Lin Yuxuan curled up on the sofa in his cramped rental apartment, the blue light from his phone screen illuminating his focused face. The episode of Kamen Rider Zi-O on screen had reached an exciting moment, with Tsukasa Kadoya’s iconic entrance about to appear. He reached for the chips beside him, but couldn’t take his eyes off the screen for even a second.
Suddenly, the lights in the room began to flicker violently. The phone screen, which had been playing the video, glowed an eerie magenta. The light spread rapidly like a living thing, transforming into a vast Aurora Curtain that engulfed the entire room. Lin Yuxuan’s eyes widened, and the chips slipped from his hand and scattered across the floor. “W-what’s with these special effects?!” Before his cry had even finished, the mysterious stream of light swallowed him whole.
As the world spun around him, Lin Yuxuan felt as though he were hurtling through a space-time tunnel, with flashes of light and shadow whipping past his eyes. When he slammed hard into the ground, a sharp pain at the back of his head made him groan. The pungent smells of motor oil and gunpowder, along with the scorched odor peculiar to a summer noon, filled his nostrils. He struggled to open his eyes, then instinctively raised a hand to shield them from the blinding sunlight.
