[https://i.imgur.com/BnOuowg.png](Art by Chestnut)

When Fannar found himself alone, taking a small break from his usual studies, he’d usually take the time to become more accustomed to his bedroom. This room was the only thing he’d ever actually seen in this new world, small master bathroom aside. His old crib was nowhere to be found, and he’d assumed it had likely been thrown away due to his growing body. Instead, in its place, the boy would sleep on a small child-size bed with an extremely comfortable mattress and almost - no - definitely too many silk blankets. He often thanked his blessings each morning he rose and each night he set himself to slumber once again. He found it still quite difficult to get accustomed to, however. Despite how soft and overly lavish it was, he just couldn’t quite get used to it yet. Unsure if he ever could. His previous life on the cold, filthy, and hard concrete streets often left him with a harder time and it wasn’t something he wished to return to, of course, but something about this new lifestyle just seemed to gnaw away at the back of his mind. Perhaps it was the guilt of getting to sleep in such a comfortable room, filled with warmth, clean and fit more for only the rich. There was no way he could ever live up to this room. To ever feel like he could truly call this room his own without feeling something deeply, sickeningly, and inherently wrong about it all. It felt stolen. It was taken from somebody more worthy. Not him. Never him.

The walls were plastered in a dull, bluish-grey paint. Parts of the edges had begun to peel, and the paint frayed along the very fine cracks that ran along some patches of the walls. An off-white, small, and intricate pattern flowed vertically across the walls; it seemed to follow the same sigil as seen on the shield and Seakur Thrayah’s necklace. This design was clearly a very big part of this household, not only culturally and historically, but perhaps also religiously. Fannar wasn’t completely sure on the latter, however, as he didn’t know if her necklace was one representing a symbol of the goddess or not. It could simply be something she had to wear as somebody who was a part of the household or related to the family in some way. A large portion of the room had now changed from being mostly barren of furniture now he had grown, however. A lot of his bedroom was now full of bookshelves. He’d also been given his own desk ever since his studies became more advanced and serious. It all seemed to be made from the same, dark wood. The boy wasn’t sure entirely what the wood was actually from, or if the tree was even something that existed or was even slightly similar to the plants in his old world. But he rarely had the time, and never felt the need, to learn or worry about it for long. It wasn’t a core part of his interests or what those caring for him seemed to want him to focus on, for now. At this point he had begun to believe, or at least suspect from what he’d seen and read so far about this world, that there was no electricity.

The area was entirely lit by candles in lanterns and decorative, glass lamps. The room would often smell ever so faintly of smoke until somebody opened one of the two doors the room had. He had become accustomed to this now, and was just thankful to be given such a warm, and likely precious light. It was hard for him to imagine how expensive replacing the wax candles most likely cost his family. He’d often find himself trying to light as few as possible when he could; although, this did sometimes cause a disagreement with the kindly lady who took care of him. She didn’t like him sitting in a darkened room for such extended periods of time. He understood she was only thinking of his health, and deeply appreciated it. Fannar often found it hard to put himself above even the smallest of things, though, and often blamed himself for causing her distress in the first place. The boy always found it incredibly difficult to ever value himself or put himself first above anything else in his room. Even from the smallest, feathered quill to the tallest, dark wardrobe.

This room did have one thing that often confused and troubled him more, however. Putting the fineries and far superior living conditions aside for even just one moment made this issue the most prominent. He had no right to complain. He’d been blessed, gifted with this amazing opportunity he could only dream to ever pay back for being given. Fannar could never do something so selfish as to wish for more or question something that was surely so trivial. But there, around him, it would often close in. Tightening around himself. Drawing closer in the silence whenever he found himself alone. Inching further inwards as the room shrank each day. The boy had long begun to realise and try to understand this one, small, tiny little detail. The one thing missing that he just couldn’t understand. Why did it bother him so? Why would this make him feel this way? Why was something so seemingly unimportant causing him this strange distress?

It was the windows.

They didn’t exist. Not a single pane of glass. Even the smallest crack in the wall. There was nothing. He had never seen this new, real world from the outside before. He had absolutely no idea what was outside his room. In fact, he’d never even been in any other room within this manor. It was supposedly quite sizable and grand. However, he hadn't seen even the slightest slimmer of it. At times, when he felt insecure - often finding himself to feel so when alone - he could just feel everything around him shrinking. It was claustrophobic. Was it because he’d never been in one place for such an extended period of time in his previous life? The alleyways of Japan may have all felt quite similar, but he could freely explore and move around them, his world was the size of a great metropolis before. No. Fannar couldn’t keep thinking this way. These sinful, impure thoughts. This greed that was surely consuming him. He was becoming spoiled by these luxuries around himself. He had to block it all out and set himself back onto a better path. Not for himself. But for all those who had helped bring him into this world, support and raise him, and surely expected him to grow into a man they could be proud of. Even just slightly. He never wanted to be considered a mistake. Ever.

On one of the shelves of his larger bookcases, Fannar began to find a slowly growing and changing collection of curled up scrolls that had replaced the books he’d stop reading. As he grew older and his interests shifted alongside his knowledge of his heritage, he began to wonder more and more about the outside world, and how it really worked. Taking one of the scrolls from the shelf, he untied the thread from around it and spread it across the table, keeping each side of the papyrus held down with the sides or corners of different books. There, incredibly detailed and beautifully illustrated, lay a small map of some kind of settlement. A village? No. From what he felt like were measurements in a system he was unfamiliar with, and the numbers and lines that ran across the borders of the page, it seemed rather big to be just a village. It was perhaps more similar to a large town or smaller city. At least, comparing it to the maps he’d seen in the trashed light novels and manga in his previous life. Whilst pure fantasy, he felt there was usually some form of fact tying them down to reality. Only, this time, the map was probably a real place. A place he lived in. It was the settlement of his home town. At least, Fannar had assumed it to be a layout of the town, as it shared the same name as the fiefdom his father owned. Siltriclove.

At the very north of the map seemed to be a large outlined body of water. It occurred to the young child that this potentially was a sign that his father’s territory was, in fact, coastal. It might have been an inland sea, however. He wasn’t sure, as when pulling out more maps and opening them up across the floor and other surfaces, he couldn't find a larger map of the land outside the town. But Fannar was certain that it likely wasn’t a lake, considering the lengths of the docks, and the amount of wards that seemed to hug its edges. Fannar wasn’t exactly an expert, of course, but he’d always loved finding fantasy maps in comics and other discarded novels; imagining what it would’ve been like to live as part of those worlds and trying to understand the geology behind them. Although, when he thought back on these worlds, something immediately seemed to be incredibly different. Something that seemed so standard as a part of these maps, especially as a part of the rough time period he’d assumed the world was in, was missing. There weren’t any walls. Not even a single tower. Their land was entirely open. It perplexed him, yet only served to draw him in further towards researching these maps. They all seemed to be of Siltriclove, but perhaps at different times. There seemed to only be very minor adjustments from each, with the biggest change being new buildings and other small works.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

One of these smaller projects seemed to include two bridges, the first being quite large and grand, with the second being smaller and seemingly quite slim. They were both built across a somewhat sizable river that split the town entirely in half. Almost all of the residential areas labelled and detailed on the maps were tightly packed up against both sides of the river bank. A road also seemed to have been a lot more clearly and boldly detailed, on what he assumed was the newest map of Siltriclove, compared to the other features that had been illustrated on the paper. It winded across the larger bridge, and seemed to start from the western ward, before leading out far towards the southern east through the fields of crops. What also seemed to interest him was the fact that all the fields were on one side of the river. He couldn’t see a single field of crops on the other side. The only time he’d seen a suggestion of one was on the most worn and slightly tattered map he’d managed to find; the faint lines being missing without a trace from all other versions. Perhaps this meant nothing on the western side of the river could grow? The farmlands that lay to the western side of the town’s river also seemed to almost be the same size of the down if he grouped them all together into one. Fannar felt that this may have either been the sign that the town was using both resources from the sea and the fields for a strong trade route towards somewhere in the east, and potentially across the ocean, or that there was a population greater than he had initially assumed.

Fannar couldn’t quite pinpoint where his father’s manor, his current place of stay, was located. However, when dwelling on this point, he felt that they likely weren’t very close to the other structures on the map, nor near the ocean or river. It could get incredibly quiet in his room when Seakur Thrayah wasn’t helping to tutor him or just simply visiting. He couldn’t ever recall hearing wagons, footsteps, or voices from his room that seemed to be coming from the outside. The same seemed to apply to the classic sounds of the ocean. Fannar wasn’t quite sure when he’d heard it before exactly, but he did recall seeing it with the loud, supposed sounds of waves being played across an incredibly large screen on one of the skyscrapers in his original home city from his previous life. The strange cry one of the birds made as it flew across its’ illuminated surface. The laughter that faded as each of those miniscule squares twirled and twinkled away into darkness. The next, hauntingly meaningless, and brief attempt to capture the attention of those who truly mattered taking its new chance in the spotlight. It had caught his eye as well, for a moment, but that memory had brought on another part he wished he’d left forgotten. As everyone else on those bustling streets and rushing on between the shops kept their eyes focused on that large screen, their own tiny handheld screens, and the flickering lights of the traffic lights - he remembered seeing it. Something nobody else would look at. Not for longer than a second. It wasn’t as important as those larger-than-life sources of information and claws of companies trying to fill their already overflowing pockets. No. Not for them. But it was all he could look at when he saw it, looking down from the brief digital view of the ocean, lying down in complete silence. Yet it was louder than all of the screaming tires of the cars and the deafening yells of the people chattering. Constantly, persistently, pointlessly chattering.

The body of another homeless child. It splayed across the cold concrete just in the alleyway opposite from the one he’d been briefly staying in. Still. He could tell what had happened. They were unusually open with their body language, unbundled, unshakable. It was the middle of winter. There was no fire near them, nor a shop with an exterior furnace to burn trash. They weren’t shivering. They weren’t trying to curl up to keep the rest of them warm. The sight of the statue-like child would’ve burned itself into his mind - if not for the countless others that clouded and mixed together. Even as he thought back on it at that moment, his small fists clenching part of the map he’d begun to blankly stare past, he wasn’t quite sure if it was a child he was remembering. Nor what they looked like. Only vague shadows, whispers of a figure, and frays of tattered clothing would stay in their proper places. Every other detail just seemed to constantly change, shift, and drift away. Just like the ash-like snowflakes that haunted the winds of that bitter day. It was almost ironic. The staple of the hot, summer vacation he’d often dreamt of, always coming back to remind him about the reality of that unforgiving winter. Fannar could almost feel the sickening, defeated sensation fill his stomach again, slowly sitting back down on the chair as he released the now crinkled corners and sides of the map.

Why was he the one to come to this new world? Why was he the only one here? Why couldn’t it have been them? He couldn’t understand it. No. He never wanted to even try to comprehend it.

Running a hand through his snow white hair, he shook his head as he tried to clear his mind, he suddenly seemed to pause. He moved his hand towards his focus, in front of the paper. He was holding a freshly-dipped quill. Ink slowly dripping off the end of the pointed feather. Then, the boy looked at the illustration. He stood up, stumbling back quickly as the chair tumbled with a loud crash behind himself. Fannar’s bright, red eyes widened in absolute surprise, and slight horror. He’d not even noticed that he was doing it. He wasn’t sure why he even had. How? But, there it was. A new building was drawn on the map. The edges and gaps of the page that surrounded it now covered in a few blotches of the pitch black liquid. Slowly, approaching the map - trying to push down his newly rising fears of ruining this map he’d been trusted with - the young boy tried to make sense of it. He’d written his name beneath the building he’d drawn. The style being quite different from the rest of the picture. Even having a stereotypical, classic little triangle roof, with a door. All other structures being simple squares and other box-like shapes without such cute, or unnecessary details that were likely supposed to be just helpful, rough guides to the general layout of the town. It couldn’t be. The more he looked at it, the more it confused him. Slowly, he put the quill back into the little, glass pot of ink. No. He’d never even seen this land before that day. He hadn’t seen any suggestion or intentional placement that would make sense for it to be the manor on any other of these maps. There was nothing even there in that space before. However, there in the north western corner of the map, he began to connect the dots. The path that was at first, seeming to be originating from the one of the dock wards, now seemed to be more likely to be starting from his father’s manor. Or, at least, from where he’d unconsciously drawn the location of the home.

It was near the sea. Not as far from the other structures than he thought he’d been. It only made him more confused. He could only try to keep talking himself out of this being the true location of where he was. It was just a strange coincidence. A mistake he’d made. Just a mindless scribble. If he was truly there, in that pointless, silly little sketch- No. He wouldn’t be. He wasn’t. After all. He couldn’t hear any of it. Surely he’d hear something. He could hear birds every now and then, he could hear when Seakur Thrayah was approaching and leaving, he could hear some movements downstairs at times as well. It was how he could tell he was likely on a higher floor. But nothing else. There was surely no way the sounds of the outside wouldn’t reach him as well. However... All that aside. It did begin to dawn on him for a brief, likely fleeting moment. A question that would perhaps never be answered, or perhaps was silly to even ask himself.

If this really was where he currently lived, and he found it whilst thinking of his previous 'home' on the streets of Tokyo, could what he just did...

Count as clairvoyance?