Faded, desolate, boundless—everywhere was filled with distorted, anomalous visual dislocation.
Modir sat alone in the deserted sailors' dining room, feeling as though he had fallen into a strange, broken time and space. Everything he saw and heard here seemed separated from him by a thick curtain, and the reinforced window before him was the physical manifestation of that curtain—the vast yet barren "desert" outside was the other side of it. On that side lay the truth he had pursued for a very long time.
Yet he had a feeling... that for the current him, it was also a place he absolutely should not set foot in.
At some point, the two voices had faded away, and the whole world sank into silence. He looked toward the wasteland beyond the window and saw that enormous figure leaning against a throne or altar seemingly fall into absolute stillness. Yet the grayish-white cracks covering its body suddenly seemed to come alive, gradually spreading outward. Behind that incomparably enormous black silhouette, in the depths of the far-off desert, he vaguely saw scenes like mirages. A black city seemed to appear there, only to vanish between heaven and earth in an instant as pale windblown sand swept through...
Suddenly, Modir felt the surrounding environment shake. In the next second, chaotic light and shadow flooded his vision, and all the voices that had disappeared returned to his senses at once—the adventurers' conversations, the sounds of machinery operating deep in the ship, the sea and wind, and the slightly nervous cry of the huntress, Laura: "Mr. Modir? Mr. Modir, are you all right?!"
The old mage finally broke free from that soul-severing daze. The swaying, distorted light and shadows before him swiftly reassembled into a normal scene, and he found himself back in the sailors' dining room