Night was about to fall, and the sky outside the window gradually sank into inky darkness.
Several Nittel soldiers walked down the street, chatting and laughing as they discussed what to eat later. Their voices echoed through the empty streets and alleys, unusually clear.
One of them cracked a joke in an officer's voice, drawing a burst of laughter from his companions that carried far down the stone-paved road.
Renato glanced at their retreating backs, then reached out and shut the window. The wooden frame closed with a soft click, cutting off the voices outside.
"Klauthsura," he said, turning around and leaning against the windowsill with his arms folded, "if the sun and the scenery in the distance are fake, does that mean everything we encountered along the way... was fake too?"
The female Dragonborn was inspecting the room. Her fingers moved slowly along the baseboards in the corners, leaving neither the gaps between the bed boards nor the inside of the windowsill unchecked.
Only after confirming that there were no traces of magic did Klauthsura disperse the psionics at her fingertips and answer:
"No. During our earlier conversations, I secretly used psionics to scan some of the humans who spoke with you, including Matt. The results showed that they were all physically real creatures."
"Whether in terms of their bodily measurements or the activity of their brain waves..." The female Dragonborn paused, then rephrased her explanation in terms Renato could understand. "Simply put, every human we have encountered since entering the demiplane has a soul."
"At least from a human perspective, they are all 'living people,' not illusions."
Once his surprise passed, Renato gave it some thought, and more questions arose in his mind:
"You mean the people living in this demiplane are all flesh-and-blood humans? Not some kind