Cisco leaned against the cabin's external wall, watching Reoloy run up and down the length of the ship's front deck.
His brow furrowed as he thought about how to approach him.
There was something he needed to ask, and it had been bothering him since the moments just before Reoloy had woken up from his comatose state.
"Reoloy!"
Lohan's voice carried across the deck as she stepped out from the cabin and jogged forward to join him.
"If you were gonna start exercising, you should've let me know."
Being approached triggered an odd reaction from the blue-black-haired teen. It was small and barely noticeable, but both Cisco and Lohan caught it.
Cisco frowned.
"It was something I decided last minute," Reoloy explained stiffly, still maintaining his pace. "I didn't think to tell anyone about it."
"Really?" Lohan asked, keeping in step with him. "You must really have a lot on your mind recently."
Lohan matched his pace a little too easily for Reoloy's comfort. She looked like she was taking a leisurely stroll while he had been practically dying, his lungs burning with every breath.
'This is my max sprinting speed too...'
"Seems like you've been at it for a while," she said, eyeing his thoroughly dishevelled state. "Why go so hard all of a sudden?"
Reoloy shook his head. "I just thought that if I'm going to get stronger, I should start with what little I can today."
Lohan looked at him in open surprise.
"You want to get stronger?"
Reoloy almost asked out loud what she meant by that before catching himself. Instead, he played it off, glancing toward Cisco, who had been loitering nearby since earlier that day.
Reoloy knew he'd set off the other boy's alarm bells, and he knew exactly how it had happened.
The reincarnator had done his best to keep his interactions with the rest of the fugitive group to a minimum.
It was easy enough with Graham and Hugo. Just speaking to them made them look like they were one sentence away from throwing him overboard.
Selene—whose name he'd finally overheard in passing—seemed perfectly content limiting their communication to brief greetings and simple yes-or-no exchanges.
Lohan, on the other hand, was a chatterbox.
Granted, that only seemed to be the case with him.
When he'd realised that, his heart had sunk straight to his feet. Both because it meant there was someone close enough to him to realise something was wrong and because it gave him a weird feeling in his chest.
He didn't want to dwell on it, though, so he hadn't.
For the last five days, he'd been pushing the thought as far back in his mind as possible.
Reoloy looked up at the whale-beast still trailing ever so closely behind them.
On one particular evening, he and Cisco had stood looking at it together, the latter trying to make idle chatter. He'd tried brushing him off, but the discussion had quickly veered into references and memories he simply didn't have.
If Laurencia hadn't shown up midway through with some problem she needed help resolving, Reoloy wasn't sure how that encounter would've ended.
But the damage was already done.
Cisco was now clearly watching him differently. Searching carefully for something. Whether it was evidence or just confirmation of a hunch, Reoloy didn't know.
Pushing the thought aside, he noticed the sun had dipped somewhere behind the enormous beast's silhouette.
It was well past noon.
He recalled something Laurencia had said about a girl in their group releasing abnormal amounts of ki.
Reoloy had no way of perfectly determining who it was.
Ever since overwriting ownership of this body, he'd felt painfully average—both physically and supernaturally.
Even ordinary people could sense the three powers if they were released in large enough quantities. Yet he felt nothing aside from the mana inside himself.
'Ki is a power that's heavily rooted in physical prowess,' he thought, glancing sideways at Lohan. 'And she's clearly got that in abundance…'
There was something he could gain from a ki user right now.
It had been brought up in-game, but that didn't mean he knew how to actually perform it.
He wasn't sure Lohan was the one, but again, what was life without risks?
Reoloy abruptly stopped running.
Lohan overshot him by several steps before turning around and jogging lightly in place.
"What's wrong?" She asked with genuine curiosity. "Tired already?"
Reoloy bent slightly forward, breathing heavily now that the motion had stopped.
"Yes," he admitted honestly. "But that's not important."
Lohan tilted her head, waiting for him to elaborate.
"You use ki, yeah?" Reoloy asked, deliberately phrasing it as though he were leading up to something else.
Lohan blinked once.
"Yeah," she said slowly. "I do."
Reoloy hesitated for just a moment before continuing.
"Can you teach me basic ki breathing?"
For a second, Lohan simply stared at him, then her eyebrows rose.
"You want me to teach you ki breathing?"
Reoloy nodded. "If that's alright with you."
She studied him for another moment before letting out a short laugh.
"Oh... you're serious."
"I am."
Lohan scratched the back of her head, still looking mildly baffled.
"You use mana, though," she pointed out.
Cisco straightened slightly against the wall, suddenly interested in the answer Reoloy would give.
"...I'm experimenting," Reoloy replied after a brief pause. "Besides, it wouldn't hurt to learn it, even if it ends up useless for me."
Lohan considered that for a moment before apparently accepting the logic.
With a small shrug, she dropped enthusiastically into a cross-legged position on the floorboards.
Then she patted the space beside her.
"Okay," she started. "I'm not great at explaining things, so keep up."
Lohan settled her elbows on her knees and looked at him for a moment, as if deciding where to even begin.
"Alright," she said at last. "First thing, let's talk about ki—"
"Hey, hey, hey," Reoloy cut in. "I admire the enthusiasm, but that's going too far back. I just want to learn the breathing technique."
The lavender-haired girl pouted, resting her cheek against her palm.
"You have to breathe with awareness."
"And that means...?" Reoloy prompted, gesturing for her to continue.
"It means what it means."
Reoloy stared at her blankly.
'So she's useless.'
He was just about ready to abandon the idea of getting any useful understanding of ki breathwork when another voice joined them.
"What she's trying to say," Cisco said, lowering himself just behind them, "is that you need to breathe like you're guiding the air through your circuits."
Reoloy glanced carefully at him, briefly wondering why he'd suddenly stepped in to help.
The question was quickly pushed aside as the new information took priority. His thoughts immediately began organising themselves around the concept.
'Circuits, huh?'
They were the channels within the body through which the three powers could flow. It was also why possessing multiple powers at once was considered impractical. If two different energies collided within those pathways, the results could be catastrophic.
'So ki breathing requires an awareness of the circuits...'
Reoloy's gaze dropped slightly as he thought it through.
Slow breathing. Guiding the flow. Conscious knowledge of internal pathways.
That was hopeless.
He needed to access a power first to learn the structure of the circuits. Each person's network was unique as well, so he couldn't ask for help.
"Why are you overthinking it?" Lohan chimed suddenly.
Reoloy blinked and looked up.
She pointed lazily at his chest.
"The motion of mana starts in the heart," she explained. "Remember? You told me that."
"Trace your way from there. Think about the millions of times you've used your mana."
Reoloy almost dismissed the suggestion. He hadn't had anything to do with mana after all.
But then a spark of inspiration hit him.
He closed his eyes, shutting out the outside world and fully immersing his attention within, drawing similarities from wielding relics.
'Trace the way,' he thought calmly, mindfully managing his breathing.
Almost immediately, he noticed something new. Before, he had simply felt the immense reservoir of mana within this body and assumed it permeated everything. Now he realised it was tightly packed.
All centred in his heart.
But that wasn't as important.
Carefully avoiding direct interaction with the power, he shifted his attention. He looked every which way until he finally found it.
A pathway.
Reoloy opened his eyes to two expectant gazes.
"I made a little progress," he said with a light smile, glancing between them. "Thank you."
Cisco faltered slightly, looking away before quickly composing himself.
"It's nothing."
"Yeah!" Lohan exclaimed brightly. "That's what friends are for!"
Reoloy fought back a grimace, maintaining the smile on his face.
"If all else had failed," she added casually, "we could've just had Cisco guide you from the outside using his sensory skill."
The poker face Reoloy managed to pull off surprised even himself. There were so many questions he wanted to ask, but he contained himself.
"That wouldn't have worked," Cisco said dryly.
"Why not?" Lohan asked, tilting her head with childlike confusion.
Before he could answer, the others came barging out from inside.
Hugo looked outright outraged, Graham bored, and Selene exasperated.
Reoloy's eyes drifted to Laurencia, who trailed behind them with an unmistakable expression of amusement on her face.
Hugo stomped straight toward Lohan and stopped in front of her, glaring down.
"You're not stronger than me."
Lohan blinked.
"What are you on about?" she asked slowly, irritation carving into her expression.
"Fight me!"
That was the moment Reoloy decided to tune them out. He rose to his feet and walked over to Laurencia instead.
She was standing a short distance away, watching the brewing conflict without any effort at masking that she was entertained.
Reoloy gave her a flat, judgmental look.
"What did you do?"
"Me? Nothing..." she said, trailing off when she saw he wasn't buying it. "...I may have done a little instigating."
Somewhere in the back of Reoloy's mind, he wondered how this woman was the only adult in the group.
That was, of course, ignoring his own mental age.
"You caused this," he said, pointing at the growing scuffle. "Clean it up."
With that said, he turned and began walking away. He hadn't made it three steps when a hand grabbed his arm.
"We need to talk," Cisco said, wincing at a loud sound off to the side. "After all this settles down."
Reoloy hesitated, but nodded nonetheless.
---
Night had fallen by the time the majority of the commotion had died down.
Most of the group was now inside the cabin, busy making sure Hugo and Lohan didn't try to finish what they'd started earlier.
Reoloy and Cisco used the distraction to slip away.
Before leaving, Reoloy had quietly asked Laurencia to keep everyone occupied. The woman had agreed a little too eagerly for his liking, but he didn't have many options.
They walked until the chatter from the cabin faded behind them, stopping near the ship's railing.
The ocean stretched endlessly into the dark, eerily still. Only two things disturbed its surface: the ship pushing forward at a steady pace, and the massive whale that followed in its wake.
"Why?" Cisco asked, staring out into the distance.
Reoloy shot him a sideways glance. "Why what?"
"I can understand with Hugo and Graham…" Cisco began slowly. "But why didn't you tell me and Lohan about you losing your mana?"
Reoloy's eyes widened.
"Right… sensor," he said, the memory settling in as his gaze dropped to the railing.
Silence settled between them. Neither met the other's eyes.
Cisco shifted slightly where he stood. Pressing a friend for answers wasn't something he liked doing, but the feeling in his chest wouldn't leave him alone. They had known each other for more than five years.
So why did the Reoloy standing beside him now feel like a stranger?
"So…" Cisco said at last. "Are you alright?"
Reoloy opened his mouth, words forming only to collapse before they could escape. A wave of guilt washed over him. The erasure—the effective death of their friend sat in his chest like a stone.
For a moment, he considered telling the truth, but he hesitated.
This new world had given him something he wasn't sure he'd ever had before: excitement. Possibility. Dreams and goals he could actually chase. It was easy to forget, when he let himself get swept up in that feeling, that everything here was life or death.
In the game, the characters had been nothing more than clusters of ones and zeros—programmed avatars reacting along predictable paths.
This was uncomfortably different.
Everyone he had met was real. Flesh and blood. Filled with a myriad of thoughts. With shifting personalities and moods.
There were no guides for them. No interaction records. No sets of data he could consult to know the best approach.
And that uncertainty terrified him.
Reoloy shook his head, forcing himself to turn toward Cisco. He tried to maintain his face of perfect composure. Though maybe that was the wrong choice when the other person required vulnerability.
Even if characters had carried their personalities into this world, that didn't solve the problem. He didn't know this specific set of people. He had never encountered them in his playthroughs, nor had they been mentioned at any point.
So, for all he knew, they could be capable of killing him the moment he told the truth.
'Even the fact that he knows I don't have access to the original's powers right now could be a problem,' he thought with a quiet sigh. 'I can't risk it.'
"Reoloy," Cisco said, his voice thick with earnestness. "You can talk to us."
Amber eyes met green ones, and for a moment neither of them looked away.
One pair held the desperate effort of someone trying to reach a friend they feared may be slipping away. The other carried only caution—wariness born from the gaps in a world that felt both familiar and alien.
'What's with those eyes…?' Reoloy wondered.
Melanie's face flashed through his mind.
'I'm not supposed to be looked at like that anymore…'
His expression stiffened, eyes squeezing shut as he tried to shake away the surge of emotion, only to be snapped out of it by a hand settling on his shoulder.
Cisco didn't say anything. He didn't need to. Reoloy's resolve began to crumble as the truth he had been avoiding finally settled in his chest.
'That's right. Those eyes aren't for me,' he thought grimly. 'They're for his friend who's gone now.'
Just like he had at some point, the original Reoloy had people who cared for him—who loved him.
His little sister came to mind again.
Owen Kang had essentially taken these people's loved one away from them.
Whether the loss was directly his fault or not didn't matter. The weight—the discomfort and pain—that came from it were his to carry now.
Reoloy exhaled slowly.
He made his decision.
"Okay," he said quietly. "I'll tell you."
Cisco straightened immediately, attention sharpening.
The reincarnator paused, giving a lingering glance at the cabin where the others were.
"I had a dream," Reoloy finally said, turning back. "And in that dream I saw things… dark things. It felt real. Like it hadn't happened yet—but it would."
He took a breath before continuing.
"I got scared. But I couldn't just sit around and wait. So when the time came for us to choose where to run… I decided to go somewhere I had seen in that dream."
His gaze drifted toward the horizon.
"Somewhere we might be able to prepare for what's coming."
Cisco didn't answer immediately. His brows knit together slightly as he stared out at the same distant horizon Reoloy had been looking at moments ago, as if trying to piece together something he couldn't quite grasp.
"A dream…" he repeated slowly.
Reoloy nodded, keeping his expression steady.
"It was too clear. Too detailed," he continued. "Like… I was remembering something instead of imagining it."
Cisco finally turned back to him.
"And you actually believe it's going to happen?"
"I don't know," Reoloy admitted. "But it felt important. Important enough that I took the risk on it."
Cisco studied him carefully. He wasn't the most observant, but he knew his friends—their tones, postures, the subtle fluctuations in their mana or ki in Lohan's case.
But Reoloy currently didn't have any of the last one.
"And your mana," Cisco started. "What happened to it?"
"I don't know," Reoloy said slowly, doing his best to appear contemplative about the matter. "When I rushed out after waking up back then, I realised not long after that I couldn't access it."
Reoloy could feel the pressure mounting with every lie he stacked on top of the last. Keeping track of them all for future conversations was already becoming exhausting.
So much so that he didn't even pause to consider the implication of what Cisco had just said. A sensor couldn't feel his mana. Yet Reoloy was certain it existed vividly right there within him.
Cisco nodded. "So you don't have any idea yourself..."
The story was strange, but it made some amount of sense on paper. If true, it answered why he suddenly knew all the things that he did. Plus, they were escapees from a place where all kinds of oddities happened. Anything was possible in this world.
And yet… something still felt off.
"So you dragged us into the middle of a dangerous ocean because of something you saw in a dream?" Cisco asked.
Reoloy winced faintly at the wording.
"When you say it like that, it sounds crazy."
"It is a little crazy."
A small smile tugged at Cisco's mouth, though it didn't quite reach his eyes.
Reoloy rubbed the back of his neck.
"I know. But if I'm wrong, the worst that happens is we wasted some time moving somewhere safer."
Cisco fell silent again.
The wind passed between them, carrying the faint sounds of the cabin behind them.
After a moment, Cisco exhaled.
"...You should've told us," he said, causing Reoloy's shoulders to stiffen. "We would've listened."
Cisco leaned forward slightly against the railing.
"We've trusted each other for years, haven't we? If something like that was bothering you, you didn't have to keep it to yourself."
The words landed heavier than any accusation could have.
Reoloy looked away.
'Trust, huh?' he thought bitterly. 'That's exactly why I couldn't.'
"I'm telling you now," the reincarnator said quietly, forcing a stiff smile. "That counts for something."
Cisco watched him for another long moment before nodding slowly.
"Yeah," he said. "You are."
The tension in his shoulders eased slightly as he straightened up. He started walking back toward the cabin before pausing midway.
"One more thing..."
He stared back at Reoloy plainly.
"Apocalyptic visions aside," Cisco said. "Do you have anything in mind for after we find this thing you're looking for?"
Reoloy blinked. "Like what?"
"Anything at all," Cisco replied emphatically. "Like what's the first thing you'll do?"
Reoloy paused, adopting a thoughtful pose. He felt like he had just navigated through a storm and come out intact, but he couldn't afford to let his guard down yet.
"I don't really know, I'm hoping to figure it out once we get there."
"I see," Cisco said, a playful smile forming. "That's just like you. All wishy-washy and undependable through and through."
"Hey, that's a lot..."
Cisco laughed, continuing to walk away without giving a response.
Left alone at the railing, Reoloy exhaled slowly. It felt like he had just survived a bout in a gladiator ring. He had to admit that this part of his new life brought him no enjoyment whatsoever.
But it was necessary.
As long as everything paid off in the end… it would all be worth it.
At the cabin door, Cisco stopped. The chatter inside reached him clearly, but he tuned it out completely. His expression darkened as he cast a subtle glance back at the oblivious Reoloy.
For a long moment, he simply watched him.
Then he muttered quietly to himself.
"You're not him."