♚ — phantasmagoria.
It unravels like a scroll he's seen sometime before, a faint remnant of the castle and semblance of peace now far behind this entrance. Beyond the point of no return? Perhaps, but he pays little mind to the drop in temperature, to the change in color in each luminescent light, and least of all to the wiry change in every tree branch that now extends in his direction. As if they'd crack beneath his touch, shadows loom over the few things nature offers up. (Poor excuses for scenery, that's for sure. But what isn't, with his island in mind?)
Needless to say, he's drifting from the steps that ground him. Though his eyes trail on every warning aside, they only do so briefly - and the safety lingering might assure is tugged away by an urge to solve the theme park's mystery as a whole: what on earth is going on?
With no one to answer his questions within a few miles' radius, all he can do is keep moving. Stasis won't help him… and who knows what just might happen, should he decide to return to his room? Even if slaying the dragon wasn't the most complicated battle he'd faced, surely something else might await him next time. Not wanting to chance it just yet, he follows the starting path - only rubbing wider eyes with sore knuckles at the near-mirage. He might gauge it as such (and he'd do well to, considering what lies ahead) were he anything like a skeptic, but the brunet casts reason aside like a spell to save his life.
"Riku! This is real, right?"
His breath is stuck at the pit of his throat - he doesn't want to let go, or to be wrong a second time (if it's a joke, this maze might not be one he'll pull through). But it's too late by the time he takes the taller's shoulder in one hand, not really caring who or what else they're about to encounter.
