Toren's ground suddenly softened and everything drifted heavenwards. He lost balance and the next thing he knew, he had been floating at a sea of darkness.
Toren was figuring out who had caused such a transfer amidst his hazy mind.
The otherworld completely vanished and he had returned to the void.
The red thread was still circling around him and the place had not changed one bit, but he could not feel any lightness or distortion anymore like how he used to feel.
It seemed like his soul or parts of his subconscious mind had gotten accustomed to the strange transfer from dimensions to dimensions.
Toren attempted swimming according to his will of direction, even using the subtle amount of abstract that he hoped to be still lingering around him. The emptiness of this place was scaring him the more he observed and the more hours that the darkness would stare back at him.
Not knowing which face or eyes are peering through, be it a deity or an element from universe, it was making him quite uncomfortable.
When the sweeping tornado began sucking him in towards the thread, he lost total control over his body.
He tried keeping his eyes open to know what was going on in between the journey through the other world, but the forces were just too strong.
He was able to see during the split seconds of the transfer, but it had remained a vague memory for him. The bright flashing spectrums, as he recalled, were dancing wildly beyond the reach of his skins.
They open completely different floodgates, each pouring another galaxy along their threshold.
Soon, Toren was back at the En household.
The residence was completely empty and quiet, but not so much as the void he had been from.
There were chirps of cicadas from the distant forest, indistinct murmurs from the neighbor gossip outside, and leaves rustling by the breeze stricken by sunlight.
He went to the pantry and saw the trapdoor leading to the underground closed and sealed.
The spell which Coen had embedded in was still intact, he observed when the rough surface had emitted symbols of spiritual chants.
Toren could not understand it, but he was guessing that his brother could have studied it either during his time at the dungeon or during the activism group's training.
He looked around and the rooms were tidied up, condiments and ingredients lined up neatly at the kitchen cabinet, materials and other belongings were sorted out too.
It felt like he had missed the world's hours when he got sealed once in the underground room.
Things had changed quite a bit.
The house became filled with a person's lifestyle, after all. Before, it was just for a ghost like him.
He was about to go back to bed and return to the otherworld as he had left when a sudden knock echoed like an astonishing phenomenon came from outside. As far as he remembers, most of their comrades had died during the war and investigations, so it was quite a mystery for anyone to visit the En household.
Toren slowly approached the door, nearly attempting to pass through it until a familiar man tinged with age had opened it.
The creaks would have scared Toren if not for his abrupt recognition of the man.
It was his former butler – the one who served him during his stay at the emperor's headquarters.
He wanted to greet the man, ask him how he had been, and talk lots of things with him, but he had come to a realization that he could possibly not be able to do such things, no matter how mundane and simple his wishes were.
The butler only passed through the ghost, without seeing or feeling him.