empty space, letting his fingers drag against the smooth current of air washing over him. What is this?

The muscles in his jaw ached with disuse as he opened his mouth and tried to move his leaden tongue to call out for help. The sound vibrated its way up his chest, only to resolve into silence in the empty expanse before him.

Am I dead?

The wayward thought halted the churning sea of questions building in his mind. The impossible situation certainly lent that possibility credibility, but the brush of air against his skin was a reminder he was still corporeal. Last he checked, those who died tended to leave their body behind.

He scrounged through his memory, trying to weave the jumbled thoughts and images back to their proper tapestry. The last thing he remembered was traveling to an old, abandoned warehouse, his palms slick with sweat as he carefully tugged open an unlatched window to slip into its dark and cold interior. The floor had been lined with crude cages and chains. The heavy metal bars held back the shadowy forms of—

The image shattered as an intense migraine elicited a grunt of pain. The thread he had been following frayed apart as his concentration broke, and the scattered pieces of recent memories fell apart, leaving emptiness in their wake. He desperately tried to grab hold of the fleeting images, but they slipped through his grasp.

Feelings of helplessness washed over him as months of memories slipped away, until the last thing he could remember was moving into the quaint upstairs apartment of a coffee shop with his kid sister, Melody. It was a strange sensation, knowing that time had passed between now and then, but not knowing how much or what had transpired.

This is just a dream, it has to be a dream, he told himself, trying to soothe his rising panic. This whole experience was nothing more than a drug-induced nightmare and the missing memories a trick of the mind. I must’ve taken some bad sleep medication before bed. It was the only plausible explanation he could think of.

Accepting the answer for the truth, he took a few deep breaths to let the tension drain out of his body. All he could do now was enjoy the odd experience and wait for his body to wake up. He flipped over, tucking his hands behind his head in a makeshift pillow as he relaxed and enjoyed the light show racing past him.

As time trickled by, uncertainty began to gnaw at him. If this really was a lucid dream, then shouldn’t he be able to control it?

Needing to put his fears to rest once and for all, he closed his eyes, determined to test his reality by ending this ridiculous falling. Reaching out with his senses, he willed the scenery around him to scatter, for his descent to stop. He cracked his eyes open, only to renew his previous worry with the lack of change—if anything it felt like the lights were zipping by even faster now.

Panic started to take hold of his mind once more as he refocused on his surroundings to try again. Putting all the will he could muster into bending the dreamverse to his desire, trying to break whatever subliminal thought was keeping him locked in this weird limbo.

Then the light show changed. The streaks of light accelerated, until in no time at all he found himself engulfed in a vortex of seizure-inducing color. The bright lights shifted so fast that he was forced to shut his eyes against the blinding display. A tendril of fear burrowed into him from the crazy situation. It’s just a dream; it’s just a dream; it’s just a dream.

The mantra helped soothe his nerves, and after a few moments, the lights started to dim before vanishing entirely. Hesitantly, he opened his eyes once more, only to see the familiar dark abyss he had started in, except with a slightly lighter shade of blue mixed with the black. Leo flipped his body back to the direction he was falling towards, his mind going blank as it failed to comprehend what he saw.

He found himself freefalling through a planet’s atmosphere. From this height, he could make out massive forests that gave way to rolling green hills that gradually grew to snowcapped mountains. The mountain range seemed to stretch forever off into the distance, and dwarfed what looked like a tiny walled settlement at their base. On the opposite end, the forest abruptly gave way to a barren waste of endless sand dotted by small oases. “What the hell did I take before bed?” he muttered to himself.

There wasn’t much time to reflect on the statement as he noticed he had more immediate problems. Primarily, he was about to crash into a rather large island casually floating amongst the clouds. A small part of him wondered why physics was giving such unfair treatment to the island. A much larger part screamed as he rocketed towards the stupid gravity-defying mass of land.

His scream was abruptly cut off on impact, the crash-landing causing an ear-splitting crack as his body cleaved through ground and stone alike.

Leo lay in silence for several long minutes before realizing two very important things: he was still alive, and his mouth tasted like dirt. When I wanted to stop falling, this is not what I had in mind. He could hardly hear himself think over the rapid beating of his heart.

Moving his body a little at a time, he found that miraculously, nothing had broken on his death-defying landing, and besides a loud ringing in his ears, he felt okay. He slowly got to his feet, brushing off the thick layer of dust clinging to clothes that he was sure he’d never seen, let alone worn before. Large billowing clouds of dust departed his clothing, only to stick to other parts of his body, turning his long, brown hair an ashen gray mix.

As he reached up to rub his face, he noticed his hands were radiating a faint, glowing light. Just as his eyes followed the glow from his hands to his torso, the yellow outline that coated his form shattered into tiny golden particles. “What th—heck…happening.” His words came out slurred as his still-spinning head struggled to regain control of the mind that had fled during the impact.

He stumbled out of his self-made crater and started spitting out the specks of dirt still lingering in his mouth. It took a few moments to try to reorient himself while absently staring at the massive gouge he had made in the ground next to him.

“Who the hell parked their island here?” he yelled. The initial shock of whatever he had just gone through had sent all his emotions running around in a blind panic. He held his head in his hands, trying to calm the still-spinning world. “I thought you were supposed to wake up before you hit the ground,” he moaned miserably.

The brief but immense surge of fear from the fall had left him feeling shell-shocked and irritated, but with nothing around to let his frustrations out on. So, Leo decided to take the only natural course of action; he tried picking a fight with the island.

“Stupid…gravity cheating…piece of dirt!” He emphasized each word with an aggressive kick to the ground, the string of insults and kicks growing in creativity and force until one particularly violent kick came into painful contact with a rock hidden beneath the thin topsoil. An audible crunch split the air, followed by a sharp lance of pain racing up his foot. He cried out and clutched the injured appendage while hopping around on the one good leg he had left standing.

“Well that was certainly entertaining,” a soft voice called out from behind him.

Leo spun around, his heart jumping in embarrassment and surprise from the unknown presence of another person. Behind him stood an angelic woman in every sense of the word—she possessed a slim face and trailing, long, white hair that glowed with its own light. On her was a tight-fitting dress that matched her hair in color and accentuated her rather impressive curves. She was gorgeous but what really caused him to stare was the two eye-boggling features that extended from her dress.

The woman just gave him an amused look. “Are you done?” She punctuated her statement with a graceful stretch of the two slender, white wings he had been gaping at.

“Th-those aren't props?” Leo managed to stutter out. Not his most intelligent statement, but hey, his poor brain had gone through a lot lately.

“No, no they are not,” she replied dryly, followed by a perfectly executed eye roll.

“I'm not dreaming, am I?” There was no way his imagination could dream up everything he just went through, but he didn't want to think about what that implied.

“No, you are not,” the woman said in the same dry tone, this time with a slight grin. “Welcome to the world of Asylum!” she announced, unfurling her wings with a large flap that blew away the lingering cloud of dust. Despite the smile she gave him, the words sent a chill down his spine.

“H-how did I get here?” It was the only question that stood out amidst the chaos that now claimed his mind.

“Now that’s an odd thing to ask.” She tilted her head curiously as she studied him. “You were granted the right to come here by garnering the attention of one of the land’s deities. Live, thrive or die, the outcome will all depend on you!” She ended with a grand gesture to the world around her.

“Wait…” Leo trailed off, needing a second to process what she said. “So, you kidnapped me? Did you do something with my memories too? Why is everything just blank for the past few months of my life?” The suddenness of the situation caused his anger to boil over. “How do I get out of here and what did you do with Melody?” As absurd as it sounded, if he had been whisked away to another planet like this goddess, angel, or whatever she was intoned, then he would make sure every second he was away from Earth would be another second she would regret bringing him here!

The woman met his glare evenly. He opened his mouth to put further words to his anger but she cut him off. “I didn't kidnap anyone, nor have I done anything with someone called Melody. I’m simply tasked with greeting your kind. It was someone higher than me who brought you here. Also, everyone who comes to Asylum does so by their own choosing, so don’t go blaming others for your decisions.”

She continued to hold his gaze until he managed to make sense of her words and rein in his obvious frustration. Yelling at someone not responsible for his situation wouldn't do him much good, and it really just made him feel like an ass, no matter how crazed his position was.

“Sorry,” he muttered, as his anger fell back to a low simmer, feeling like a kid who had gotten caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

“As to why you don't have your memories, that is...unusual. You’re the first arrival I’ve ever heard of to experience memory loss.” A smirk crawled up her face. “Of course, you're the first arrival to make a crater with your mouth upon landing too. Maybe you hit your head too hard, Leo.”

“And how do you know my name?” Not that he was complaining about moving towards a first-name basis, but it was a little suspicious that she knew who he was without having a hand in bringing him here.

“I can observe your character sheet, child,” she responded in exasperation, clearly tiring of all the accusations thrown her way.

“First off, I'm not a child. I’m eighteen years old. And second, what is this so-called ‘character sheet’?” Leo stated, throwing up air quotes, nothing like masking your insecurities about being stranded on another planet with a bit of humor. I’m not panicking—you’re panicking, he told the other half of his brain. I am not having a mental breakdown in front of a beautiful stranger, nope, everything is just fine. He took a few quiet, deep breaths, gradually calming his swirling thoughts so he could fully focus on what the woman in front of him was saying.

She let out a sigh. “It will be easier to show you than to explain it. Simply will for your sheet to appear.”

He gave her a skeptical look, which was met by a perfectly arched eyebrow as she waited for him to follow her instructions. Taking a deep breath, he willed his body to bring up his character sheet. A sudden flash of light made him jump in alarm, as a red form fizzled into existence in front of his face.

“Okay…sooo you’ve taken me and thrown me into a video game. Did the government kidnap and hook me into some sort of experimental full-immersive technology? Am I just a rat in a lab right now?” It was a much more plausible explanation than him abandoning his kid sister so he could get sent to another world like some two-bit manga character.

“I don’t quite follow your statement, though I can assure you that your situation is quite real.”

“Prove it,” he growled, folding his arms.

“And just how can one prove that the reality they are living in is not some fabrication made by a greater being’s design?” she questioned. “For all you know, the life you were living was nothing more than a dream and only now have you woken up.”

He opened and closed his mouth a few times, trying to find an argument to refute her statement, but none came to mind.

“Adaptation and growth are the two pillars to survival in this world. If you cannot accept your current situation, then you might as well step off the ledge and save yourself the suffering.” She motioned to the edge of the island as a strong gust of wind picked up and sent a sprawl of leaves floating down to the surface below.

Leo clamped his mouth shut, realizing he had let more of his frustration seep into his words than he had intended. He was probably better off not continuously antagonizing someone who could likely flatten him with a swish of her hand.

His silence seemed to appease the woman as she softened her tone and gave him a small smile. “I understand your anger, but sadly, our time grows short and my schedule does not permit me to play counselor. Do you have any questions for me?”

Yeah, about a thousand, he thought sarcastically, but knew that response would just waste even more of their time. He pulled up his character sheet again. It all appeared rather intuitive, at least on the surface, except for one. “What exactly is my Origin?”

“Your Origin affects the amount of mana your soul can hold, along with the rate at which it can recover mana from your surroundings. You’ll find each attribute is capable of more than it appears, but that isn’t something you need to worry about yet. Now if that is al-”

“Wait!” he exclaimed, interrupting her before she could leave. “How were you able to look at my sheet? Can anyone see it?”

She gave him a bemused smile. “Both yes and no. Try to bring up my sheet.”

Focusing on the beauty in front of him, he attempted to draw up her character sheet like he had his own. Instead of a solid clear image like what was displayed for him, the woman’s sheet was blurry and transparent like it was going to fade away at any second.

Congratulations! Through your power to follow simple instructions, you have learned the skill Observation! Rarity: Common, Skill Level: Novice Level 1. You'll never miss that hair on your food again. Access General Information about your target up to 5 levels higher than you.

With the notification came the appearance of a red and blue bar at the bottom right corner of his vision. Leo assumed it represented his health and mana, respectively.

“And that concludes my obligations. Do try not to die too soon.” The angelic woman gave him a playful wink before disappearing in a blinding flash of white light.