The uncanny figure got off of my face while I sat up in a panic. Please don't eat me, I was going to say, but the next scene left me dumbfounded. The humanoid entity knelt down on one knee and bowed.

“It is of unimaginable relief to see you again, Lord Alrion.” He said with his gray carbon eyes sparkling of genuine gladness.

Okay, that's fucking weird. Not only was he wearing a black hooded robe, he even had a full smile that didn't go well with his face which looked like a new corpse's. And wait,

“Alrion? Who's that?”

He tilted his head like he just saw a moron. “Is that not your name, my lord?”

“Eh? Uh...”

My eyes darted round and round the room looking for the perfect response. Do I tell him no or pretend I'm this lord? I thought hard, since my answer might well decide my fate. Just then, I happened to notice a vital fact about him.

There was a long black object hanging on his waist by a belt. The moment I recognized what the thing was, cold sweat rolled through my back like a slippery snake.

“Ah yeah!” I said. “Alrion, yeah, that's me alright. Yeah...”

My head was nodding like a jackhammer without my brain attached.

“... ‘Yeah’? Is that a word from an ancient language, my lord?” He tilted his head to the side.

“Oh! I meant yes... Yeah—I mean yes.”

“... I see.”

“Aha. Ahaha...”

My heart calmed down. I was safe, I was safe, I told myself over and over, my eyes still fixed on the sheathed sword by his waist. Just what would have happened if I told him that I wasn't this lord of his? I wondered, but the answer was already quite obvious. I would've been diced meat.

He stood up and dusted his robe, then turned to me.

“Then we should get going, Lord Alrion.” He said.

“... Get going? Go where?”

“To let the king know of course, that you have finally returned from the abyss.”

“Oh... okay...” I said.

I stood up. Finally, a ticket outside! Fragile hope filled my head.

But then, in the middle of my first step, I noticed plenty of things wrong. The non-human chap noticed the sudden halt of my feet and called me, but I had to ignore him.

First were my clothes. I wasn't wearing the tracksuit I had on before I woke up in this place. Instead what I wore was a dusty dark robe vaguely similar to the mysterious figure's.

Second, there were curtains of white hair on my shoulders. When I tried to pull them off, there was a tugging feedback from my scalp.

What the hell?

I pulled again, this time a little harder. And that earned me the same sensation.

At that moment, nothing else mattered other than me and the mysterious lump of long hair hanging from my top. No seriously what the hell?! The last time I looked at a mirror, I had black, spiky short hair. Sure, it has been a few months before I last got a haircut, but even the dumbest idiot know that a few months is not enough time to grow hair this long. The length was well past my shoulders. Moreover, it was white! as in milky white, not that gray hair you get from aging.

“Impossible.” I muttered. “How is this even—”

“—Look out behind you!”

It was him, his widened eyes fixed at the brick wall behind me. Behind? I turned around, and as soon as I did my alarms went off—

—I was in immediate danger, and I raised my arm in a vain attempt to deflect the sudden threat.

Then it hit me head on, a flash of searing white light. It enveloped my forearm in intense heat, accompanied by a great force that threw me across the chamber like I was nothing but a rag doll.

My back collided against what I think was a wall, preventing me from flying further away. The impact knocked the air out of my lungs and left my ears ringing, while also giving off a sound of stone cracking and pebbles scattering. Everything happened so fast, my mind took a good while to catch up. Was I hurt? What happened? The burning sensation on my forearm slowly faded away. And that is never good.

... Was I dead already? I asked myself.

I slowly opened my eyes, half expecting to see a white marble hall with Dumbledore greeting me. Or was it Gandalf?

But as it turns out, I wasn't dead. At least not yet.

Instead, I was inside a purple transparent dome. It looked like glass, but its surface was twisting, flowing, like a thin wall of water. I wanted to stare at it some more, but a more shocking thing took my fickle attention away.

A large hole the size of a human was punched out of the wall where the light came from, revealing a dark outside.

Then it dawned upon me.

Did something strong enough to bust concrete just hit me? I thought as I took another look at the purple dome that surrounded me.

The front part of the dome had cracks. Then does that mean...? Well, it does look like a force field alright.

But even though the dome prevented my death, I wasn't unscathed. The stench of burnt flesh was too powerful to ignore, and it came from my right arm. From fingers to elbow, a lot of skin patches were missing while small parts of the bone peeked out from every direction. It didn't hurt, but it was numb. Blood was flowing out of the blisters, but it wasn't red.

The blood was pure black.

The ringing in my ears finally abated, and I began hearing a pair of footsteps rushing towards me, accompanied by panicked shouting.

Ah, him. I remember, I wasn't alone. Yeah, he would probably help me.

The dome surrounding me started to crack, and then shattered when the accumulated fatigue finally pulled me to the ground littered with the fragments of the wall I crashed onto.

Can this day even get any weirder? Walking up in a creepy room with a creepy creature, then getting hit by a Kamehameha and seeing a real life energy shield. But then again, this is just a dream, right? This have to be.