However unprepared or ill-suited Ryunosuke may feel, his cries do draw Estinien's attention. He suddenly falls quiet, a silvery eye turning to stare at him through a part in his wild white hair. He breathes raggedly as if he's only just realized he was asphyxiating.

It genuinely answers a question for him. In the wake of having been taken, body and soul, by such a creature, he had been dropped back into this realm mid-freefall. Even though he has a sense that he has faced a feeling like this before, to lose himself in the soul of another, this had been a window into overwhelming psychosis. Had he even been anything besides a vessel for that force? If so, did anything of him remain?

It seems that it does, at least, because hearing his own name does something to ground him. It's one thing that feels right, that feels like it belongs to him, and gradually it rallies other memories beneath its banner. His breathing begins to slow, and he no longer attacks his own body in a terrified frenzy.

He lifts his eyes and looks around him. He remembers this. He was just here.

He makes a sound as if he's trying to speak but the words keep cluttering together and tumbling out of his mouth formlessly. After a few attempts, he manages to communicate again.

"Am... Am I..." He trails off, as if answering his own question within his head. He brings down his hands, looking at his disconcertingly unblemished skin. "You are..."

With such vulnerability, the passing of the entity really has left him in a state of dire innocence.