Turning toward the city, Jiehong redoubled his march. He wanted to rest but knew he needed to use every ounce of daylight.

His approach, then, was slow, but thankfully uneventful. As the sun began to set and the day wore to evening, Jiehong slowed himself to stay well-gained on energy. The cooling wind picked up, though not by so much as to become a burden to his core body temperature. Chirping crickets joined the soon-to-be moonlit glow, as wolves -- peaceful, proud -- cried somewhere far off.

"It's so peaceful," Jiehong said to Zan, hoping he was listening. "You would love it. We made it, Zee."

Crawling, the wind encouraged tree branches innumerable to dance. Scrapping like the subtle steps of squirrel ballet.

For the next couple of hours, Jiehong enjoyed himself. He slowed his thinking. "The wind here is so crisp. Zan, it's crazy!"

"Zan?" Jiehong queried.

Tilting his head back to steal a look, Jiehong saw drool drip from his face like slobber from a dog. His eyes were rolling in his half-open sockets, as though his hidden eye was attempting to soak in all of reality.

Fear struck Jiehong. Yet he did not let it overwhelm him. He remained calm. There was nothing he could do to help Zan. Jiehong told himself these things many times. Whatever battle Zan was fighting, he had to wage it himself.

"Hang in there, Zan. Keeping it up!" Jiehong said to a semi-conscious Zan.

Zan's body made chaotic jerks. Violent as sometimes they could be, most were of a gentle nature. Jiehong gave his attention to the road ahead. He would not rest tonight. He couldn't, not with his brother's life on the line. Jiehong dismissed invasive thoughts pertaining to Zan's potential death. He would not die. Jiehong knew this. He couldn't die. He was too important to die. Too important to me, Jiehong mouthed, choking on dry tears.

Walking unencumbered by bleak premonitions, after a while, Zan slowed his convulsions. This allowed Jiehong to do his best part and walk and walk and--

"Where are we?" Jiehong suddenly asked. Zan was asleep, Good, Jiehong thought. He needs the rest.

It had been subtle. He hadn't realized it at the time. But something had happened; while Jiehong was walking, he had, somehow, been affected by something or wandered into... something. Jiehong felt strange movements in his head. His face felt warm. And the world around him? It felt significant.

Jiehong's difficulty in articulating what happened stemmed from him not being able to understand what exactly had changed about the physical world. The world remained as it had been -- trees, wind, wolves -- and the rough path ahead of him used by traveling merchants. But something about that physical world shifted. Like a pervasive aura had enraptured existence itself to make it more than how it appeared. Jiehong knew something was up when the bends to the trail seemed a little too perfect.

Qualifying what made a 'bend' perfect was tricky. Each bend was different. The incline varied. As did the decline. Sometimes roots struck near the path, but never on the path. The path's soil could only be described as well-kept. Which made no sense, of course, as no one was repairing these paths. Or put very little maintenance effort into them, at least. No animal tracks soiled the path. And somehow, the air tasted sweeter.

Jiehong considered these things as he walked. Unsure as he had been, he did not dare break from the path, not with his destination, and help for Zan, right in front of him. More and more Jiehong fell into a trance-like state. Falling, the world became more and more perfect. Sequential, somehow; branches, trees, even contrails of wind and the forest critters festering among the forest floor, felt powerful.

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A violent shake.

So violent, Jiehong did not have time to react.

So powerful was the shake, he was sent out of himself. Not for long, hardly a moment escaped before Jiehong was back in his body. What Jiehong saw, though, made the moment worthwhile, terrifying as though it were: Jiehong saw an image out of place. Superimposed over reality, Jiehong saw a perfect recreation of reality as it existed on Hope-Ridge's approach. But that image was not an image, per se. No. Jiehong glimpsed how this perfect recreation of reality was linked together -- it moved and breathed, using the swaying of the wind, as its animals were its blood and veins, the vestiges of objective reality its host. It mimicked reality, attached itself over reality. Then used reality to move.

The revelation came to Jiehong's mind: it was alive.

"What the shet-feck is going on," Jiehong whispered, struggling, now not to succumb to his fear.

As if testing the waters, Jiehong stepped forward several paces. All appeared as it had been. Perfect.

Breathing in deeply, the sweet air tasted of coffee and earth. Bold Moss intermingled. He felt calmer. More relaxed. With his fear subsiding, Jiehong did not consider himself in danger, though he knew he was walking among a very strange Life Form. Pretexts against killing imposed themselves upon all Kinds, both divine, mortal, and even eldritch. And though fates as bad, if not worse, then death did exist, Jiehong remained ignorant of them.

The trail ahead of Jiehong seemed to wind, curving along a nearly infinitesimal, repeating bend. Animals, root meshes of a unique nature, repeated. Jiehong did not receive the impression, however, the repetitions were some cursed after-image of something which 'once was.' Jiehong, rather, felt the repetitions to be the same impressions of those same animals, but at a different point in time. Which was, to Jiehong, common -- of course, all of life only went in one-direction. Forward in time.

"What am I seeing?" Jiehong wondered. "If it isn't the afterimage, then what is it? Is the animal behaving unnaturally? How and why? Is it even relevant?"

Such and Other Questions dotted Jiehong's thinking head.

Falling deeper into this not-a-trance-but-similar-to-a-trance-like state, Jiehong glimpsed a slow, easeful move of earth. Of soil.

The soil was sliding toward a point in space-time like a river flows through bedrock. "Is it really moving?" Jiehong thought.

Before he fully articulated the shift, Jiehong's route rearticulated itself and guided him along the same course as the soil-river. Walking, Jiehong felt at peace, one with reality. Like he was an experienced angler enjoying his favorite hobby in retirement. Eyes heavy after a long day of contemplation. Of the water rocking the boat, of the sheet blue sky reflecting the ground above without a cloud to be seen. Every step became an oar's push against the water; every lure's sink an appreciation of Jiehong's nature walk as he advanced through the altered stretch.

Walking without realizing it and conforming to every inch of the path's peace, arrayed exactly as Jiehong would find it best, as would be best suited to his walking speed and fashion, his concentration focused to a pinprick point. What he knew as reality blurred; phantom fragments from reams of existence he was hitherto as now unaware of, came into focus, crossing his eyes. Jiehong saw reality, but a version of it distorted as an entity came from the apparent disparate portions. Rain drops. Plop. Leaves tussling. Sounds which repeated themselves until new suggestions came into being. Lulled, Jiehong felt as he fell into himself, his vision swerved as do wagons nearly colliding into innocent babes in the streets. More sounds: the trod of his feet upon the ground and its crunch; an exhale of breath; and the evaporation of sweat intermingled with magic, as gray bleeds into white. It was a new language. Before all of his perception broke, Jiehong swore he heard a word in this new language. "Hello."

But with another step, he was out of it.

Reality returned to as it had been. Peaceful, yes. But not as significant or ordered as it had been in the caress of... whatever that phenomenon was.

Looking all around him, Jiehong felt a pack of goosebumps roll over his skin. His hair rose to its edge. He took several more steps, away from the strange cloud of significance which had clouded him as he walked. With each step he took away from the significance patch, he felt the normal duration and beat of life resume.

"What in the blasted realms was that fecking nonsense?!" Jiehong quietly sputtered to himself. He was not angry. Nor was he traumatized -- nothing of the sort. Rather, Jiehong was confounded. Nothing in his studies had remotely hinted at the phenomenon he had just encountered. He wanted answers. He had half a mind to return to the cloud of significance, assuming it remained in the area. Yet he couldn't. He had Zan to take care of and get to Hope-Ridge. A city which was still a very far way away and--

Once more, Jiehong stood befuddled.

Before him was Hope-Ridge's front gates. He had arrived at his destination.

But how? Jiehong mouthed as he signed in with the guards and entered the city, more confused than ever.