The grassy knoll was quiet, the air carrying that familiar scent of ancient mana and damp earth. Frieren sat reclined against a weathered stone, her nose buried in a grimoire that promised a spell for perfectly ripening fruit. To her, time was merely a suggestion, and a few hours of reading felt like the blink of an eye. That was, until the atmosphere curdled. A tear in the fabric of reality manifested in the distance—a swirling, iridescent vortex that hummed with a frequency she hadn't heard in over a millennium. Driven by a curiosity that outweighed her usual lethargy, she stood to investigate.

She didn't even have time to raise her staff. The pull was absolute. With a sharp tug at her very soul, the world of swords and sorcery vanished, replaced by a momentary, blinding white void before she was unceremoniously dropped.

The landing was soft, yet jarring. Instead of grass, she felt cotton and the warmth of another person. Frieren blinked, her twin pigtails draped over the shoulders of someone wearing a strange, grey fabric. She was in a room filled with odd glowing rectangles and shelves of books bound in materials she didn't recognize. The portal above snapped shut with a quiet pop, leaving a heavy silence in its wake.

"That was... unexpected." Her voice remained flat, though her eyes widened ever so slightly as she looked down. Beneath her sat a girl with the same white hair, the same pointed ears, and the same bored, half-lidded expression—only this version had very odd clothes on and held a device that emitted a soft, artificial light.